When wandering across the soil
That scalds beneath the white-hot sphere
My memory of ancient toil
Returns to taunt and fill with fear.
My hands were rough from breaking chunks,
My plow cut gaily over sand
As year on year I pulled up trunks
To plant my seed within the land.
Now my child has gone away,
My wife is buried on that hill,
I now no longer work this clay
Nor bend the bitter earth to till.
Now chancing on a prairie flower
I step upon its naked bloom
To watch its tiny structure cower
As to foretell certain doom.

Mother mother I am dying
Lying here among the pine trees,
Pining for her arms and sighing
Here alone amidst the pine trees.

Father father please advise me
As I sit beneath a pine tree,
How to seek her hand more wisely,
Lure her out beneath my pine tree.

Lord dear Lord I love the crisp scent
Floating here among your pine trees.
Soon I hope to pitch my tent
Upon the needles of the pine trees.

Love my love, I want to have you
Underneath the pines at midnight.
Stretch my skin on top of yours, and
Lie together until dawn’s light.

I felt my unborn baby move
Through flesh and flacid skin,
A thrust, a jab, as if to prove
The life that dwells within.
When birth will come I do not know,
But I am not afraid,
For I have met my unborn child
And watched it as it played.

I am a man of myriad years,
I am a soul of myriad fears.
I am a wish upon the sea
For all the things refused to me.
I am a prayer upon the air,
I chant for gods who are not there.
The lines upon my face reveal
The bitterness I’ve dared not feel.
The freckled arms upon my frame
Hang loose as branches in the rain.
The legs I force beneath my chair
Are candles covered up with hair.

When people ask me who I am,
I answer them, “my name is man.”

I stole a thought from a friend of mine.
He shall not miss it. He has so many.
When he roams the closets of his mind
He never knows when one is taken.
And, encountering it from another’s lips
He rarely recognizes it, or
In any case, has the social grace
Never to reclaim it.

He felt this idea was all used up,
Dried tea-bag in the bottom of a cup,
But I divined amidst its patterns
A promise of stronger view.
And so I stole it, yes—
I confess –
It was impetuous I guess,
But very gratifying.

I fled the city and climbed a mountain
Among the clouds
Lingering and musing
Dickering with perceptions
Debating
Bartering unborn truth for unbaked fish-cakes.

I let the wind repart my hair
In a natural sweep, where I had not dared
To part it since
I had grown from a child
To a man
Of sorts.

Shrugging now in recognition
Of how simple great truths are
I carved into the ground that
Bread and circuses are all there is
And left the mountain convinced
The Romans were wise thieves.

Somewhat like a duckling
Paddling down the river
At nightfall
With a breeze across the water
And the sucking of the waves against the stones.

Somewhat like the ocean, in the morning
Before the swimmers loot it
Of its pride
When sand and salt twirl in the air
And grit between the teeth and linger there.

Somewhat like a mountain
Traversed by hidden streams
Dancing
Whitely
Clearly
Like the dampness in the forest
When you feel the waterfall before you see it through the pines.

Somewhat like a wish, perhaps more as a promise,
Born as but a dream within a prayer.
Walking as an answer
Dying as a whisper
Fleeing
Into darkness
As a sigh….