Can words be found
or assembled into poetic lines
to capture beauty such as this?
This majestic night-
overhead a starlit sky-
like scintillating black ice-
below- white powder-

To tried to care
All hope is gone
Instant oblivion
Standing alone
Ignorance by some
Silence by most
Malicious replies
Yet marked ambivalence
Longing for
Answers while
Sipping bitter tea

Nothing of value comes without cost
for all things dear will some day be lost-
causing so much pain and deep sorrow
the deepest sadness we’ll ever know.
This the price we eventually pay

There is a secret
place within
my heart-
a room kept
under lock and key-
where no one but you
has ever been-
or any other could
ever be-
where bitter sweet
memories of days
long past-

The seasons unspool without major accomplishment-
although I question “major” and “accomplishment”-
all relative I guess-
like milestones in life-
a matter of perspective-

I see the sea, the sea I see-
The sea that calls and beckons me-
Come and a sailor be-
To sail on me to distant lands-
Across my great expanse-
But the sea I see knows I can’t do that

I cherish memories of winter mornings on the farm-
awakening to the sweet smell of hickory smoke
escaping from the old wood cook-stove-
and to the aroma of frying bacon, perking coffee

One stormy evening dark and dreary-
I sat alone bleary eyed and weary-
drinking my beer when what did I hear
but a rat-a-tap tapping at my door.
Away to the window I flew like a bat

With vacant stares and slipered feet they
shuffle aimlessly through corridors and halls-
lined with rooms with numbers on the doors.

They all have their mementos on a table
by their bed-

Is there an object lesson is to be had,
or story moral to be learned-
from the frightful tale of the
Cuckoo bird?

A bird that neither plans nor toils
its own nest to build, but seeks

Those winter evenings on the far Eastside-
remembered still for the aroma of potatoes
frying and coal smoke-
intermingled in the crisp twilight air.

At just about dusk, every evening,

Who was it first determined what’s a weed and what’s a flower-
whoever it was could they just maybe have been in error?
Have you noticed when late summer turns hot and dry,

When I journey along the stream,
that flows beside the meadow green,
I ask myself where does it go,
and why it wanders to and fro.

The answer it would seem to me,

Original version set to paper a long long time ago.

Why have you forsaken me oh my love?
You have left me desolate and used up-
as you would a castoff stained garment.

I have been advised at times by poets who mean well-
that many of my poems are just to dad-gum concise.
I am told they have too few words to be me mysterious and deep-