Oh Nature!
Oh being alive,
Years and decades behind me now,
Work seems arduous nowadays,
But that's how it happens,
Done with one job,
Moving on to another,
Done with this person,
Clinging to yet another,
Hard work and harder times,
Such remarkable stage fright,
All those rad party anthems,
All those other bad rhymes,
That closing red velvet curtain,
We bow and bend to find,
The audience clapped just to be kind,
We're all alone anyway,
One in the same,
On this midway ride,
Bright lights and brass horns at times,
Layers of trite alleys and ley lines,
Crass slums and general chaos rules,
Pandemonium with its turbulent hum,
Scattering angel dust from rooftops,
Hurrying down perilous sidewalks,
Harried along this precarious journey,
Danger falling from the dicey sky,
Splicing marred and failing body parts,
Proud flesh scarred and pierced and spiked,
Spicy rice curry in a bland land,
Earthquakes wake us from our randy dreams,
Something buried rising out of the bandy earth,
Grasping at our wretched lives,
Washing us into the reckless sea,
Battered with rogue waves,
Dragged under by careless currents,
Pitiful and scourged by Neptune himself,
Waking in the belly of some great whale,
Suffering those raging leviathan atmospheres,
Transitionally aging from this to that,
Forever morphing with our dreadful fears,
Proving we are alive with all our grievous tears,
Searching for meaningful origins,
Seeking phenomenal and marvelous beginnings,
Dreaming exceptional endings,
Remembering fragments filled with momentous light,
All that remarkable illuminated existence,
Something sensible and satiable,
More than pure and simply breathable,
Something surely sustainable,
Not just ponderously insatiable,
But the feckless stars interfere,
Arousing naked reckless you,
Those long shapely legs,
Tip-toeing out of the shadows,
Tap-dancing across the universe,
Pondering other exceptional galaxies,
Reminded of those wondrous Sunday picnics in the park,
Recollecting our grueling holidays with Heil Hitler,
All that drum beating and holy marching,
Tramping unholy political streets,
Old Joe Stalin shadowed by despots like Saddam Hussein,
Warbling savage war tunes o'er shifting desert sands,
Trekking up one cruel dune,
Stumbling down a grueling other,
Those distant rumbling camel trains,
Rumpled like a mirage in the far off distance,
Reciting verse from the Quran,
Reckoning life with other promising quatrains,
Desert rats scrambling,
Rambling past the shifting stars,
Fumbling beneath the burning sun,
Grumbling pachyderms chained,
Slaves forced to work and run,
Relentless scavengers cackling and cawing,
Delighting over every smoking gun,
There's the corpse there's the motive,
Assaulted and broken and bleeding,
Falling down and breaking apart,
Flying to the imaginary moon and back again,
Blinded by poverty and that cursed street-cred pain,
Tasting drops of our own hot blood,
Gagging on bloody mistakes and ready habits,
Learning about life that hard and steady way,
All our daily gambling,
All our sordid vacations with cruddy Caesar and those other rakish Emperors,
So much deadly gambling,
All our morbid vocations,
All that true regret,
Horrid nights with Romeo and Juliet,
What is?
True love and compassionate giving,
So much greed and heady living,
Oh bountiful nature!
Loving and living,
Such glorious stature!
Passionately alive,
Such passionate rapture!

Crying monk tears,
Those strident fluid spears,
Carving a spirited path,
Gouging deep canyons,
Probing ardent deserts,
Shade beneath hydrated banyans.

Deep wells of prophetic dreaming,
Dry sanctums echoing with thirsty screaming,
Emotionally parched and screeching,
Preaching Wadi's seeping discomfort and hurt,
Irreverent stars and reverent planets have plummeted,
Plenitudes of cosmic precipitation,
Prescribing the galactic sum of it,
Concentrating on consecrated Oases,
Blackening serpent tongues,
Slack fronds framing sublime psalms,
Scribed arcane words rhymed in song. 

Record storms of carnal knowledge,
High pressure and lowly sedge,
Restoring divine crowns and sacred mandalas,
Poised freely below an airy ledge,
Craving carnival love,
Bowing to eclectic celestial bodies,
Knowledgeably lowing,
Orbiting an electric sun,
Shooting stars shall see again,
Routing routine evolution,
Debating blazing revolution,
Stating prophetic revelation,
Moot love cleansed by Martian tears and Venus rain.

