Young Lovers

Out To Sea

My mind swims with thoughts of a past love,
warm like a sun-filled afternoon
while walking the pier of a green sea.
Remembered moments slip by
as easily as the sky changes color--
from swept orange, cool red, to dark violet.
Various shades of emotion.
I watch these changes like one watches
the slow travel of clouds.

Past arguments both won and lost.
Small reminders, really,
like a white sailboat in the rolling sea.
With it's cloth sails set against a west wind,
and like the quiet past,
our voices carry away out to sea.

A Family's Grave

It's autumn in the country
and the leaves are changing from green
to yellow and orange and brown.
They fall dead off trees
and cripple after days.

Under bridges,
creeks run thin and cold.

Wild horses saunter next to
fields of corn--dry, brown
emptied husks.
These fields of empty husks
sway in the breeze,

and across an old red home,
with tiny paper ghosts
nailed to it's columns,
a small grave lot lies
telling the season's story.

Shadows

it's as if the sky opens up
to the circle of the sun
and it's rays knife through the atmosphere
and settle down inside silent forests.

this light lies down
alongside rivers
that run into other rivers

and the dark outlines of fresh-water fish
move within and without
the changing light.

Driving Dark Roads, From Town to Town

In the half-light of early morning
I drive these dark roads
without a thought in my head.

My heart if covered in mist and silence
as I pass an airport's landing strip.
Blue and white lights flash
in this darkness.

Wheat fields spread out to infinity.
They go on and on
as I come to terms with my limitations.

After It All

For days, my sad heart
has prolonged happiness.
Waiting through the prologue
for the epilogue--
hoping for help to come.

Like a deserted station
waiting for the next wave of transients.

The full heart waits for a joke,
and this season's leaves rot.

For days, my sad heart
has prolonged happiness.
Waiting through the prologue
for the epilogue.

In the autumn the nights are long.
The new mornings dark and still
and not yet ready.

After it all,
after all the mornings and all the nights,
after all the seasons and all the years,
my sad heart has waited patiently.

Once frozen, once sprung to life,
once inflamed, and once fallen.

After it all, after prolonging happiness,
it has settled
where it cannot be touched--
deep in a woods
where snow blows off the trees
and covers every footprint.