The City Lights with You


Nice sunset to stroll the paved sidewalk
There beside the river
Clear blue skies slowly fading like a rose
Into the soft pearl glow of a city night
Reflected backlight of a hundred street lamps
Stealing away the dark
Holding tight with a lovers grasp
Hands and fingers laced
You and I
Side-by-side together
Go
Your soft grip reminding my feet not to walk to fast
Directing them sternly when they go to slow
The same nested hold
With an awkward bump
Pulls the walk to a stop
And with a warming embrace
Hurriedly turns our path back upon itself
Shivering from the coming cold
Leads us home

An Autumn Day

The heart grows weary as the cold nights lengthen
The wicked gather
Adorned in riches of jewels and gold
Where are the vigilant that tend the watchfires
Have they abandoned their duty to glean the crops
Why have the wise men ceased their understanding
Frequenting instead the alehouse and tavern
Alone the traveler wanders
Burdened by knowledge that the gates have all been barred
Highwaymen prowl like lions
The blind, arrogant, and foolish fall prey
And from the rooftops the innocent crying leap
But there are none to stop their fall

Broken Lament

Those peaceful walks through autumn woods lost in guiltless silence

A frigid heart in solitude remorseful of their passing

Thoughts of you wander free tracing tear stained lines from pallid eyes

Displaced in time I watch you fade even as the last of the oak leaves fall

Last to find deaths release
lost love I linger on

A Quiet Walk

Orange and yellow mix slow on the breeze. Red dappled woods laced with the faint memories of wandering trails. Highlights of green fern tufts mark the boundaries between fairy realm and memories of childhood. Rills and folds bend the land. My mind drifts out into this world. Each crisp breath forming thought balloons without captions in the air.

At the Garden Edge

Watching a young black snake slow gliding across leaf and rock.
She stands out against the brown and yellows of coming fall.
Silent and quick, and as long as a kitchen broom. Coiling up and then straightening out she threads her way along.
I often loose sight of her amongst the fennel an goldenrod. It’s only after a mad dash and leap of a surprised frog that I find her again.
The soft shimmer of black scale gliding along betwixt and between the plants helps idle the last of summer away…

Temporary


I am …
The rustling of the autumn leaves
which hang tight for now amongst the maple and oak
The borderland at the far edge
A small stack of stone piled up along the imaginary lines of a map
Even the rill filled trickling down between root and rock
Sparking gentle reflection beneath half shadows of this wilderness before seeping down
Disappearing into the land
No one cosmopolitan will understand this simple satisfaction of a season
And the acceptance of the passage of life
Before we go our way

Come November, from The Book of Pat

The soft muzzled cough brought Alice back from being lost in her usual daydreams.
It had been months since she had walked freely about the streets. Even longer since the blind run through the dark forests of another world.
If this insane self-imposed quarantine had to continue for very much longer, Alice was going to leap back through into the brightly lit hall beyond. Once there she was more than willing to try her luck at some other random doorway.
“What then?” muttered the low voice of the sage.
Alice could tell he was talking more to himself than to her.
Alice replied anyway, “Anywhere but here.”

The look of the old mages floor length beard partially muzzled by a soft swath of mask looked ridiculous. The rope ties for the ears could not reach so Alice had helped him braid the ends into the facial hair just beneath the cheeks.
The effect gave the ancient librarian a hipster grunge look.
The ink stained hands of the sage had been hard at work rubbing his face again. Either an allergy from the ink that now tinted his nose or from the dreaded Covid virus had been making the elderly gentleman wheeze and cough. He had coughed enough times that Alice had demanded the face covering.
The sage grumpily complied just to silence her complaining.
The whole request struck him funny since it came from a woman wearing no clothes at all…

The doorman had been busy hanging invisible signs about the hall. Each had been hung so that an individual entering could see them with little effort. He was certain when the complaint department was called he would be found blameless in the spread of such ignorance. Each entry had been clearly marked with a request for a mandatory fourteen day quarantine, and each infectious destination properly marked.
The Gatekeeper had even replaced his usual Welcome mat with one that read, “Masks Required”.
“Yes”, he thought, “in a reality of inexistence the flattened curve wasn’t going to catch him in another surge, hoax or not.”

Pat sat watching the falling leaves. The peace autumn brought was a welcome change from the dry hot days of summer. Still the thought to lay naked in those golden rays made his pulse quicken with youthful memories.

“The seasons change with the turn of a word,” he whispered to the quiet room. Though there was a large crowd, no one heard him.

Pat was aware that the sentence could be thought of as political, as well as environmental.
Opinions were changing. Impatient populations desperate for a miracle.
Come November another four years of greatness would be chosen. Hopefully one that meant the destruction of a party founded in racism. If not then things weren’t going to look too good for the home front.
It had been bad enough that this man-made virus was unleashed by corrupt policies of the criminal elite in the attempt of a one-world-order coup.
To have to suffer under the heavy-handed tactics of the cosmopolitan could lead to an actual armageddon between good and evil…

Pat watched the falling leaves. The beauty was not wasted on him. The mix of yellows and reds drifting down. Sometimes in soft spirals, sometimes in a direct glide. Individual leaves and groups all randomly blowing about with a kaleidoscope of color.
None of the meaning was missed.
Everything had a purpose;
Pat just had his own preference in how things should end.

All this change from the green leaves of one tree. Nothing was ever missed…