You used to come and stay,
By and by the moon kissing the sky,
Sweet love a while away,
Such short perfumed visits,
Water washing over callouses and other digits,
All my aroused washboard cares,
Reminding my wounded heart,
Those remnants of long gone love affairs,
Scars and kisses buried deep,
Embracing misses within my earthbound burrow,
Shameless tears and prison bars can't e'er refrain,
Restrain all those nightmare fears,
Explain all that dreadful earthly sorrow.

Scouring floods rush unconstrained,
Empathy surging onto parched earth,
Love sucked up by that desiccated desert,
Kind love sweeping each dry furrow,
Salted tears wash o'er my stolid brow,
Eroding each saline day into a forlorn hole,
Shamelessly revealing my corroded soul.

Treading on barnacles o'er a barefoot shoal,
Wading oceans of burnt out stars,
Infinite grains of sand to count,
Universe reverberating with good vibrations,
Attaining Compassion's deified goal,
Impassioned Creation,
Erupting deep within my sacred soul,
Erudite feasting by a welcome fount,
Blessed companions to Divinity's infinite glory,
So much divine heaven and reticent passion,
Reaching deep into my dry burrow,
Breaching pelagic dreams on this oceanic story,
Bleaching tidal zones with reluctant joy and constant sorrow.

What is this divine goal?
Swift currents in a veering course,
Jet streams determine headstrong steering,
Shearing headlong into a remorseless wind,
Tacking along an unimaginable force,
Hurling magnified profanity,
Hurtling like a reckless cyclone,
Curtly wrecked by those voracious and blind,
Simple kindness arrested along this raging course,
Scourged by steep staccato phrases,
Scouring wicked eighth notes and utter remorse,
Igniting brave octaves plagued by gutter phases,
Screaming seems such staged vanity,
Rich dreams as I'm vainly composing,
Poised for Life's timely insanity.

I Thought I Was Awake

I thought I was awake,
Then the sun spoke,
Spinning me different,
Circumventing love,
Revolving in another orbit again,
Igniting a careless solar wind,
Inviting rare spirit,
A celestial guide through space and time,
My bestial soul navigating exigent seas.

      * * * * *

Bent round the fervent twist again,
Spiraling succinctly,
Instinctive lopsided refrains,
Moiling in this mucking tide again,
Boiling beyond relief again,
Coiled on this daring ride,
Roiling across a dangerous reef again.

     * * * * * 

Outwardly strained again,
Orbiting a blackhole bitch,
Etched and richly naked,
Poised without a single stitch,
Nothing to lose or hide,
Staked out in love's rakish valley,
Isn't stank love rich?
All afire in this rank alley.

           * * * * * * 

All the birds going silent,
Nothing but melancholy wind now,
Reaching across a colourless sky,
Speechless like onerous bleached coral,
Impeached by oneness somehow,
Everything sacred tends to die.

         * * * * * *

Rainbows have disappeared forever,
Elegant nature mirrors winter's ugly face,
Nothing the same anymore,
Love died when the watery moon turned to blood,
Fluid prayers were never heard,
Silent God vanished,
Nary a drip nor a drop,
Nothing pure remaining.

      * * * * * 

Elemental love echoing eternal grieving,
All this tortured heart break,
Sweet dreams forever lost,
Nothing but harried sleep it seems,
Dangling by a strangling knot,
Bemoaning jostling marriage,
Majestic horses and a pumpkin carriage,
What a dreadful abject cost.

     * * * * * *

Hopes drowned in raging streams,
Love lies marred and mangled,
Tangled helplessly by so much tussling,
Clinging desperately to a fussing shore,
Treading mapless paths,
Wand'ring restless haunts,
Accosted by blood curdling taunts,
Abandoning love's dreamiest hopes,
Caterwauling ghosts clearly bossing us around,
Madly stalling muddled battle tanks,
Armouring ourselves against those ghostly army ranks,
Incarnate against this stodgy world,
Safer defusing dodgy bombs,
Than diffusing codger love.

          * * * * * * 

Deceptive war demands receptive wealth,
Warriors beguile love's incited stealth,
Boorish cannibals moil at the castle gate,
Carnivores recoil with but a taste of love's scurrilous fate,
Roiling insatiable beasts tattooed with bloody shame,
Nothing intrepid shall e'er again be the same.

