Poems

Obsidian’s Edge 29

El sueño de la razón produce monstruos.
When reason sleeps, monsters are born.

Francisco de Goya.

5:00 AM

… bright flowers of penance purchased for a pittance finger knitted spider webs of silence spun into wrinkles between stars and evensong while an old film shadow boxes black and white photographs and a rowing boat lurches over the waves as if a soggy brown cardboard box had dropped down on a moonbeam to pluck the mote from a one-eyed jack-in-the-truck who surveyed his road map for the dead days lying in ambush next to the sudden bonfire that flared on Guy Fawkes night and ignited the world like a Jacky-jumper vaulting a Roman Candle as Catherine spun on her wheel and a sky full of stars wheeled round the North Pole and slid down the Big Dipper’s handle to launch a long white scar of lightning that scared night’s velvet mask and plucked a diamond feather from the peacock’s tail as it strutted through the garden of bifurcating paths where Borges left his summer footprints at low tide in the sandy grief of the autumn leaf that the red fox dripped and dropped as he fled in vain like blood sizzles drizzling from an open vein and observe I say the play of light as it glistens on the voices of young children reaching to pluck the church bells as if they were ripe fruit dangling before us in our dreams and the world is a handkerchief so small it is and now not so clean and so we dream these dreams and pluck this unripe apple from the eternal branch where it lay hidden kicking and struggling up like the float that bobbled then sank through deep water and memory bent itself into two like that fragile reed dead in the water lying as straight as a bowing string at a crazy angle at the pillows edge where mouths flap open as shadows walk and talk and we slide back into sleep’s dark waters where there are no dreams and nothing from those dark depths is ever recalled …

6:00 AM

a clicking of claws
needles knitting outwards
towards dawn’s guillotine

the alarm clock shuffles
its pack of sleeping hours

the church bell
lurches into action

IMG_0140 2.JPG

We have come full circle and the sequence of rewrites that I have dedicated to At the Edge of Obsidian / Obsidian’s Edge ends here, with the start of a new day in Oaxaca that will be very similar to the old day that has just passed us by. For those of you who wish to read the full sequence, in its correct order, it will appear (some time soon) under Obsidian’s Edge at the top of this page.

I would like to thank all those readers who have accompanied me on this journey. In addition, I would like to thank all of you who lent your voices to this sequence either below the line with your comments or, and I refer specifically to those who are close enough to know me in the flesh and blood of real life, with your verbal comments and telephone conversations.

I hope this will be the first of many journeys that we make together. My best wishes go out to you. I trust you will consider joining me in my next verbal adventure on this blog.

Obsidian’s Edge 28

El sueño de la razón produce monstruos.
When reason sleeps, monsters are born.

Francisco de Goya.

4:00 AM

… scrabble of agile ruminants goats their basket weave ribs alive on the grass roof of the neighboring azoteas or wandering these cobbled pathways with knife-edge stones and broken all ten of those sea-faring bottles that managed to reach this land though they came floating from a distant shore each with its message lost now and he waded through the incoming waves this god-like ghost emerging from his white-cap snow bank to stagger in the moonlight where a child’s world lay buried like a bone as sharp as this black knife that slices the mind into two twin towers of tall sunflowers trapped in this wet clay rag of a body that binds itself in a fine film of glacial fire where incarcerated birds strut in the rib cage their robin red crests as distant as the light of a hurricane lamp in that moment of silence before an opening door snaps its sudden match of light and the tick of the death watch beetle gnaws at the beams of the worn out house that the earthquake cracked into a thousand pieces though one wall stood still and the alarm clock over the fireplace clicked a death mask for that anonymous face that raised both hands and threaded the black lace of the mantilla through the golden wedding ring as a finger nail of moon shredded the clouds and the body’s house slowly broke down in an unending dance round and round the garden where the teddy bear trod on his partner’s toes and the undergrowth tickled the china doll’s fancy but the garbage can intervened and dust stained the vagaries of a brutish existence both sharp and nasty as a devil’s scissors severed angel wings and tangled this skein of wool that pulled the church bells pounding their celestial hammers into a sea of wind while the sea parrot spoke in a tongue thick with anonymous flames that flickered a trigger of song while flashes of sound sparked twigs from the tree that flamed a joyless overflowing river of unknown light while the brown bear danced to a pipe and drum dance across bamboo marimbas that shimmered and shone and lay fine layers of music and dust that grew beneath bare feet as new flowers stoked a confessional of dust and gave it new life in a resurrection of the body into a world where everything is remembered and nothing is forgotten or forgiven … for how can we forgive if we cannot forget … or forget if we cannot forgive …

