We suffer now the famine phase Of our perennial feast or famine cycle Dragged by rigid chains of days Without respite or release Foraging the honeyed haze Of evaporated ecstasy of images In memories and daydream strays To distill but a drop on which to subsist So I contrive this tangled phrase For a girl who says she doesn’t care for poetry But moves in such poetic ways That seems hard to believe Dim color though a word conveys Abbreviated, imprecise and empty While visions flash in dream displays Somewhere beyond the lexicon A sparking synapse ricochets And echoes through the canyons of my mind Multiplied in mirror maze She is everywhere all at once The earth commands and god obeys For a moment there is peace in the valley A note plucked on a harp decays And silence blooms Would that time ran different ways Were its nature not so drastic More tangible, malleable, elastic Instead of that iron rail straight to our doom Soft threads were crossed on weavers loom That I might stretch out through the mist With a dancer’s reach and sculptor’s twist And pizzicato flick of wrist, snap us back to forever exist In last moment in which we kissed, a classic for the classicist When July’s everlasting rays Strung trees like harps with golden strands Borrowed from the angel bands To serenade these holy lands Every chord sustains and stays Then down from from sweet magnolia stands Alighting on our unbound hands A sparrow making no demands Just sings all day long For nothing but the sake of the song While filtered sunlight’s shadow plays On summer sand and sultry skin And fingers pulling out the pin Of all that’s luminous within The canopy of alders sways Shifting shade and whispering Secrets in the river’s ear Just loud enough for us to hear She translates every word to me without speaking A black and white kaleidoscope Turning round dark pivot point Through rushing hearts’ meridian And eyes of deep obsidian Reflecting back the light of hope Through perfumed air that we exhale Lifting off the souls black veil With kisses reading lips by braille Her raven hair a luffing sail in twilight’s breeze

A man without a moon Casts no shadow, calls no tune Wanders and waits As the day fades With no heavenly poet’s punctuation No distant love’s triangulation No one there to remember your name A sky full of stars just ain't quite the same To the man without The man without a moon A sea without a tide Stillness inside Alone upon the dune Walks the man without a moon No midnight rippled reflection No Wayward heart’s course correction The sun sets in the west but nothing rises in the east The night plays on in a formless piece No theme, no variation No tension or release For the man without The man without a moon A sea without a tide Stillness inside Alone upon the dune Walks the man The man without The man without The man without a moon

A captain’s pace On the Natchez trace Muttering to himself with a worried face He was comin’ in from the west For to settle up his debts On his way to Washington Along the Natchez Trace A fall from grace On the Natchez Trace Malaria and alcohol leave a bitter taste He was sufferin’, quote Jefferson: “Sensible depressions of mind” In a room behind the Grinder’s Stand On his way to Washington Along the Natchez Trace 4000 Miles of wild unknown country 4000 miles to the western sea You pulled against the current And you crossed the highest mountains Faced every danger known to man With strength of mind and strength of hand But you never lost faith You never lost that drive A lesser man would not survive A resting place On the Natchez Trace Two pistol shots at 3am and a life erased There’s a wilderness within And sometimes you just can’t find your way Through the long cold night In a room behind the Grinder’s Stand On your way to Washington Lost in the heart of darkness On the Natchez Trace