Winter (2010)

Winter, you seem to choke my very breath
With chills and frost and bitter, bitter ice.
You, the very shadow of death, proceed
Across a land that languishes for song;
The forests are silent, the cities silent too,
The fields that once abounded now are still.

This muteness presses down upon the world
And sings a foreboding music all its own:
Biting the bark of barren shrubs and trees,
A cry on the mourning wind that passes by,
A dirge that tells the weeping and the moans
Of those who must endure and carry on.

Through all of time you’ve whined your bleak lament
And pressed your arctic hand upon our hearts,
Reminding us of our thin mortality,
As if you wished to freeze our very souls
And smother out eternally the stuff
Of happiness – an unseen, inner death.

All creatures tremble to pass beneath your rod,
Your glacial rule that overruns the earth;
But there is a fire that you can never staunch,
For love cannot despair, nor faith, nor hope,
Which know, despite your shadow and your song,
That your hand will lift with the melting of the snow.­

Music (2009)

Music, in a lullaby
Sung to a cradled, sleeping child,
Though insubstantial as a sigh,
As orisons, or dreams compiled,
Rests not on air, yet it may lie
In memory in a slumber mild.

Poetry, in whispers soft
Passing from one heart to a lover,
To heaven lightly lifts aloft
Like prayer, though a moment hover
‘Round her soul, as oceans waft
Beneath the moonlight’s silver cover.

Memory, when youth is spent,
Softens the harsher tones of life,
Fresh as the spirit may invent
New poems to mend some antique strife,
Or charm with stories affluent
A grandchild, or beloved wife.

Music, in an elegy
Sung for a loved and parted soul,
With power moves confusedly:
Though grieved, sweet memories console,
Though loved, still lost: the poetry
Of life and all that life may dole.

Beauty whispers through it all,
Singing and stirring; you too shall choose
To follow or decline her call,
This lovely, unseen, supernal muse,
Who beckons us beyond the pall
And intimates of what ensues.

The Passionate Poet to his Love (2009)

Come live with me and be my love
And we'll the highest pleasures prove:
The treasures hidden in the fields
And forests – all that nature yields.

We'll sing amid the wooded dells,
And fall beneath the skylark's spells;
Beside a sighing mountain stream
We'll rest and share a leafy dream;

Then venturing to the mountain's peak
We'll see what words will never speak!
If you these pleasures may but move,
Come live with me and be my love.

I'll weave for you a laurel crown,
An ivy sash and myrtle gown
And slippers wrought of silver light
To chase the moon across the night,

And when we catch her by the sea
She'll fill us up with poetry!
If these delights your heart may move,
Come live with me and be my love.

Yet, if these pleasures cannot be,
Still will I love you faithfully;
And if my faith your spirit move,
Then live with me and be my love.

The Tower (2009)

Up, up and up and up it grows,
With spires great and proud;
Its shadow far and wide it throws,
By people’s fear and awe it rose,
Who stand below and cowed.

Up, up and up, it reaches higher,
Until it seems the sky
Is pierced in two by bricks and fire,
By bitumen, and one’s desire
Against the heavens to try.

The axis of a total power,
An empire of the world;
And never realm does it devour
Can quench the famine of that tower;
More conquest must be hurled.

Behold an army marching out;
Behold the slaves that army brings,
Enchained and wailing from the rout;
Now hear those slaughterous warriors shout,
“Hail Nimrod, king of kings!”

And Nimrod, high atop his walls,
Great hunter of the earth,
Looks on his armies, golden halls,
His toiling mass of nameless thralls,
And cannot sum their worth.

Beside him stands, with midnight sheen,
Dark onyx of his crown,
Proud Semiramis, orient queen,
Whose thirsting eyes will never glean
Enough to let them drown.

“My queen, this world is in my fist
And every nation quails
Against my armies to resist,
Such might is in this mortal wrist
That none alive curtails!

“And yet I am not satisfied,
My heart must still be fed;
It thunders with a godlike pride
And wails, ‘what god has ever died?’
What god has known the dread

“Of such an empire in his grip?
And yet no god will be
A banquet for the worms which slip
Within our tombs with eager lip
To taste nobility!”

Thus Nimrod cried with fearsome gaze
And loathed his feeble realm,
But hated more the sun’s free rays,
Which taunted him into a craze
By lighting every helm.

“Dread lord of earth and sea and air,
Have no more doubts and fears.
No god with you shall long compare;
We’ll make the very heavens despair
And break the celestial spheres!

“Behold this tower, spiralling,
Built up by countless hands
Subdued by you: it is your spring
To give the gods a mortal sting,
And vanquish heaven’s bands!

