From Macrocosm...

BETWEEN THE DARKS

Between the darkness and the dark 
We dance to descants of the lark. 
Between the shadow and the shade
​We slip through sunbeams in the glade. 

From midnight to a darker night
We long for love and beg for sight. 
From darkness life itself arose,
Yet back into the dark it goes.
Each something into nothing flows
Why this should be, who knows? Who knows?

...to Microcosm...

HOW LONG, HOW LONG?

How long before the Dark descends, 
How long before the night
Beats down the ramparts of the day,
And Light is put to flight?

How long before a faltering fire
My log no longer burns?
How long before my hearth grows cold
And Spring no more returns?

How long shall life and love endure, 
How long shall sense abide
Inside this vortex in the void, 
This bottle in the tide?

THE SWAN SONG OF
​J. ALFRED PRUFROCK

​So, let us go then, you and I
Where the land’s end meets the sky,
Where our memories of a happier time
May be mured about by pleasant clime,
Where unreason’s rough and reckless hand
Cannot choke right reason’s spring with sand.

Let’s go away, then, you and I
Before the daylight starts to die,
’Ere gods and ghosts take full command,
And darkness veils the path we’ve planned--
While yet we see the way to go
To follow footprints in the snow.

So let us go there—you … and I.

IMAGINARY FRIENDS

​Imaginary friends besiege our world
And sap with Hatred’s holes frail towers of love.
Stern thunderbolt-commandments they have hurled
    
From Sinai’s peak and storm-cast skies above
To crush the souls and loose the fears of men,
To bid them think a devil be a dove.

Imaginary friends beyond the ken
Of science slue our minds that we misthink
Our anguish God, make desert oozing fen.

How can such childish daydreams bring to brink
Our lives and force us to forsake life’s flower
In change for deadly draughts of hemlock drink?

Imaginary friends possess more power
Than sinews strapped to muscles red and real.
In darkling shadows dank they crave us cower;
And we forgive all rays of light they steal.

CICADA SONGS

​Cicada songs are warning me
       My summer soon shall end,
And all my blossoms, all my bees
       Will into dust descend.
 
Cicada songs are telling me
       These colors soon shall fade,
That Autumn sere and Winter white
       Will rob my summer’s jade.
 
Cicada songs are telling me
       The conquests I would make
Will go unconquered one more year,
       My yearning heart shall ache.
 
Cicada songs confirm to me
       This world of mine is lost--
To follies fired by fevered minds,
       To phantoms sired by frost.
 
Cicada songs now make me think
       My earth cannot be saved,
That Time and I again have failed
       To free a world enslaved.
 
Yet cicada songs will sing me on
       Through summers yet to come;
Again and yet again shall I
       Count up my zero sum.
 
But cicadas still will sing beyond
       My efforts on this earth,
To e’er new blossoms, e’er new bees
       Who’ll fill my vacant berth.
 
And some day some cicada’s song
       Will fill a world of reason,
When superstition shall no more
       Make Fall so sad a season.

REMINDERS

​There are moments when I wake from sleep
    But cannot bound from bed,
    And I know, I know.

There are moments when I think
    To climb the stairs
    But then I don’t,
    And I know, I know.

There are moments
    When my lust is slaked
    Before I feel the surge,
    And I know, I know.

There are moments when the dawn
    Seems slow to light
    And the night seems ne’er to end
    And I know, I know … I know.

There are moments when I part my eyes
    But light is slow to lume
    And I know.