Feather to the gale

you, standing there on the shore
looking out to sea,
what is it that you see?

are you illuminated?
has your vision once again
become light?
can you now see through
the darkness engulfing the flame?

if feet could smile, yours would
for they've brought you home again
from such a long stray

but oh, what a feather in a gale
home is and how rarely
do feet find it

does the moon remember you?
do the waves speak as before?

what is it that you see?
show me

for once, i too found that shore,
illumination in the night,
the song upon a wave

but that was oh so very long ago
and I've forgotten the language
once native to my heart

I'd come beside you
take your hand
invade your heart
share your eyes
and weep for the witness
-but then,
you'd forget too

and though, feather to the gale
you will anyway
i long for this moment
in your flight
this respite from lost
in the flame

The Winter Raven

i might've been a songbird
cupped in morning's first light
the poetry of a chickadee
the elegance of a catbird
or maybe the joyful wren

from field to pasture
flocks of friendly sparrow
might have followed me

geese may have known rest
in my quiet pond, and the eagle
may have shared his mountain perch

but the blackbirds, they did swarm
and the crows, they did call
and here, in this late valley
of creeping dusk where all
that might have been has been forgotten

i find i have no song
and through blighted fields
it's the lazy cowbird that follows
leaving her future in others nests
and it's the felon blackbird i call
to escort me down dark alley ways

and it's here, in the tangled thicket
below the tall maple, where
the void of leaf or elegance
is swallowed in the last ray of light
drawing down the shade of hope
that i find myself silent
deep in the shadow
of the winter raven