Moose

Moose

Who has nailed summer to its autumn cross? Sunbeams dazzle in the wind, footsteps follow, or is it a shadow’s shadow flickering its year’s end dance on a twisting path? Beneath our feet the painted leaves lie still. Bottled sunshine abandoned now in rusted flakes, who will replace them in the tree’s discarded puzzle? Footsteps crackle along the trail and, as they draw closer, our cold breath hangs a question mark on the air before us. Yesterday, the salmon danced on their tails. Lettuces went to seed and built tall pyramids up to the sky in a world all yellow with the sun and blue with the sea. Primrose and bleu céleste, this stretch of Fundy, where the islands are large black beads, threaded together by tiny strings of ducks and geese. Today, going home, a bull moose thrust his head through the windshield of a speeding car. For an instant the trees caught their breath, the air stood still and a red fox tore from the trees like a runaway leaf, so quick, so silent, a shadow across the road melting into dark woods to lie silent in the forest. I can still see the occupants of the shattered car standing by the roadside, their cell phones in their hands, punching urgent numbers. Shock had rounded their snow white lips into an O for Operator.

Very surprised (and pleased and proud) to hear this prose poem from my book Fundy Lines read on Shift, CBC, this afternoon. Here it is in a more permanent form — the written word. Thank you Shift CBC and best wishes to all.

Selecting a Selected

Last Year in Paradise, my first book of poetry, was published by Fiddlehead Poetry Books (Fredericton, NB) in 1977. I am once more re-reading Last Year in Paradise in search of some early poems to include in the Selected Poems that I am putting together.

As I leaf through the pages, the words of T. S. Eliot come to my mind: “every attempt / is a wholly new start, and a different kind of failure / because one has only learned to get the better of words / for the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which / one is no longer disposed to say it.”

So: how do I select from poems that no longer say what I want them to say or that are expressed in a way that I am no longer disposed to use? I keep struggling with these ideas. Are my selections signposts along the way of my poetic development? Do they say ‘this is what I was, where I came from’? Or should I re-write, revise, and bring thoughts and poems up to date to fit in with my current way of thinking and expressing?

The first poem in the book illustrates this quandary in metaphoric fashion.

Renovating

The carpenter swings
His bell-faced claw hammer
The closet’s gyproc sides
Tremble
Shiver into dust

Each splintered layer
Reveals
The closet’s secret skeleton

Memories
Spill out flood in
Shake grinning skulls
Like jacks of this box-room

Released from sloughed skins
We stand knee-deep
In a debris of recollections

As I re-read this poem, the scene comes back to me in vivid detail. An old closet cluttered the small room downstairs in our first house, an old army home. We needed more floor space, not another small room. As we tore the closet down, different layers of wall-paper showed up and we found ourselves knee-deep in memories of other times, other places, other renovations.

As I re-read, I also remember working with my first editor, Fred Cogswell. I recall the typed manuscripts going in to his office and the pencilled suggestions and corrections coming back out. What I no longer remember is how much of this poem was actually mine and how much was his. Re-reading it, I find I have no desire to re-write it, to resurrect those memories that the poem preserves. But I do feel an urgent need to trim the poem, to weed it as if it were a flower-bed. I notice repetitions, a doubling of statements, an excess of adjectives … I would like to suggest more with less words. The poem needs minor readjustments. As I rethink, I come up with the following.

Renovating

The carpenter swings
his hammer
The closet’s gyproc sides
shiver into dust

Each splintered layer
reveals the closet’s
secret skeleton

Memories spill out
shake grinning skulls
jacks in this box-room

Released from sloughed skins
we stand knee-deep
in a debris of recollections

I find this sharper, less cluttered, and perhaps a good poem with which to begin my Selected Poems. I need a title for the Selection and will share some thoughts on that later. A Debris of Recollections springs to mind as a first possibility, but there are many other possibilities. In the meantime, I will begin a new journey on this blog and along the way I will read, re-read, commentate, and occasionally re-write the poems that I select.

I invite you to accompany me on this journey. I look forward to any conversations we may start and any comments you may care to make along the way.

