We know

Or are told

Act how you want to feel

Or you will feel how you act

It’s a chicken or egg thing

Am I the chicken or the egg?

Fire can burn

Inside the tree

Unseen to any eye

Until the whole

Is consumed and nothing

And the flames move on

Seeking the next victim

To devout

We are out in the world

Away from happy home

For our own good

Crouching in the coffe shop

Hissing at passersby

Staying close to dark roast

And the sheltering shadows

We feel we must be sick

But the traditional symptoms

Are nowhere to be found

So we smile and soldier on

Waiting for the heart to catch up

How do you keep the days

From blurring one into the other

You work

You connect

You move

And you pick up the cat

When she won’t leave you alone

Because it lets you know

You exist and are meaningful

A one hour passes to another

The wind whips the snow

and ground writhes with life

Nothing is stable anymore

Cold moves to warm

And warm back to cold

Sky is blue and pale yellow

Than white blending with earth

All is in flux as if waiting

For a new creation to take over

And eradicate the old

i am leaving
a trail of footprints in paper
small black letters across white expanse of pixels
that you might follow to find me

and they’ll outlast everything but time
a fading life written in rhyme.

beneath the music
i feel her heart
moving her mind
and it is deliberate
and it is beautiful
like an epiphany
sent on a mission
and emerging
as a song
in this time
in this space
vibrant
and
alive

Am I throwing ropes of words

To drowning men in the sea

Or are those ropes

Being thrown out to me

You write for so long

You forget who you’re trying to save

As you look to the waters

Bursting with bodies

You just do your best

And you try to be brave

And you weave more cords

Because it’s all you know

And so you throw and you throw and you throw

Crushing wet fibre into skin

With some small hope

you may drag your own body in

Glass in the foreground

Trees and branches in the mid

And vast supportive in the distance

Towering over our city

Keeping silent watch

Amused and saddened by the lives

That race past at root and rock

All talking pace

Beneath the dispassionate sky