38. Numbers

Curious things,
cold, soulless.
Always proving,
always searching,
never feeling,
never answering.
Barren:
spread in artificial
rows,
matrices, leading
nowhere;
[Incoherent musings
of a foreign deity.]
It is what I have chosen,
enlightenment;
strangely –
I am drifting farther,
closing into a realm
I do not
belong.

37. Electrons Dance

For out of fear,
I stay concealed,
a little sly,
but much too shy.
Across the room,
oblivious,
you’re restless too.
I pack away
my furtive glance,
re-focussing.

You’ve seen me now:
I catch your gaze;
a startling smile
bewitches me.
I, cautious, smile;
electrons dance
and you draw near –

36. Le plus doux rêve

You gave me something more than friendship
- so I thought,
and I, my youthful self, so foolish,
followed close -
through sunlit paths as daylight faltered,
heedlessly.
Such radiance seemed otherworldly:
in such light,
I was illuminated by you,
loved and praised.
We watched the leaves twirl, golden-dusted,
rains had danced;
the dying autumn sang its prayers.
Wrung of words,
I watched you say goodbye one final,
final time –
oh, just for one more fleeting day in friendship
such as this:
a thousand grand, exotic operas
could not know
the simple happiness you gave me,
my sweetest dream.

35. So sang the silence

Photograph By: Christian Hanner

Arrested in the sun –
as photons stripe your wings:
could death be lovelier?
Unseeing eyes ablaze,
as if too undeserved
of such a masterwork.
Upon a tender branch,
the paragon of dawn:
did one such mulberry
obstruct your jeweled throat
upon the blinding sight
of lethal loveliness?;
so as you gasped, it struck –
so swiftly, fatally?
In serving such an art,
an art oneself becomes –
in still serenity
entombed in oxygen:
the sentinel of Truth
remains forever mute –