The voice like an airhorn
buffets the country
with meaningless sounds,
the swaggering gait of ignorance
futile against mounting crises.
Up has long been down
in the prison yard of violence,
combing the shadows for answers
while real light lays beyond,
outside their cold encampments
where seekers rest in moonlight,
sharpening their tools against the dark,
an old magus among them, silent.
He watches the stars in their procession,
their long orbit slowly changing.
Learning from the night, patient with the day,
the season of reckoning draws close,
the time of waiting soon to be over.
There is only one earth,
one grail that unites them.
They gather their strength
as the late hours pass
while his eyes look to the east
for the dawn that surely comes.

photo by Patrick Orleman

Connecting the thread
from the dimly lit present
back through the darkened past
to the ancient forgotten,
before the slain, the hardened earth,
what comes alight is new to time,
unburdened by mortal weight.
Pale green and fresh as a leaf,
unprecedented as the rising sun,
true to life and nothing else
the unbidden seeps into the unaware,
examining the chains of habit,
the horrid wounds of tradition
and like a tide that lifts all boats
raises the noble and impoverished
to sight of the never before imagined.
The loft of this platform frightens,
instilling vertigo back into the familiar,
but for the intrepid the promise of horizon
leads them into the unseen,
closing behind their old worn history
like the mist of a jagged dream.

Fire rages down the dry slopes,
years of sunlight lift in choking smoke,
falling as ash blanketing the valley.
The sun dull orange
we reach into the burn
for the ark within the flames,
to find and be the solace
while the old earth cleanses,
holding her sorrow, her trembling hands
as she weeps for what is lost.
There are no words yet for the future.

Photograph by Tristan Fortsch

Thankfulness
for the morning sky
then silence
carving inner space,
hollow bone, empty reed
ready for heaven and earth
to make their music.

Photo by Peter Castonguay