       * * * * * *

Oceans turn too acid,
So many lost and forgotten goldmines,
All those misplaced golden idols,
Such epiphany plastic brings,
Lamenting extinction,
Watching falling eagles,
Appalling pollution burying nature deep,
Beneath our vampire dreams,
A bloodless moon rejects starlit love,
So I'm dancing by myself,
Advancing t'wards love's acidic gulf,
Even Rumpelstiltskin stands quiet,
Mocking and smoking and smoldering with that attitude,
Provoking love in that bandy cold,
Cloaked respect hidden behind bold shadows,
Love moldering in gold digger solitude.

       * * * * * * 

Mount Etna waits impatiently,
Choking nature's serene quietude,
Oceanic Krakatow rumbles,
Grumbling from that sentient latitude,
All these sacred volcanoes,
Waiting for some small rent or shift,
Creating new vents and rifts,
Existence seems a God given gift,
Oblate resistance bubbling only to erupt someday,
Gruff plays of troubled love and nature,
Displayed in yet another rough stature,
Augmented by some other venture,
Diminished by love's galactic platitude.

     * * * * * * 

Continental shelves grinding,
Inclining monumental mountains,
Changing selfish minds,
Rearranged under the talking sky,
Reminded as I walk through these kind north woods,
Mother Nature replenishes with blessed fountains,
All Heaven's majestic kisses and worldly goods,
Magnetic love refined and defined as it should.

    * * * * * * 

Fluid agnostic love,
Racing to the failing ocean,
Braced and never surrendering,
Sending grace with love's devotion,
Blindly ranging into the rending tide,
Engaging fringed love,
Awash on virgin dunes,
Jeweled love dangling,
Tangled in every mangled treetop,
Reticent love caressing scrambled nature,
Pledging a dangerous imprisonment,
Lest a strangled jury consent,
Repenting in solitary confinement,
A cruel court swings and sways,
Arrested ways of wrangling,
Cresting this angling incline,
Recommending love's retirement.

       * * * * * * 

Love executes its victims,
One by one,
Occasionally two by two,
Demanding rich ransom for poor love's hostages,
Nothing opulent shall ever be the same,
Heartbreak will always paint a tempera sky,
Colour the temperate wind,
All that interdimensional temptation,
Cascading through extraterrestrial space,
Carousing through tempestuous time,
Past Winter's Black Holes and Summer's Red Giants,
Nothing burning can remain the same.

     * * * * *

A restitute moon weeps,
Our sun cries for compensation,
Yearning love lies bleeding,
Relinquishing sanity and blame,
Gathering cockeyed religion,
Such a cookie dough world,
Everything eventually shaking and baking,
One last naked supper,
Take eat these raw words,
Shake and bake and toss,
Fishermen and mermaids setting nets,
Love gutted by unrefined recipes,
Such a tasteless loss,
Such detectable mass vanity,
Delectable braised shark glazed with diminished sauce,
Love garnished and tarnished by crass time,
A grim smorgasbord of processions and resident insanity.

        * * * * * * 

Love sails the seven seas,
Islands of remorse remain submerged,
Equatorial Africa begins the rhyming conversation,
Racing through timely paragraphs,
Continental cave dwellers gaze up at tell-tale stars,
Trim pirates embrace love poems,
Grim tragedy sets the bracing course,
Betting on dim dreams,
Upwellings from the deep Atlantic,
Wild Davy Jones laughs at each hurricane's force,
Irreconcilable storms reaching landfall,
Breaching love's inner harbour,
Ripping heartbeats with a category five,
Life gripping these whirlwind invasions,
Panicked love has lost its vision,
Final love lies beached and razed,
Crazed by all these garish storms,
Amazed by love's tarnished kin,
Darling branded on my arm,
Branded love becomes the norm,
Stigmatized by love's varnished skin,
Nothing grand e'er remains the same,
Nothing darling about love's nightmarish game.

        * * * * * *

After every raging flood,
All those dead and drowned,
Recklessly splayed along a ready edge,
Migrating steadily,
Each dredging freshet,
Bordering fledgling savanna,
Feathering into the greedy desert,
Featuring needy love,
Love's thirst stays hidden,
Bunkered beneath shifting sand,
Pools of shrinking liquid love,
Sifted and drifting,
Rivers of dripping love unable to e'er remain the same.

      * * * * * * 

Doomed love,
Such raging winds,
Such an unforgiving sun,
Forever chaffing,
Charring burning hearts,
Scrambling out of crude oily trenches,
Seeking forests and airy heaven,
Speaking of freedom and light,
Shrieking love leaves us buried,
Hurried love steals our blurred hopes,
Obscure dreams purloined away,
Burning retired bridges,
Plans mired in goopy mud,
Stooped love poems,
Stenciled on public benches,
Building love's conspired fences,
Perpetually tired and stalled,
Walled in by conscription,
Marshaled by such limited vision,
Garrisons of love along failing borders,
Love's generals in this corporal universe,
Nursed to death by war's fervent breast,
Yet love and war and all the rest,
Shall ne'er remain the same.

