I check the time and see that it is now.
The map confirms that where we are is here.
I look as far as gathering clouds allow.

What is a place when landmarks disappear?
Who knew wind blew so wildly? All fell down.
The map confirms that where we are is here.

It’s already hard to think this was a town
and that a forest. Where are all the trees?
Who knew wind blew so wildly? All fell down.

If there is no inside, tonight we’ll freeze.
Where the sun shown briefly through, would that be east
and that a forest? Where are all the trees?

Of all our problems it is not our least
that we learn that what we’ve lost we never liked.
Where the sun shown briefly through, would that be east?

We kept eyes closed and heads down as we hiked.
I check the time and see that it is now
that we learn that what we’ve lost we never liked.
I look as far as gathering clouds allow.

A moral man, and such am I,
believes there’s something in the sky
or in some sacred Spring, or Wood
that knows and teaches what is good.

I spend hours on my knees
imploring It to tell us please
(all of us, not only me)
what ethic guides eternity.

Of all that’s born the best part dies
and so perhaps the most truth lies
here inside our happy home,
or harrowed through our garden’s loam;

and thinking this I’ve dug up yards
of debris searching in the shards
of pottery for runes and paint
that might mark truth, however faint.

Today at dawn I’ll rise to go
down to a stream where willows grow
from tears I’m told that fairies weep
to fill the rivers then the deep.

Shaped stones, old customs, woks of weird words.
He hawks his worn collections near the wall
and leans against it: nose and toes in sun,
his back and buttocks buttressed in bricked shade
against the cold-toned, more-than-mortal rocks.

Tunes culled from dirges echo in his eyes
as he sees music others only hear.
Green dancing girls gyre in a wincing wind
rewinding age-cold ashes back to fires
where logs incarnate trees from falling flames.

A carnal vision drums inside his ears.
His others senses scintillate in step
and glory glitters as it did before
he stepped aside, to make a place for that
which accustomed him to seek the shade of walls.

He shades his eyes as shadows shape a ghost
who speaks his name and offers him a stem
with wicked thorns and topped by one wan bloom,
a flawed rare beauty of the lethal kind
he’s hidden from since moving to this land.

The thorns are real and tingle in his hand.
He feels arthritis amble off in time,
and space escapes attention, while the shade
addresses him in language he’d forgotten
and tells him that his mission is complete.

The sun itself seeks shelter at such times,
and walkers who were sweltering grow chill.
Some, in the darkness, seek each other’s hands
and, when the sun returns, they see it seize
and sear two shadows sitting by stone woks.