Obsidian’s Edge 24

12 AM
Envoi

1
Night’s incoming waves,
flickering candles,
yellow flames,
altar-white table cloth
with its cross of flowers;

evensong:
an ebb tide dangling its flotsam
at the end of a long white string.

Mala madre,
the spider plant,
an evil mother
abandoning
her unwanted children.

I clasp your hand in a confessional of dust:
your fingers knit themselves with mine.

Each wrinkle
on your hand
as fine as
a silk spun web.

Yesterday

I tapped
with ardent spoon
on the graceless grapefruit’s
golden skull.

When we awake
I will boil us
each an egg.

Squeezed orange:
as warm as
this fierce embrace,
as sweet as
sunshine,
moonlight,
starlight;

silent bird:
midnight branch.

Obsidian’s Edge 23

11:00 PM
Calling it a day

This auriferous sky,
sewn with sharp sequins.

Is there a warp, I wonder,
a lurch towards meaning,
a leaning towards
sun or moon?

When they planted
our first footsteps
did those little prints
take root and grow
or did they wander,
restless,
across this planet?

A rampant foot stands firm
on the highest rampart:
instant gratification,
timeless possession,
each passing cloud.

A rocket streaks upwards.
Immediate
this release from the sender’s
earthbound misery
or is it merely
a message of anguish?

Who knocks
now at heaven’s gate?

The low moon glows:
lesser incandescence,
departed sun.

A satellite glides
its razor edge,
slicing distant pin
pricks of light.

The moon rides
her orange unicycle
across a thin black
line of hill.

Here on the azotea,
midnight slowly
covers the sparkling town
with a dark gray cape.

If their grief is our grief,
and all grief is one,
do we all then bleed in vain?

Nochebuenas, tulipanes,
flowers of every crimson hue
pour blood from each
thorn-pierced wound.

This zapotec measuring cloth,
this mixtec weaving wool,
this trique with her knife:

who will sever the artery
that binds us to the loom
at Obsidian’s Edge?

Closure: Literary Theory

Closure
Writing or Re-Writing 7

Yesterday’s post, Lagartija (Bistro 13, Flash Fiction) raises the question of closure. For me, closure sets a double problem: when to close and how to close. These two concepts, when and how, may seem to be the same; but in fact, they are not. Let us take a closer look at Lagartija and use it as an example.

Lagartija
(Bistro 13)

There are striations in my heart, so deep, a lizard could lie there, unseen, and wait for tomorrow’s sun. Timeless: this worm at the apple’s core waiting for its world to end. Seculae seculorum: the centuries rushing headlong. Matins: wide-eyed this owl hooting in the face of day. Somewhere, I remember a table spread for two. Breakfast: an open door, a window that overlooks a balcony and a garden.
“Where are you going, dear?”
Something bright has fled the world. The sun unfurls shadows. The blood whirls stars around the body.
“It has gone,” she said. “The magic. I no longer tremble at your touch.”
The silver birch wades at dawn’s bright edge. Somewhere: tight lips, a blaze of anger, a challenge spat in the wind’s taut face. High-pitched the rabbit’s grief as it struggles in its silver snare. The somnambulant moon tiptoes in a trance.
If only I could kick away this death’s head, this sow’s bladder, this full moon drifting high in a cloudless sky.

Lagartija falls neatly into two parts. These are divided by the spaced paragraph division. The first part ends with the line: “If only I could kick away this death’s head, this sow’s bladder, this full moon drifting high in a cloudless sky.” In terms of HOW to end, this is a great ending. The piece could end right there: powerful image, sense of closure, strong line and sentiment. In terms of WHEN to end, however, I wanted to say more. So I added another paragraph.

Who knows when the skeleton will take to the limelight, peel off her gloves, doff her hat, lay down her white cane, and use me as fuel for a different kind of fire. Grief lurks in the bracelet’s silver snare of aging hair. I kick my legs in the chorus line and my day fades into shadowy shapes that unfurl leathery wings.
Pebbles catch in my throat and the word-river once flowing smooth backs up to spill leaf-freckled foam over the tiniest barriers of branch and weed. I try to speak but a gypsy has stolen my tongue and sewn my lips together.
Leaves outside my window grow rusty with rain. A sharp-shinned hawk no bigger than the blue jay he stalks drives like a whirlwind at the feeder. Winter touches with his jack-frost fingers and Old Eight Hoots waits in the tree and calls my name.
Bright stars crackle the sky. Frost crisps leaves. A mist weaves webs scarce-seen. All around, as I walk to my lonely home, the cold ground creaks its wordless tongue-tied whispers.

