smzang

CliIn the days before winter

In the Days Before Winter

The stark blue hills

stand smoky soft at dawn…

Painter, poet

save them as they are today

unknowing

of the forest's thinning,

unaware they've been mortgaged to the hilt

by guilty men who lack the heart

to stand up in a storm.

Even the kind hearted grow small

against the rising sun.

Smart and modern

we adjust creation until we have no home,

but I babble…

It is the hills that stand the test of time,

Soldiers fall like leaves, trees become poor poems

and those stacks that belched their smoke stand idle.

Bricks fall, fill the empty belly of the beast that fed us.

Ivy tangles and turns brown,

but every evening in the shadow

of a day that's done,

the hills stand tall in tortured stone,

They do not fear the dark.

Come morning when the sun is at a softer slant,

the smoky haze of day gives gentler hue

to hills that cup their hands

to catch the thunder.

Tranche de Vie

This is autumn,

This is the log crackling

its brightest blaze

before it falls into a mass

of ashes. That last

bold ember

that remembers innocent sparks

igniting

the conflagration,

Ah, sweet glow…

The waiting

for the flowering,

The arrogance

of full-fledged bloom,

and now in autumn,

the gentle cooling,

Perhaps a warning,

of the cold

that is to come,

Unwelcome cold

can’t kill memories,

A time for reflection,

this growing old,

this time of peace.

Cryptic

Passing through a strange land

Looking for home,

Familiar faces lost in fog,

Souls touch and then withdraw

Behind clouded windows,

Doors with no knobs

And cryptic messages

Left in sand, the meaning

at the mercy of the tide.

Bedouins have long been noted

For their thievery. Someone said,

“There are no new Jerusalems”

Welcoming the Equinox

Alight sweet spring and warm the stone cold fields,

Touch these barren limbs with your sable brush,

Set free the butterflies that winter sealed

in dark cocoons that wait your fevered blush.

Send greening vines that sweep up to the door

like guests, kept waiting too long in the cold

of tides that ebbed while dreaming of the shore,

direction bent and faith fast growing old.

Turn loose a lemon moon to light the sky

where gods still live in stellar adulation,

Don’t timid come nor make your presence shy

but boldly paint the canvas of creation.

With hope a wintered heart will sing again

when tendered with the gentle touch of spring.

Always Near

...in the shadows

that sashay

across the sweeping lawn,

dancing at twilight

to settle quietly

with the first sweet blush

of each new dawn.

Always near…

in the prism

cast by morning dew,

the fiery flash,

the tiny tear

that drops silently,

that is you.

Always near…

You are the sky,

the earth, the essence

of all that is

or ever will be

through all the eons

of eternity.

Minion of heaven,

you are always near.

Leaving No Footprints

We walk in sand

Secure that the tide

Will wash away our epigraph

Of inconsistency,

The little faux pas

The stumbles

That haunt us

The touch

That strays

Too close to the soul

We trace our love letters

On drifting leaves

Place them in bottles

That get lost in the sea

Of ambiguity

We avoid the garden path

For the undergrowth

Dark and dense

We leave

no footprints

Still,

There are scars.

Photograph

It wasn’t just the purple shadows

that I wanted you to see, not just the snow

jeweled trees, or the swirling filigree

of sky - it was more

than spellbound breath

adrift in silence.

A snowflake caught, soon leaves empty hands,

I might wonder if it’s memory or dream -

that moment, too full for one to hold

alone – this knowing

why twilight skies bring

sighs of melancholy.

In courts of kings,

Before chiefs of clans,

Once a maple beside a pensive pond,

Resonant through battles waged

In peace to play a gladder note

The agony of death assuaged.

Now the magic's lingering air still travels

with the poet's quote, in silver tones

of symphony the savage beast is smote.

To March

Tea and patience

and tales that never bite their tongues.

I hold you in the underlined places,

those interstices of vagrant days.

It is only lately

I’ve begun to think the weather

is intentional, Inscrutable face,

the ides give you away.

I understand you

even better than April, Like you

I have a roar inside me

that hungers to be heard.