     * * * * * * * 

Still a faint heartbeat,
Dwarfed simply by this feigning,
Demanding bold earthly existence,
Eclipsing this old world,
Fragrant dew falls,
Misting herbal nights,
Stars twinkle o'er this verbal sea,
Jewels shimmer beneath glimmering heaven,
Brimming Eden so ripe and sweet,
As the veiled moon forever swoons,
Trite Nightingales sing,
Greeting the darling moon.

       * * * * * *

Twisting and turning,
Yearning under a resisting moon,
Resting passion out of guarded hearts,
Compassion seems just a heartbeat away,
Yet star sign lover's remain far apart.

      * * * * * *

Rash love washes up on some far-off shore,
Such a placid place,
Perfect Eden and more,
Glistening beneath the blazing sun,
Silent light sacredly recedes again,
Hidden beyond a distant horizon,
Night bidding adieu to respite,
Rightly goodbye to radiance,
God's speed to brilliance.

      * * * * * *

Godhead reaching out,
Breaching Heaven's outer limits,
Preaching love's magic,
Magi haven's in a sentient world,
Ne'erending tragic chaos,
Hurried by this disruptive scheme,
Placid streams abruptly disrupted by perilous falls,
Treacherous rapids and corrupt canyons ahead,
Precarious love bleeds onto the feral landscape,
Oozes out of every wild nook,
Peers out of every untamed cranny.

     * * * * * *

Somehow love has gone blind,
Confused by a galactic haze,
Stars shimmering in some far-off place,
Where love knows no bounds,
Such a placid rounding place,
Beaming faces resounding joy,
Boundless pain ne'er does exist,
Suffer nothing but legend and myth,
So reflected light permeates,
Penetrates rough cracks,
Ensures every insight,
Brightly engineered so nothing e'er remains the same.

         * * * * * *

Dream on evolving Earthlings,
Changlings revolving in a changing light,
Watery birth has conscripted us,
Resigned to this portion of fluid existence,
Sign nothing but crude imagination,
Spectral sight beyond the brooding stars,
Extraterrestrial vision,
Love burned into our hearts,
Reality always rushes in,
Speaking crushing truth,
Expounding primeval happiness,
Primal reeling roiling with eternal compassion,
Weaving relegated empathy with love's passion,
Still fusion and a doomsday bell toll,
Seconds to fuse midnight,
Heaven calling for love's infused reign,
 Cracking the cosmos with a sacred voice,
Graced perusing love's leavening,
Tasteless love grasping at this earthly plane,
What spiritual choice on this runaway train?

     * * * * * *

Either love or die,
Spry love must break these mortal chains,
Perhaps dreams remain merely dreams,
Response to an expanding Rumpelstiltskin,
Commanding all that straw and chaff,
Spinning love into flawless ribbons of gold,
Growing love continually cavorts,
Dancing raw and naked,
Around and unbound,
Bonding with ice and fire,
Love songs echoing through the intrepid night,
A repetitive chorus illuminated by a sacred light.

     * * * * * 

Enchanted troupes of Nightingales,
Pan's love flute singing summer songs,
Nighttime for ever dreaming,
Something only midnight lovers share,
Listening to love songs and poems,
Yet I wake aching,
Forsaken and shaken,
Realizing you're not there.

     * * * * * *

I've been mauled,
Lying sprawled,
Sleeping alone,
Swamped by love's torrid flood,
Choked with horrid crud,
Mud that does not atone,
All these muddied thoughts,
Befuddled and barreling downstream,
Damned where wild dog packs jam,
Lodged with crazed insurgents and dastardly rogues,
Cruelly strewn goods,
Haphazard floods,
Originating far upstream,
Once again we are about to drown,
Swept off our feet,
Losing our uncharted way,
Fumbling half blind,
Stiffened and bumbling,
Adrift in a rife numbing tide,
Alarmed by love's cunning tsunami,
Running away from torrential slush,
Dangerously askew in a horrendous flush,
Catatonic and helpless in this apocalyptic crush.