Night shapes abound.

Let me begin by stating that I am not sure about the second paragraph. I wanted to emphasize the sense of loss of love, the sense of being dislocated in time and space: but is this overkill? I am in two minds about this: one half of me says OVERKILL; the other half says: LIVE WITH IT. Now, just looking for a phrase and finding those words: LIVE WITH IT makes me feel that both the WHEN and the HOW of the ending fall at the end of that first paragraph. Much as I like the second part, it must go. Perhaps it can stand on its own?

The problem is exacerbated because Lagartija is actually a prose excerpt of a poem from Though Lovers be Lost. I wanted to see if some of the magic of the poetry could be retained in the prose version. I think it can, provided the HOW and WHEN of closure ends early. To extend the prose passage is to weaken it. To extend the prose passage is also to betray the poem. Here it is: Building on Sand (from Though Lovers Be Lost, 2000)

Building on Sand

1
Everywhere the afternoon
gropes steadily to night.
Some people have lit fires;
others read by candlelight.

Geese litter the river bank,
drifts of snow their whiteness,
stained with freshet mud;
or is it the black
of midnight’s swift advance?

They walk on thin ice
at civilization’s edge.
Around them,
the universe’s clock
ticks slowly down.

2
Who forced that scream
through the needle’s eye?

Gathering night,
the moon on the sea bed
magnified by water.

Inverted,
the big dipper,
hanging its question
from the sky’s dark eye lid.

Ghosts of departed
constellations
walk the night.

Pale stars scythed
by moonlight
bob phosphorescent
flowers on the flood.

3
The flesh that bonds;
the bones that walk;
the shoulders and waist
on which I hang
my clothes.

Now they stand alone
beneath the moon
and listen at the water’s edge
to the whispering trees.

They have caught the words
of snowflakes
strung at midnight
between the stars.

Moonlight is a liquor
running raw within them.

4
There are striations
in my heart, so deep,
a lizard could lie there,
unseen, and wait
for tomorrow’s sun.

A knot of
sorrow in daylight’s throat;
the heart a great stone
cast in placid water,
each ripple
knitted to its mate.

Timeless,
the worm at the apple’s core
waiting for its world to end.

Seculae seculorum:
the centuries
rushing headlong.

5
Matins:
wide-eyed
this owl hooting
in the face of day.

Somewhere,
I remember
a table spread for two.
Breakfast.
An open door.
“Where are you going, dear?”

Something bright has fled the world.
The sun unfurls shadows.
The blood whirls stars
around the body.

“It has gone.” she said. “The magic.
I no longer tremble at your touch.”

6
You can drown now
in this liquid
silence.

Or you can rage against this slow snow
whitening the dark space
where yesterday
you placed your friend.

The silver birch wades
at dawn’s bright edge.

Somewhere,
sunshine will break
a delphinium
into blossom.

7
Tight lips.
A blaze of anger.
A challenge spat
in the wind’s face.

High-pitched
the rabbit’s grief
in its silver snare.
The midnight moon
deep in a trance.

If only I could kick away
this death’s head,
this sow’s bladder.

Full moon
drifting
high in a cloudless sky.

8
After heavy rain
the house shrinks.
Its mandibles close.

A crocodile peace
descends from the jaws of heaven.

I no longer fit my skin.
Iguana spots itch.
Walls encircle me,
hemming me in.

The I Ching sloughs my name:
each lottery ticket,
a bullet.

None with my number.

9
Late last night I thought
I had grasped the mystery:
but when I awoke
I clasped only shadows and sand.

Building on Sand now asks another set of questions, for it offers multiple possible points of closure, key lines where the poem might end, but doesn’t. Is closure possible? Or are we always faced with continuations and further possibilities? In Building on Sand, each possible point of closure opens another set of perspectives. Without being infinite, the cycle is continuous. In Lagartija, on the other hand, the closure poses a different question, for although the prose poem seems to come to an end with the line “If only I could kick away this death’s head, this sow’s bladder, this full moon drifting high in a cloudless sky”, the ending is in fact rather more open than closed. As a result, the reader is left wondering how and if the narrator has managed to cope with the circumstances.

