The sky
Wanes to night
While I
Rest on cliff’s edge
Above the serenity
Of calm waters
Allow the last vestiges
Of daylight
To dance
Their vibrant death
When I
Turn for home
And the solitude
Of a lonely highway
No taillights
But my own
No headlights
But the moon
In the rearview
All the way
To bed
Where I
Sleep the deepest
Of sleeps
Does the eagle know
Glory in the day’s end sun
Or my eyes alone
Wild seas dash upon the rocks
Which seem brittle and broken
But hardened they are
Resilient and determined
A stone will falter
Here or there
But the armour never fails
In the end
It is the storm that breaks
Upon the hardened shore
Replies the fireweed
Where wildfire had scorched the Earth
Resistance is life
A ribbon of light
Winds along the valley floor
Swallowed by the mist
There am I
An Island of consciousness
Standing on an Island beach
On a planetary Island in space
Circling a celestial Island in a galaxy
On the outer rim of a galactic Island in an expanding universe
That is an Island in a multi-dimensional array of infinite universes
Singular
Infinitesimal
Inconsequential
But in this moment
I am
I am enough
Necessary and sufficient
For consciousness has no bounds
While it has no explanation
It needs none
The buoy sings
In broken meter
While gull cries
As steel
Rings out its soul’s lament
Rolling on the seas becalmed
Which lap gently at the marker
Slings languid clapper
Side-to-side
Until it dings
Seeking gull’s reply
For bereaved augment
Not one to be remiss
The gull
Its song amiss
Takes wing with foulest aural screech
Through which the many souls buried
Here
By storm
Beseech
For they that never heard the bell
But discovered rocky shoal
With sundered timbers of their hull
Forsook their invitation to God’s holy hell
No, not that descent
Instead remain beneath the sea
Without repent
To pull the chain of their lament
This Melfort Bell
Forever
Out of meter
Comes the night
With celestial swagger
Its vanguard in scarlet, violet and indigo
Descends the void dotted by galaxies and stars, a planet or two
Beyond the dim beacons built by small creatures
To penetrate the darkness they fear
Languid moments follow
Sun’s final thoughts
Bounds the sky
From golden to indigo
Wherein abides such grace
There I, manifest, serenity
The puck hit him
Square in the facemask
A one hundred mile per hour slapshot
And it really rung his bell
The world shattered for him
Spun like an off-centre top about to fall
Vision blurred
And he felt a little sick to his stomach
Like he felt during the weird, disparate moments
Of the past weeks and months and years
That flashed through his mind
As visual and aural nightmares
There was the candidate gloating
About sexual assault
And getting elected anyway
Though it all should have ended
Before it even started
In an open mic moment
And an administrative error
That sends a man to a foreign torture chamber
And making no effort to bring him back
Or even apologize
A man who already can only be counted
As one among thousands
Soon tens of thousands
And how many more?
Only history puts an upper limit
The lie that no judge has the authority
To adjudicate the actions of a president
Who can simply ignore the law
“Long live the King”
He proclaimed with a ridiculous faked cover
Straight from the halls of the White House
After he went after a city
For the temerity to write
Its own traffic laws
This “leader of the free world”
Promises to annex one sovereign neighbour
Though he needs nothing it has
Run a hostile takeover on another
As if a landmass were a corporation ripe with assets
And send troops to take a canal
Because, well, it used to be his
There he is
He and his orange smirk
Swearing oaths
He would soon break
As if epithets and slanders
Surrounded by billionaires
Many with their own agendas
Catalogued in a plan for 2025
Serviced by their sycophantry
To an emerging despot
One is also a gloater
Who takes a chainsaw
And a woodchipper
To entire agencies
And the tens of thousands
Who’ve worked to make them
The envy of so many
And to the tens of millions
They serviced
Then whines for all to see
When the millions
Stop buying his shit
Both product and actions
And set his world on fire
Then yesterday
A tablet of tariffs
Against every trading partner
Friends, allies, enemies alike
Without cause
Without reason
But to a great effect
All can see coming
But the self-styled King
The despot
Now today
The stock market whirls
As its unsteady feet
Fall from beneath it
As does our goaltender
Who slumps forward
Falling toward unconsciousness
While a thousand more absurdities
Flash through his mind
Before his facemask again
Is crushed by its contact with the ice
And then there is darkness
Pix to Words 