Somewhere in the night you’re waking,
feeling the press of the world
while in the arc above you
shines the morning star.
The sky brightens pale blue
as you stir in the long transit
back from the dreamtime.
You assemble the pieces
careworn and fragile
of the person you’ve become
to navigate this life.
Cup of coffee, piece of toast,
perhaps now you’re ready
to show your face
to the world’s hunger.
As you break the darkness
with your road weary lamps
give a thought to the star
that guided you in sleep
and is with you now,
hidden by the dawn
yet burning with the knowledge
of your original self.

Who can take your crown
said the sun rising in the south?
The earth is your lover, the deep sea
and morning star your friends.
Why give yourself to desolation?
As if awakening from a dream,
one filled with sorrow and despair,
I let the great power enter once more,
the golden thread of the eternal
pour down into this humble clay.
Lifted, what shone forth
was like the earth, the sea
and the bright morning star,
the one and only glory
freely given and received.

Now I’ll gather from the darkness
for you my old friend and ally
a tracing of what may come
untarnished out of the east.
Too easy to lament,
to break down on the journey
while out on the edges
a lone hawk waits high in a tree,
a silver salmon breaks with salt
and begins his last trial.
The ledger where your name is written
and the yet blank pages of your story,
what will you write?
May the deep night guide you
and find you unbroken
with the promise of new light.

photo by Willard Walch

Bare branches call to me,
striven of their summer glory
by the winds of autumn.
Crows mock their barrenness
from nearby rooftops
as burnt orange remnants
cling for these last few days
before falling to earth.
Below the asphalt
there is another dark
where lifeblood drops
into the old patience.
There time is for dreaming,
gathering strength
amidst the loss
of what once flowered
as roots sink deep
to the inner life
of stone and soil
and seeds of the future
wait in darkness.

Standing like a tree in autumn,
rain in my face with light fading,
I search down into my roots,
wondering if the veins of joy
will gift me again.
Those lonely people
in their thatched roof cottages,
the rail thin boy walking the roads
with a stream of dumb cattle,
sleeping in the rain, hungry
and cold to the bone.
The deeper veins are past them,
this I know, so like the giant evergreens
I send my tap root even further,
through clay and stones,
seeking the elixir, not once
but many times, day after day
if I am to lift my face to heaven.
Their words come to me then
in the dark of my searching –
you are not alone;
the vein you seek
you seek for many.
They keep me company,
bringing me back to the warm room
and the leaves of the maple tree
turning gold in November light.
The joy I’ve found,
hard wrought from the earth
and delicate as a feather
against the weight of trouble,
at least I know as my own.

photograph by Louis MacKenzie