Occluded skies
Reflected in a secluded cove
Cold, still water
With the clarity of glass
Now I
In this diffuse, scattered light
See the depths in crisp detail
A bed of granite
Obscured by sand and silt
In this, I see myself
The bedrock of me
Beneath a sediment of memory
And these beneath the terrible weight
Of experiences so fully repressed
As to be rendered transparent
So I stir up the bottom
Cloud the water
See what patterns emerge
To reveal the dark matter that is the forgotten me
Though journeys be fraught
With pitfalls and wanderings
Know the beauty of the path
That the pitfalls and wanderings
Make the path beautiful
That serenity finds its moments
From peak to valley
He tumbled
A pebble
In the tumultuous runoff
Of his own emotions
Finally released
In the awakening spring
After a long, cold winter
Of isolated dissociation
He lay there
For a while
In the rocky bed
His torrent gouged
Through valley floor
Then stood
Shook off pain
Shouldered the burden
Of recovery
So began the work
To break new trail
Back to the peaks
The grasses and shrubs bow and flutter
On a windswept fen
Long Range Mountains leap from the plain
Testament to the crushing power of colliding continents
And I am reminded
Of a small boy
Heart rent through and through
By harsh words and hard gestures
It’s alright, boy
You bent like the grass
And rose up like the mountains
There is no small beauty in that
Be soft
She said
Like velvet
Bend with the wind
Like grass
In the field
So when others
Touch your life
They are not cut
And if they lean on you
A little hard
You do not break
All this broken glass
You wear
From your past
It harms you
As much as those
You love
And what is not
Already broken
Is brittle
With the slightest pressure
It shatters
Into shards you wield as weapons
Learn to be soft
Before you crumble
To no more than sand
Or only when
You are naught but dust
Will you ever be soft
There was a small crack
Which let the light in
Amber and warm
To dispel the gloomy darkness
But left the shadows
So I could see both
Where I was going
And where I’d come from
The road takes me through
A deepening darkness
Toward a near horizon
Of fantastical colour
Receding with the sun
I depress the accelerator
Hoping at least to keep pace
But wishing to my core
That someday
I will catch up
Water of life
Cuts into stone
Reveals depths
To be plumbed
A hard journey down
A harder journey back
Rewards every step
Even the most painful
Idyllic setting
Empty seats
New normals
Under development
I have convinced myself
That chaos follows me
As if a companion
Or a stalker I can not shake
Until today’s revelation
That it is merely disorder
Of my own orderly creation
Like the roiling waters
Left in the wake
Of a vessel underway
And I am always underway
Though always looking back
Focused on the havoc
Left behind
In the lives of self and others
Manufacturing in my mind
The spiritual narrative
Of a Job-like tragedy
That relieves me of responsibility
Pix to Words 