Writing or Re-Writing? Sometimes, as writers and re-writers, we must make difficult decisions. Often we must reject and eliminate some of our favorite words and images. Hard to do? Definitely: but we all face that choice. Hopefully, the above study will help clarify not only the difficult choices we must make when trying to close out our creative pieces but also the some of the key differences between the HOW and the WHEN of closure. It also raises the question of the extent to which a piece of good creativity resonates and whether it can ever be completely closed.

Building on Sand: Poetry

Building on Sand

fundy 05 mist+wolfepipers 153.jpg

1
Everywhere the afternoon
gropes steadily to night.
Some people have lit fires;
others read by candlelight.

Geese litter the river bank,
drifts of snow their whiteness,
stained with freshet mud;
or is it the black
of midnight’s swift advance?

They walk on thin ice
at civilization’s edge.
Around them,
the universe’s clock
ticks slowly down.

2
Who forced that scream
through the needle’s eye?

Gathering night,
the moon on the sea bed
magnified by water.

Inverted,
the big dipper,
hanging its question
from the sky’s dark eye lid.

Ghosts of departed
constellations
walk the night.

Pale stars scythed
by moonlight
bob phosphorescent
flowers on the flood.

3
The flesh that bonds;
the bones that walk;
the shoulders and waist
on which I hang
my clothes.

Now they stand alone
beneath the moon
and listen at the water’s edge
to the whispering trees.

They have caught the words
of snowflakes
strung at midnight
between the stars.

Moonlight is a liquor
running raw within them.

4
There are striations
in my heart, so deep,
a lizard could lie there,
unseen, and wait
for tomorrow’s sun.

A knot of
sorrow in daylight’s throat;
the heart a great stone
cast in placid water,
each ripple
knitted to its mate.

Timeless,
the worm at the apple’s core
waiting for its world to end.

Seculae seculorum:
the centuries
rushing headlong.

5
Matins:
wide-eyed
this owl hooting
in the face of day.

Somewhere,
I remember
a table spread for two.
Breakfast.
An open door.
“Where are you going, dear?”

Something bright has fled the world.
The sun unfurls shadows.
The blood whirls stars
around the body.

“It has gone.” she said. “The magic.
I no longer tremble at your touch.”

6
You can drown now
in this liquid
silence.

Or you can rage against this slow snow
whitening the dark space
where yesterday
you placed your friend.

The silver birch wades
at dawn’s bright edge.

Somewhere,
sunshine will break
a delphinium
into blossom.

7
Tight lips.
A blaze of anger.
A challenge spat
in the wind’s face.

High-pitched
the rabbit’s grief
in its silver snare.
The midnight moon
deep in a trance.

If only I could kick away
this death’s head,
this sow’s bladder.

Full moon
drifting
high in a cloudless sky.

8
After heavy rain
the house shrinks.
Its mandibles close.

A crocodile peace
descends from the jaws of heaven.

I no longer fit my skin.
Iguana spots itch.
Walls encircle me,
hemming me in.

The I Ching sloughs my name:
each lottery ticket,
a bullet.

None with my number.

9
Late last night I thought
I had grasped the mystery:
but when I awoke
I clasped only shadows and sand.

fundy 05 mist+wolfepipers 081.jpg

Writing or Re-Writing? 6

A Question of Thematic Unity

The question for today concerns thematic unity: should one strive for thematic unity or should one present thematic contrasts? This question is provoked by today’s blog post, Obsidian’s Edge 22 10:00 PM, in which the narrator, sitting alone at the table in his apartment in Oaxaca is filled with memories of home, a home that is very different from the daily reality of life in Oaxaca.

The contrast with the sights and sounds of Oaxaca is obvious and immediate: outside in the street, a world of sunshine and shadow, darkness and fireworks, singing and dancing, people and poetry; yet within the room, alone, the narrator is challenged by that other world in which he is also immersed, the world of home and memories from home. This other world contrasts cold with warmth, the coast with the interior, memories of home with the immediate presence of Mexico.

I keep asking myself, would it be better to keep the thematic unity of Oaxaca, rather than to try and contrast the past with the present, thus creating a contrast between the distance there-sense and the immediate here-sense? The insertions try to emphasize the strangeness and immediacy of the new world (Oaxaca) that is in truth already so old. My worry is that I have not done so, certainly not in the way that I wanted to. As a result, I am worried that these “home visits” are intrusive and break the thematic unity that I would also like to establish.

