With Canopies Keeping

With Canopies Keeping

(“If then your body is full of light, with no part of it dark, it will be as full of light as when a lamp gives you light with its gleam.” Luke 11:36)

And in the forest with canopies keeping the furled smoke
of a hundred distant campfires just above our heads,
the gray shadows and crackling soot divided the
aspen boulevards and made addresses hard to locate
nearing the last light of day.

There was no fear, no threat, all was contained except

the misguided insistence that kept many from finding
the ring of friends sharing stories and passing songs late.

The smoke stayed well past sunset, and the whole forest was

the same tuxedo black of the shadows just hours before.
But in that heaviness of night forest air is the sweet breath
of pine scent and summer smoke. And though late among
the upright stands the night itself seems to reign, the
evidences of life are magnified; a crackling twig or
a hoot owl’s call are french horn and percussion close by.

And in the darkening night that might turn another away,

the campfires, like lighthouses among the woods, catch
the wanderers’ eyes and lead them by human voice and
eventual affection.

Every circle with friends and new ones warming, is not
simply an invention, but evidence of redemption; a fire
and a song with a final arc of friendship to wanderers
in the night.

The Mighty Chord

The Mighty Chord

(“The apostles left and went from village to village, telling the good news and healing people everywhere.” Luke 9:6)

There is a mass of loneliness nearer may heart than
any other definition or silent wanderer; just like the furthest planet
in a solar system of dustless ions. A planet
because the loneliness is not empty; it is tangible;
a hardwood enlargement of lead-weight emotion
with gravity so strong that nothing stays long but
is boomeranged into its own orbit across the outskirts
where longing and time rarely cross.

It is what I write about because it is wound about my being;
and so many ask when the flowers will appear in my poetry,
the hearts and forests, the hope and choruses of love.

And usually, once someone has noticed the sadness in
each letter on the page,
I force the petal of a rose between the stanzas. Yet it
wilts between the writing and the reader. I was made this way,
because that space, so heavy and so empty, has always been the
first phrase of the next thing I thought or wanted.

And yet, I’ve been asked by the One Friend,
in some way, with some convincing tone,
to lay the good news down like the hook; “The next sound
you will hear is a mighty chord of 9 grand pianos finishing the song.”

I’ve been told He fills me, but my gut feels empty,
save for the solid mass of longing where the loneliness has
made its home.

I once thought there would be a friend, maybe two; and
I watched Joan Baez celebrate her 75^th birthday with friend
after friend after friend, sing their duets with her. I thought there
might be a duet started early that stayed for the last encore.

But the ones I wanted near the end, half have turned their backs,

moved down another road too difficult to navigate now. So I plow
down the path the same way I began, almost convinced that friendship
is not worth the time I took to get it from beginning to banned.

The weight stays nearer my heart than any can imagine. Lonely.
It’s true, I’m a forgiven man, and a healed one, too. But time has
robbed me of the hugs

While space has subtracted.

Come near, please, only if you know there stands a weight between
your good intentions
and my lonesome heart.