Dusk, A Farewell

At dusk we bid farewell.

Restlessly stirring the days inside sounds,

making deranged concoctions in the clouds.

In subterranean wells, sirens are drowned by rain,

wind is amplified in the brain, sailing through sleepless nights.

Expelled into the horse latitudes of idle hours,

if only they could be painted like brilliant flowers,

a motley of colors to distinguish golden horizons

from the sea at large.

A farewell to your craft, adrift in ideas.

Eyes of red navigation,

the body a black expanse, to submerge, trawling deeply

for the coins of sunken ships and elusive silver fish.

Beneath these surfaces

the mystical coincidences are accumulated in song.

You’ve dreamt underbelly,

words radiating starboard from the hull.

From the bridge a farewell.

A hawk leaves the inlet

with talons clutching the metallic scales of an alewife.

With a glint in the sun, the imprint is seared into memory,

like a piercing cry

we’ll recall later from a different frequency.

The antennae of rooftops witness

many farewells of undetermined suffering,

almost human, the sound of the sun falling.

A bird of unknown origin,

leaving no wake as it plunges into the ocean.

The trajectory of its body, a descending shade,

with each moment the shadow increases

further into the loneliness of De Chirico courtyards.

 

Dusk, a farewell.  The world spinning out of control.

Grinding to dust all the ambition that burned cities bright,

pressed into a daily toll, a number that will always grow.

It was through creativity that we learned of community.

These gatherings are not forgotten,

nor can they be swept into isolated piles

of suspicious eyes with no smiles.

Vulnerable, the tiny flames with no kindling.

Blow on the ends of our hope

before extinguished candles become smoke

and the landscape grows cold with sorrow.

A farewell to plans, time lapsed lives

that no longer strive but are slowed, compartmentalized.

Twilight is no longer spent applauding fireworks.

The future is no longer a bright sparkler

reflected in everyone’s eyes.

The gaze has been averted to a decapitated flower

that appears so much smaller as it sits on the water

before  being taken under.

A farewell, the illusion of distance in beacon light.

A sweeping seascape of change with no compass,

the coming of an age born out of chaos without counsel,

save all those books and albums.

We’ll witness the weight of industry overwhelming humanity.

In shrinking spaces the imbalance is amplified,

navigating the collapse, like one of the damned,

with sanitized hands and covered faces,

peering into a void with no features,

like empty theaters.

It’s a tragic scene, is there any room left for heroism?

A silver lining in defeat?

Intrigue for imagined patrons

watching from empty seats?

Run the credits, words engraved in stone.

Save the last gasp for the projector,

exhausting its last reel of film alone.

 

Dusk, a farewell. Trains departing depots.

Wheels screetch, no one speaks,

voices swallowed in tunnels of what’s to come.

No parting kisses from the distance

or faces stuck to windows

like in old black and white photos,

waving handkerchiefs of goodbye.

The darkening of eyes adjust

to the damp unfamiliarity

we’re meant to breathe in.

Breathe again, the end comes to everything.

Yet, fear of the eventual end

is inherent in the fear that this may never end.

Is there light at the end of this tunnel?

Will the sun rise tomorrow over the ocean?

Will rain fill rivers to maneuver these bends

without our mouths consuming the land?

Without these thoughts can the bird songs

still hold sway in the chaos that canopies them?

Will they find the sky ceilingless,

or a desperate color

in the flutter of wings?

Will they glide on the wind

and the infinite it brings?

Time will tell, for now farewell.

The Motion Beneath Confinement

The Potential of Travel:

The potential of travel when confined to islands becomes mental.

The strength of creativity, equilateral

to the flight of frigate birds

and the horizon that completes the triangle.

The shadow casts a wide net knowing not where it will land,

somewhere equatorial,  over vast tracts of luminous sand.

Sometimes it’s necessary to scan an entire ocean

before we can temper the distortion.

Can the mind’s eye touch the spirit?

Will the interplay of a thousand images get near it?

There comes a surge of words but you barely hear it

in the motion of a distant storm

and the supple blackness that gives form to the correspondence.

 

The Drifting Leaves no Footprints:

Lodged like a shell in this primitive expanse

your dreams of drifting leave no footprints.

You await the tide,  the next great swell

to bring you back out again.

Through the hypnotic reverie of the surf

the sound of whitewash dissolves

into ancient squares.

Surreal and composed

it proceeds over stone

breathing its soundtrack into the motion

of when it comes and it goes.

It rises and recedes

beneath the toes of a statue,

this patron saint of lonely virtue,

companion to the emptiness that time would accrue

over centuries of our movements and the residual echoes

are the only things left that pass through.

 

Fragments of the Imagination:

Fragments of the imagination gathered like debris,

it’s a war for control within the limits of any city.

In the contents of journals

In the semblance of journeys,

fragments of experience are closely cropped,

before spilling to your feet like errant teardrops,

turning the well worn passages into cascading streams

and through these gleaming mirrors all will be revealed.

 

Outside of Awareness:

On the outskirts of the glass city,

far from the sheltered harbor,

near to the pathways outside of awareness

there is a mystical sequence of moments

at the crossroads of consequence,

a series of propositions to remind us

that we’re merely riders on the wind,

passengers on the bridge

spanning the moment

between the past and the future,

suspended, nebulous as a rumor

afloat in the ether,

the faintest of bells

ringing out from towers and hills

and the freedom that follows

the silhouette of sweeping swallows.

 

 

The Back Valley Exhales:

You’ll descend like a strand of rain

loosened from a cloud,

a radiant bird

the illuminated shroud

of a monk at work with the sacred word

describing the light before it’s dispersed.

The knoll is aglow in resplendent intervals of flame

from out of the shade of the back valley

it is framed by the ridges, to hold in the essential energy.

Until exhaling with the strongest of wind,

it is a phoenix conjured again.

There’s an attempt to harness it,

to give names to the shrill songs

but wayward is my own breath,

destined to unravel before long.

Looking back on your travel like a colorful thread

lifted like wildflowers from the riverbed

unencumbered from moors

the moments of ascent

reaching towards the unbroken sky

when there is no breath to give

the memories die.

 

The Motion Beneath Confinement:

There’s a highway that follows the coast

and around every bend

recollections call out like restless ghosts.

A temporary retreat from quarantine

the city is shuttered, encased in concrete.

Here you evaporate instantly

into mist and sea salt,

leaving stains we’re urgently altered

by the whims of the water.

Waves breaking against the foundations,

no windows remain.

All the best laid plans,

wind blown and sacrificed to the rain,

to all the old gods in nature.

We’ll advance, hand in hand with the unknown.

All structure going up like matchsticks,

like retirement homes in the lava zone.

Against the hardened darkness

there are streaks of light,

in contrast we find the alignment.

So we lose ourselves for a time

peeling back layers of confinement,

seeking motion for guidance

to see through the blindness

and the sickness that knows no limits.