The same question arises with earlier posts, Obsidian’s Edge 17 (Home Thoughts) and 16 (Siesta and Dream). These three poems (or sets of poems) break the thematic unity of the Oaxacan presence. They work as a contrast to that present, a reminder of the origins of the foreigner who observes and writes. But do they intrude, do they break the unity to such an extent that they stick out, a sore thumb hitching a ride to nowhere in particular?

My feeling right now after scanning the rewrite yet again is that they are intrusive and should be excluded from the final text. I have other poems and scenes from Mexico that would fit the Oaxacan themes much better. I give an example below. So, fellow followers and fellow bloggers: the rabbit is out of the trap and the greyhounds are primed and ready — I would appreciate your thoughts.

First: Today’s Post

10:00 PM
Alone at the Table
Memories of Home

Salt on the sea wind sifts raucous gulls in packs,
breeze beneath wings, searching for something
to scavenge. Seaweed. The tidemark filled with
longing. A grey sea crests and rises. Staring eyes:
stark simplicity of that seal’s head filling the bay.
Next day, his body stretched dead on the beach.

The river runs rocky beneath the covered bridge.
Campers have created first nation’s rock people,
heaping stone upon stone. At low tide, on the dried
river bed, there is no easy way to say no. White foam

horses in the farrier’s forge stamp and surge. A cold
wind blows at Cape Enrage. Wolfe Point sees late
gales transform the beach: the sandbar carved:
a Thanksgiving turkey, stripped to bare rib bone.

Dead birds sacrificed, so I can lie here in comfort:
my eiderdown is stuffed with dull dry winter coats.

Gold and silver, the last breath going out of him,
this warrior destined to dance before a cruel sun.

His ultimate spoken threads, so delicate, so thin,
they run, blood and water, through his pierced side,
sorrowful beneath the spectator’s stare. Ice cold,
this water on which he no longer dares nor cares

to walk. Rich silk: this tapestry woven with another
man’s words. Ghosts shunt back and forth across ice.
Late autumn mists confuse the paths, leading nowhere.

And now the alternate post on which I am still working.

10:00 PM
Alone at the Table
Memories

(Alternate Take)

Last year,
limed in a wedding
suit of white,
the grand tree of Tule
escaped from its compound.

Waving its branches wildly,
stumped down the road
to Teotitlán
in search of a bride.

It found instead,
on the Day of the Dead,
a carpet weaver
who interfaced its spirit
with fine lamb’s wool
shot with silk.

Next morning,
the tree came back,
its soul intact.

Now you can’t take photos:
the locals have imprisoned it
in a straitjacket of rusty iron railings.

The tree will not escape again.

It wanders round its pen,
hiding in corners,
never quite what you expect,
nor where you expect it to be.

Child prisoners,
escaped from their schools,
flash tin mirrors
at the underside of its branches.

Their dancing lights
set ancient spirits
free from their incarceration.

Serpiente lies along a lower limb,
waiting for some gossip to walk his way.

Mono swings from branch to branch
and is never still.

The quetzal bird preens
the emeralds of his feathers;
mirrors pursue him
with their liquid light.

Wandering eyes need time to rest.
They need time to discover
the old wrinkled man,
face like an ancient manuscript
all lines and creases,
his dark skin dried by the sun:
coarseness of furrowed bark.

Half buried in the trunk,
he nurses a fiery flame.

Convinced by the eloquence
of his hand-carved map,
I strive to follow
my troubled heart
struggling on its journey
across earth’s sea.

Conjured in the mirrors’
confusing crossfire,
blood flowers
dot the poinsettias
eyes and cross their Ts.

Sunshine engraves my name
on the sacrificial pelt
I bought at the abastos.

A blazing sun
dries the cries of shock
coursing through my victim eyes.

Obsidian’s Edge 22

10:00 PM
Alone at the Table
Memories of Home

Dead birds sacrificed, so I can lie here in comfort:
my eiderdown is stuffed with dull dry winter coats.

Gold and silver, the last breath going out of him,
this warrior destined to dance before a cruel sun.

to walk. Rich silk: this tapestry woven with another
man’s words. Ghosts shunt back and forth across ice.
Late autumn mists confuse the paths, leading nowhere.

	rogermoorepoet on My Love For You
	acalvern on My Love For You
	rogermoorepoet on Red Cloud of Reality
	chuckbowie on Red Cloud of Reality
	rogermoorepoet on Dalí ‘s Clock