      * * * * *

Perhaps we shant be torn,
Raked or railed across a ragged reef,
Ripped to bloody bits by loveless sharks,
If crusty love be with us,
Rusty luck might save us,
Light just might find us,
Reminding our lips of sweet kisses,
Whisking us off our tender feet,
Caressing mended thoughts,
Searching for amended love,
Feeling helpless in the trending dark,
Wondering why love leaves us,
Love still believes in peace and doves,
Pacific Gautama uncaged love's Nightingale,
Igniting caged hearts that feel unloved.

     * * * * *

If love would be trusted,
Words should be true,
A compliant sun might shine,
Reminding us love can be kind,
Tempered hearts refined with fire and water,
Memorable moments sparking life into remarkable lives,
Oil and vinegar resolving each solution and every afterthought,
Pillars of salt and caustic ash,
Pressed rashly into our burning wounds,
Harsh dressings for love's tenements so full of pain,
Reverently reshaping us with scattered remnants,
Rattling us because we remain so vain,
Shaking us to our shattered cores,
Knowing we'll someday wake again,
Relating love poems in every pure vein,
Restating love on divinely sparkling shores.

This is the background,

to the background.

Squeezing nonsense,

straining orange juice.

Stirring shaking and making,

myriads of other concocted tonics.

God provides.

Two words.

Compassionate providence.

When I was cellulose in the form of a tree,
I generated strong deep roots,
Sprouted supple broad leaves that fluttered free,
My sweet sun ripened fruit forever falling,
Feeding a hungry world that was constantly calling,

When I was still a lofty bird thing,
I fledged brilliant plumage magnificently unfurled,
Pledged clutches of marvelous colourful eggs,
Hatched hungry chirping offspring midst a world of carnage,
Bringing beauty and music to an exceptional world,

When I was a yet a lively fish with ribbons of entrails,
I developed bitter slime and translucent scales,
Leapt rapid falls struggling upstream against strong currents,
Navigating pure cold rivers swimming to the briny seas,
My red roe and firm flesh nourished great bears and ancient towering trees,

When I was simply a rusty moth,
I transformed my dusty pagan world like shimmering silk cloth,
Wriggling from vulnerable egg to squirming larva to exquisite chrysalis,
Unfurling delicate wings finally fluttering in warm brilliant sunshine,
Providing wonderful diversity and needed sustenance to a voracious world,

When I was born human,
I learned to jabber then speak and finally walk,
Consuming milk and air and water and earthly resources,
Maturing I shuddered from all I experienced and witnessed,
Awarding my frail humanity a reason to love and talk passionately,

Each time I returned to purity,
My soul rejoiced praising heaven's magnificent Creator,
Relishing a firmament vested by all its glorious ferocity,
Constantly petitioning God with vestment and prayer,
Hoping humanity might learn to live compassionately,

When I was once again conceived,
My mother's intelligent womb perceived new life,
Genesis resorting to chromosomes and genetics and viable shoots,
Reveling in extraordinary molecules and planetary kinetics,
Delighting in trees and birds and fish and moths and humans,
Sustaining creatures with fresh water clean air and deep earthly roots,

When exception summons expiration,
Decomposition fosters the accepting earth,
Distant stars erupting in Creation's vast universal berth,
Black holes consuming particles oblivious to participles and carnal knowledge,
Existence in perpetuity poetry showered by myriads of grandiose worth,


Then I became a Being of Light,
Revelation transformed a conscious strain,
Animating gravity into viability in some reasonable vein,
Vapour performing in a physical prescient right,
Ethereal communion flourishing in a transcendental plane.