“Then all the universe must fall
Beneath your awful might;
The gods before your feet will crawl
And beg your mercy, but the pall
Of death shall steal their light!

“Then I shall be your ceaseless queen
And rule throughout the night,
As you the day will rule serene;
We’ll torment all who would demean
Our glory and our right!”

So Semiramis spoke her bent,
And all the heavens shook,
Foreboding some most ill event;
For heaven and earth, each malcontent,
The other cannot brook.

Then Nimrod, from his mighty tower,
Looks up and fiercely cries,
“Yes!  God himself will fear my power!
I’ll tear him down, his heart devour,
And throw him from the skies!

“The sun will set within my crown,
And shine on whom I may;
I’ll sear the airs, the fields I’ll brown,
This world will fear my scorching frown
And death itself obey!”

The king sends forth his bold command
To muster all his force,
As numberless as grains of sand,
Their marching shakes the very land
With chariot, man and horse.

Arriving with the Hunter’s Moon,
The earth his armies hide,
Unto the edge of vision strewn,
Such gold and jewels all festoon
And boast their deadly pride.

The eve before the king’s great war
He gazes over the plain,
And sees a falcon upward soar
As if to strike at heaven’s door –
Him nothing can contain!

But lo!  On silent wings there sweeps
The hooting bird of death,
And strikes the falcon as it steeps,
Then plummets with it to the deeps
While screeching out its breath!

Astonished, Nimrod staggers back
And stumbles on his throne,
A fear arises dim and black –
“And yet did not that hunter wrack
It’s prey as I my own?

“For Nimrod is the hunter king,
And full the Hunter’s Moon!
Good portents for what day will bring
When I will clip a godly wing
And make the heavens swoon!”

Anon that night commotion throws
The kingdom into fear –
The moon falls dark, yet faintly glows
With bloody hue, as if it knows
The morrow’s doom is near.

King Nimrod sees the moon as well
And shivers in his nerves,
But shouts, “Tomorrow I shall dwell
In heaven and the gods in hell,
As this false moon deserves!”

And so the night is spent by all
Beneath a fearsome moon
That lours with its bloody pall,
While time moves onward at a crawl;
All pray that dawn comes soon.

When light arises on the tower
The armies rouse and arm,
While Nimrod waits the proper hour
To launch his host, and heaven shower
With arrows, spears and harm.

Proud Semiramis rushes in
And falls before her lord:
“I dreamt this bastion strong wherein
We stand, that pierces heaven’s skin,
Collapsed as heaven roared!”

“My Queen, this omen, seeming ill,
Bodes well our victory!
For when I triumph, I shall spill
This spire and whatever hill
Might brave our regency!

“Now arm yourself – we go to war,
And make our doom today;
And either we the Elysian shore
Must win or suffer evermore;
All’s risked in one fell play.”

The trumpets blast the battle cry,
And Nimrod’s golden host
Uplift their standards in reply,
Their gallant banners waving high,
And ready for their boast.

The army glitters in the sun
Like waves upon the sea,
This army, never once outdone,
Which ever forced the foe to run,
Awaits the king’s decree.

A hundred thousand thousand spears
Unleash their furious sound,
Their mighty, conquering king appears,
A hundred thousand thousand cheers
Explode and shake the ground!

Then up and up and up they stride
With Nimrod and his queen
In front of all and full of pride;
Up, up and up and up they guide
Beyond the cloudy screen.

Up, up and up and up the tower
The mighty host does climb;
The ether shakes at such a power
While lightning shrieks and brimstones shower
To mark so great a crime.

Up, up and up they rashly march
Unto bright heaven’s gate,
And halt before a blazing arch
That makes their sin and hubris parch,
Despite their brimming hate.

Now Nimrod lifts his mighty sword
To signal the assault,
But silent dread overcomes the horde,
As groanings strange first stun their lord
And shake the lofty vault;

The groans increase, the air grows thick
And wailings start to rise
From out the soldiers, fallen sick
With terror as the mortared brick
Turns bloody to their eyes!

Then blasts rip upward from the plain,
A screaming, grinding squall:
“What’s that?  That jolt!”  “Explosions!” – “again!”
“Our weight –”  “Our weight!”  “It can’t sustain–”
“The tower – it breaks!”  “The wall!”

And mighty was their fall!

On Pomposity (2010)

There once was a youth known as Slick,
A pompous and genuine prick;
With ambition the size of a planet
And an ego to easily span it,
The world would be his in a trick!

Although Slick was the head of his class
And his grin was like well-polished brass,
His friends would complain
He was galactically vain,
And they secretly thought him an ass.