archetypes
symbols arrayed
arranged
precise
meanings elusive
multiplicative
hearer dependent
no Carrollean wishes
fortresses erected
below the tide line
await waves
minor etchings
Durer or trivial
seen or ignored
Lot cast
either diamond
or salt pillar
eroded by rain
adrift torn
by tongues
cast to ash.
In so many mythologies
earth is a woman, a mother,
and we arise from within her.
The pure and simple logic
of this assumption cannot
be assailed, for she is
the crux of all nature,
and as it seems in life,
it is all too often
the males that lay siege
and wage wars that
damage her deeply,
and the women whose tears
gently wash her wounds
If you ask, she says,
you take away the chance
of ever getting a miracle.
If you ask and it happens
you reduce it to a simple
prayer answered, no matter
how surprising the outcome.
You don’t see, he said
it’s not the final act
that is the miracle,
it’s that it actually happens
to someone presumptuous enough
to believe themselves deserving.
On this night the moon
should be new or full, the sun
should reflect on this
More than a billion
stars will fill the sky tonight
I see just a few
Evening clouds gather
staring down on the city
imagining rain
He clearly remembers standing on the edge
peering down into the almost bottomless canyon,
listening to the narrow river slide across the rocks
thrown down by its walls over millennia.
He was a visitor here, knew he would stay
only briefly, then leave, his spirit hiding
among the rocks in the nearby mountains,
staring down on the mesa for eternity.
He remembers listening for coyote, begging
the wily one to tell him the tales of its ancestors
with whom he will soon share this canyon.
All he hears is the wail of the jackrabbit,
coyote’s message in a foreign voice,
as night engulfs the mesa and he
stares up at the galaxies and stars
which barely notice the small orb
hanging in the distant sky.
He was no longer sure
quite where he found it,
or whether it was talisman
or just an amulet, but
he didn’t believe the distinction
really mattered at all.
He carried it with him
everywhere he went,
was sure to put it
ins his pocket each day.
Many said it did nothing
for him, brought him
no better luck, no change
in his circumstances,
but he was quick
to point out how much
worse things might have been
had he never found it.
A river may polish
a stone until
it reflects
the morning sun.
A jeweler may polish it
and facet it
until it shatters the light
in ten directions.
A wise man will claim
it is still
the same stone.
