Nothing between
me and heaven.
I waited,
watched the moon rise,
saw the earth spin
to look away,
But I did not.
The wind rose
to pay homage
to its lunar jewel,
And clouds
slipped across
its sun-kissed span,
a wolf’s eye
rimmed with kohl,
A lover’s eye
in a keyhole,
a peering beast
rising from
sleep.
In the night-blue verdant
branches of forest pines
and late summer leaves
the wind sang.
My heart found the harmony,
and for a fleeting moment
I was a floating note,
Unbound
in
Moon Song
Where will you take me?
“Where would you go?”
Up to the sky to play
in the moon’s glow.
Out past the night clouds
to juggle the stars.
There’d be no limits,
no chains, and no bars.
“Where will you take me?”
Where would you go?
“Down to the ocean floor
so far below,
stirring the sandy mud,
skimming the stones.
Passing by treasure,
and shipwrecks, and bones.”
“Come, let us go now.
First here, and then there.
Deep on a sea voyage
high in the air.”
These sacred scars I bear are
not self-inflicted, but life induced.
I stand indicted
of others’ crimes
and cannot answer
for what’s not mine.
What I do
is cry in the dark
and bear witness
to the empty room,
the barren sky,
the callous cosmos,
that I bleed as
an innocent man.
The Eyes of Heaven watch me walk
across the virgin snow,
impassively marking
my passing
I see the winter wolves in
my periphery, gathering
in curious, carnivorous lust
for blood and meat to slake
their killing urge
The blade of my knife is
cold
against my thigh
The weight of my sword
gives me
balance
in the
high, white drifts
And the
Eyes of Heaven
glimmer with memories
of other travelers
who’ve traversed these
rugged rocks
Some to their hearths,
Some to their gods,
And it is all one
to the
Eyes of Heaven
And I stop,
feeling the chill night wind
in the thick fur
of my hood,
in the scruff of my
wild whiskers,
and look back into the Eyes of Heaven
And long to be
loved,
But
they are
as blind to me
as they are
infinite
And the Eyes of Heaven
close
to dream
and
remember
ages past,
and
unsoiled
virgin snow.
I scattered myself
spread myself out
purged myself of
fickle, transient colors
and became a
solid monochrome,
containing all that you would need
to shine
And you, lain so sweetly, gently
over the top of me,
like diamonds on black sand,
took the sun from my heart,
and turned it into
angelic starlight,
reflecting the night sky,
and our enduring,
timeless love
to the
infinite universe
Stare we no longer
at
the setting sun
The evening starlight
knells
the day is done
And you and I
are here
Love’s victory won
She has the power to summon spirits, but only by the ocean…a mystery she’s going to work on solving, before it might be too late.
If you could
hold a handful
of
stars
what would you do with them?
puff them away
like
dandelions fluff
and make
random wishes?
toss & scatter them
like
silver coins
into the
sea?
make clusters of them
spin
like
pinwheels?
or let them
slowly slip
through your
fingers
spilling them
back into
the sky?
If you could
hold a handful
of
stars
what would you do with them?
© Alfred W. Smith Jr
Candles
wink playfully
flirting
with my retina
hiding
what I would
see
The Sun
is a saucier creature
who will
blind you
if you
stare her down
Give me the
steady
patient
starlight.
© Alfred W. Smith Jr
2015
Beyond Panic 