An Alien Beauty

I learn the bounds
Of my sense of beauty
When I see an alien eye
Rendering a familiar form

I am transported
To other worlds
To other dreams
To other insights

I learn my bounds
Then extend them
Beyond what I’d known
Or even dreamed possible

When Death Came

One sunny Sunday
Death came to my smithy
In his shroud of black
Trailing a shadow, like blood
Spilt on the butcher’s floor

Your time has come.

Said Death

What say you?

I am not ready, Ancient One.

So say they all.

I try to stay
On the right side of the line
I try to know
What the right side is

It’s not always easy
Not like a centreline
On the highway
On which I drive through life

Keep to the right
Keep to the right
Keep to the right

Except to pass

Get out on that highway
Nothing in the rearview
But what I carry with me

Eyes forward
Movin’ on
Leavin’ all the dust
Behind me

No matter the depth
Of the blue I fall into
There is light above
And a vibrancy of life
I can climb to

Stars and planes
Streaked through the sky
While camera film
Made green the night
Doubled in the pond below

And o’er it all
Arced golden steel
To celebrate
The westward move

When I look back
At all the worlds
I’ve left behind
On journeys past

Some with regret
And, some, disdain
Though most with neither
This nor that

I think not
Of the world I’m in
The present
Not this very day

But all the worlds
I’ve yet to see
Which will also
Fall behind

I turn the brightness up
Raise myself out of the depths
The mire
The hardship
Out of the confusion
And disorientation
If only for a moment

Breathe

Like coming up for air
In the tumult
Of crashing surf
Before the wave
Takes me under

Tossed by the storm
While the cyclone raged
Inside my heart
Inside my mind
Circling ’round
The centre

My spirit
My soul
The eye
Of my
Being

I find harmony
In places unexpected
A dirty, broken alley
Amid the smells
Of misery and death

Scrawled there
In pigment
And love
Arcs and lines
A language of hope
And possibility