Small Lyrics

                                                Sanborn Library

                                                Dartmouth College

                                                August 24, 2012

I take in the scent of old wood.

It becomes one with me.

I relish what the incense does.

Intoxicant;

A mixture of tobacco, varnish,

Faded sunlight, and memories.

Expectant air hangs;

Sounds muffled.

Stacks of musty, ancient books;

Their raggedness, their dated echoes;

Printed and reprinted talkers;

Bindings imprison words as if they were a jail,

Which, upon spilling open,

Pour forth words;

Painted illusions which connect, harmonize;

Weave ideas into the structure of thought.

Small lyrics of the fates of mountains, men, and morality,

Sung in the silent sheaves of brittle pulped parchment.

I, as those before me, sit under the evaporating light

Of the yellow dimming sun,

To taste the vestiges and essence of all that was wrought before me.

To My Fallen Hero

When I awaken, I call your name,

Always now to the hollowness

Of the window frame

Which holds a view of a desolate field.

A barren plain of emptiness,

This world of mine

Without you.

When I arise, I look for you,

Grasping only air I do not understand.

The empty space I cannot take in.

Where once your presence filled my hours

With laughter and insanity.

Until recently, it was easier, you know,

To imagine you here before me.

But then, shadows yield to light.

Thirsty Fire

Thirsty Fire

                                                            Lebanon, NH

                                                            August 6, 2012

I have loved you forever, it seems;

Lit by the thirsty fires of dreams.

I am lost in the woods tonight,

Outfitted with a poem I did not write….

Half drunk on my mind’s eye,

A measure of acuity keeps my head held high.

I will never again recognize those trees as a forest;

For the way you touched me has been cast.

When requisite loneliness comes to call,

Rapture is home, tapping at the wall.

Wisdom

My winter embodies wisdom;

Spare wisdom of a black and white world.

In my solitude,

I take a chance and look around.

Everywhere, I find the same.

People move through paths of twilight on the knoll.

They usher in a festival of the departed,

All for love and an affirmation of life.

So the living and the spirits merge,

As a marshmallow day softens

Into the dark cocoa of dusk.