Desert Stars

Photo by Wally Pacholka

"Who wants to understand the poem must go to the Land of Poetry"

...... Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

To Stars

With age, I've learned to watch my feet.
I've become cautious of falls,
the honest frailty of bones
and equally fragile, the choices
found at every crossroad.

Time makes us bend.
We learn the habit
of looking down.

I was blessedly no where
just some where between 
"here" and "there"
a truck stop off I-40
falling off the edge of the world
into a nameless desert town,

disappearing
into a sweet black halcyon midnight
After a summer rain

wet, shining asphalt
the smell of diesel, and chaparral

(below,  some where between

my feet and eternity)

reflected, you made your puddled,

gracious descent:

luminous Orion,

and faithful Sirius,

the dog star.

Antares, the scorpion's tail,

the Pleiades,
dancing in Indra's shining jewel net.

And the Big Dipper

offering,
offering forever

                    (2003)

I Stood Poised Upon the Edge of Town
and Heard the Blue Stars Singing

Weary ideas rise and fall

into blessed exhaustion,
the mind retreats

I taste the  blood-red honey wine

I entered a lucid dream,

and found a lucid life.

Through an open window, 

Night reveals a black, far horizon

a landscape layered 
with memories made of memories

I hear the blue stars singing

     "Wait for me,

       Wait for me"

I wish I could tell you

what I have seen

in the homelands.

Perhaps, 

in that country,

we are of each other at last......

You take my hand, we walk together

in that green and splendid meadow.

I offer you a glass,

you raise your cup to mine.

Lips touch

a butterfly rises between us,

flies into the morning

from the other side

of forever.

Through an open window,

I hear the blue  stars singing.......

While I write this in a small, dark room

a cluttered here, a  mute now

wishing I could be young again,

wishing I could feel

something other than foolish.

I will always remember you

between, 

always between

regret and joy

hello and goodbye

delight and sorrow

truth and lies

that bright

endarkened landscape

I saw you in.

(2002)