Let Sleeping Dogs Lie

Saturday, 7:00 p.m.,
December 15th, 2007,
What's happening,
to us!
Do you still want,
to talk to me?
I love you!
My love!
Sunday, 1:30 a.m.,
December 16th, 2007,
I finally plugged the phone back in,
How did that go?
On Wednesday,
December 12th,
You phoned me,
All excited,
Bursting to share the drama,
Unfolding there,
With Jessie and Jason.
You told me,
Jessie had left Armidale,
Going back to Queensland,
To live,
With brother James.
I said,
"She'll get over it",
You took great offense,
Me saying that,
Quitting our conversation,
Telling me,
"I thought I knew you!"
"What you said offends me!"
You hung up.
You called me back,
An hour later,
To tell me,
"I need time to think",
"What you said",
"Really offended me!"
"She'll get over it!"
"That's like me saying",
"About your cabin burning down",
"Get over it!"
You sounded so malicious,
Our scarred and wounded hearts,
Bleeding to death while love laughs in our faces,
Shock shook me,
Surprised by your response,
I was hurt,
Your malicious tone,
Your statement,
You said,
"I need a time out."
And you hung up.
I cringed,
Felt rather sick inside,
Like I'd just been punched,
Kicked hard in the gut.
I unplugged the damn phone.
Turned off the answering machine.
Now I find myself here.
Where?
Sunday,
1:40 a.m.,
December 16th,
2007,
We haven't spoken.
You've emailed me a dozen times.
I haven't read any of your messages.
Fearing more venom from you.
I fear hurtful words,
From those I love.
And I love you,
With all my heart.
I emailed you,
Three times,
Since Wednesday,
Once each day.
I told you I was sorry.
I told you that I love you.
I told you I don't blame you for anything.
I doubt now,
Whether you will ever phone me again,
I doubt everything somehow,
I don't know,
If we will ever talk to one another again,
Hold each other again,
Kiss or make love again.
You're probably thinking,
Hateful things of me now.
I can hear you,
From one hemisphere to the next,
Cursing me,
All the way,
Across a vast ocean,
Separating us.
I love you.
I hoped we could be together,
But it seems bigger than me now,
The Armada has been scuttled and burned.
The Empire has been crushed and disbanded.
All love has been sucked into a black hole.
Without your loving words,
It seems impossible somehow.
I'm sorry we aren't together.
Those deep vast oceans.
All that space and time.
I can't throw my love far enough,
Shout words loud enough,
For them to touch,
Or reach you again,
Where we would sit and talk.
I love you so very much.
I thought forever was with us on this walk,
Hand in hand with us in this forest of trees.
Love babels on cloudy days.
Love has its own ideas.
Love always,
No period please,
Love always,
- Joe.

Number 64 Number 64 Number 64

Sweet rising,
All these perfumed things,
Out of the generous earth,
Freely offered to the lustful wind,
Lasting pieces of you and me,
Carved from our inner beings,
Plucked ripe during kisses,
Fragments stripped from you,
Segments sliced from me,
Thin slips God recognizes and sees,
Vivacious sparkles captured in a creative fire,
Flames licking at love's sweet sky,
Embers tracing borders and songlines,
Hither thither to a nether world,
Sweet rising,
Out of perilous loneliness and danger,
Into tropical bliss and equatorial happiness,
Enabling antarctic words in ecstatic sentences,
Protesting icebergs calved by subterranean mischief,
Blatantly transforming taiga emotions into petrified forest,
Golden talons tattooing masks and totems on our eagle selves,
Black holes and pin pricks scarred by cuttlefish ink and sad dreams,
So many tentacled cuddles marred and scuttled leaving sucker marks,
All this scuttlebutt and fuddleduddle rising in the warm gulf stream,
Hungry sharks sick and going belly-up from the taste of tainted blood,
Blinded whales fainting and going deaf beneath the ocean flood,
Polluted flesh and random plastic gathering in other rebellions,
Congregations of faith flung to the lions from the gates of every big city,
Unceremoniously tanked and dumped on Neptune's failing altar,
Sweet rising,
Incense bewitching these magnetic moments,
Smoke and mirrors redirecting the moon and stars,
Crude oil blinding and choking us into ritual approbation,
Conjunct nations refracting astronomy and reflective astrology,
Meeting places and constellations in the Zen park,
Rivulets of light spring rain falling in the dark,
Baptizing every crack and righteous seam,
Fractured obtuse stages in a reckless ecology,
Columns of hot poker red and calendula yellow,
Smoke tangling with chiming crystal streams,
Sweet rising,
Tumbled into deep ocean currents,
Washed and polished on windswept beaches,
Salty sand rubbed into graven wounds,
Reminding . . . us . . . we . . . are . . .,
Naked astronauts starboard on our mother ship,
Witnessing the same sunstorms,
Breathing the same earth air,
Billions of beating hearts,
Sweet rising,
Pieces of amber offered to the vexing wind,
Quarks hauled onto a high dry bank,
Fragments of what was a moment ago,
Atoms of what we once were,
Rivers of elements and other dreams flooding by,
Contained by chemistry and physics,
Constrained by pick and shovel channels,
Prayers keeping tsunami and flood at bay,
Hymns and chants so hurricanes and firestorms are stayed,
Yet there are still asteroids and broken dams,
Earthquakes and volcanoes in every land,
Galaxies far beyond Andromeda,
Comets composing orchestral universal bliss,
Cosmogony reprising imagined heaven,
Vibrato in harmonic symphony,
Maestro's magic wand held high,
Such sweet rising.