Winter in Rochester

The days are cold
The nights are colder
The world is old
And it grows older
So everywhere
Is entropized
When all is bare
Then all hope dies.
But in the dark
And dank and dim
There is a spark
Of joy and vim
Beside me here
My loving dear.

Comfort and Joy

I must remember how these things have been;
To marvel at what has become routine
Recalling that I once could not begin
To truly hope for what's now daily seen
Or to imagine in reality
My present everyday. It is not right
To let these wonders fade invisibly
Into the background, like the clouds at night;
Instead I must, somewhere within my soul
Celebrate them each as they deserve
Remembering each several, separate goal
So even once achieved I can preserve
The joy of it, and each day wonder more
At all my blessings in their growing store.

Ordain

I am not sure I have the words to say
How proud I am, how much you have deserved,
Or how well you have done along the way.
For every mile that the road has curved
You have turned with it, covered every foot,
And done all that is asked of you and more.
The thought of all the distance passed should put
A smile on your face fixed hard and sure
As it does mine. Each trial passed and bested
Is but a brick to build what you've achieved;
The times you might have thought progress arrested
Or been by sorer fates troubled or grieved
Are now your bygones, and by going by
Have made the now. I hope you're glad as I.

Sun

Ah, who am I to love you? But who better?
I cannot help but love, and being so
I love beyond the spirit of the letter
And in that feeling do not only grow,
But also spread, as plants that seek the sun
Turn their hot heads to soak up every ray
Without expansion. I have now begun
To heliotrope you, and turn your way
Admiring all your little turns of phrase
Your nice expressions, and your many faces.
These are to me as constant solar rays
Absorbed for nutriment, and in their graces
I am happy. In your being you I bask.
Be so and let us love. That's all I ask.

Ignus

In every part
I yearn for you
And though I do
Deep in my heart
Know from the start
The love that grew
Open and true
Will self-impart,
Still I desire
With endless verve
To let you know
That yearning fire
Burns bright and slow
In every nerve.

Proof

I'm not sure I can find the words to say
To tell you how I love you so, or why;
Of course I said them once, but since that day
How am I certain that each look or sigh
Is clear? How can I best ensure my heart
Figures in my tongue, and is translated
In every fundamental, yearning part
Into your mind, and there substantiated?
How can I know my soul is bared to you
And all I think and feel exposed and shown?
How can I hope, as I perforce must do,
I do not love you wholly but unknown?
I look down and my finger, and there shines
The proof you know the love my soul designs.

8pm

The night came faster than the day deserved;
Faster than the sun itself went down.
Spacetime, they tell us all in class, is curved;
Today it curved itself into a frown
And in that grimace shed the lazy day
Putting on instead the busy night
Whose sudden beams flash out into the gray
Not giving, as the sun would do, much light
But dazzling, and warning. In the dark
There is a danger wet and wild and fierce
Exposed with every sudden dizzying spark
That seeks the insubstantial murk to pierce.
And in that frowning danger we see naught
Except the murk itself, for we are caught.

Commencement

I saw it done, and saw it was done well
My fingers chafing from the loud applause;
What had to come has now come to excel
The expectation, and so with it draws
A pride deserved. It could not but be so;
The is were dotted, and the ts were crossed
What happened was the last thing left to go
Which could not, from the former cause, be lost.
So it should anticlimax, yet from being
There, attentive and attending it;
From listening, and most of all, from seeing
There is a satisfaction. She is quit
Of three long years, and so deserves the prize
And it was good to see with my own eyes.

Thunderstorm

I see Chicago in a giant's palm
Who with least motion could cause major harm
But for the moment still pretends to calm.
The prickle of a droplet on my arm
Almost congealed from pure humidity
Suggests what is to come, but still holds back.
Instead it rumbles ostentatiously
Of what could be, but does not let it crack
Into reality. Thus it remains
The prospect only, and therefore the worst
Neither safe from what that choice retains
Nor ended in the final desperate burst.
The giant's hand is stationary still
But we await the changing of its will.

West Eros

If the spring should never come
Nor the summer, not the fall,
If the winter conquers all
And we find a way to plumb
Deeper depths of cold, far from
Any hope, however small,
That the slush will cease its sprawl:
Omnipresent, grey, and glum.
Even then, in such a time,
Frozen, frustrate, desperate, I
In that underseasoned clime
With no end to freezing nigh
Would be cheered and warmed by you
The eternal winter through.

Mif

Flocks need pastors for their care;
Pastors also seek a flock.
Every pastor must find their
Church, as finds a key a lock.
And as locks require keys
Staying toothed and barred alone
So a church will likewise seize
On their pastor for their own
And will open as they bind
To new missions, goals, and needs
Helped by guidance to now find
Their own purpose. As one feeds
Different flocks with different grain
So do churches pastors gain.

Holisnow

Hail the brave inclement weather
Sudden, sorrowful, and strong
Throwing friends in warmth together
Lest they, mournful, join the throng
Of those destitute of fellows,
Who must travel through the storm
Pushed and pelted by its bellows
Drained and driven, wet unwarm.
No, instead they join in staying
Inside, where all's calm and clear
So by company defraying
Out of season winter's fear.
But to be so they must first
Venture out and brave the worst.

Game of Thrones

In Westeros, the Bard has writ
The Summer and the Winter last
Beyond the year; and seasons flit
Ponderously, being so vast
They swallow lifetimes, and the tale
Of Winter is believed a lie
In Summer, and will not avail
Although the cold be truly nigh.
The Summer too is ever thought
A myth in Winter, cheap as breath
A child's fantasy but nought
To anyone who knows of death.
So find we here, with Winter come
And Summer's sirens stricken dumb.

April Is

Chicago, wrapped now not in snow
But in the cold that lingers still
Increased by hellish winds that blow
(If hell is icy, as who will
Having lived this year believe
Otherwise?) down every block
And laugh at jackets--laugh and cleave,
For such attempts are worth the mock
When they can never save the skin
(Frail and human, cracked and cold)
That hoped to warm itself within
Which now the chill will close enfold.
Where is the spring? Where was the fall?
The winter has consumed them all.

Blergh

There are so many hoops we must jump through
So many blocks remaining in our way
Yet none insuperable. They're there to screw
With our safe sense of being loosed to play.
We are but toyed with, not prevented from
Our larger purpose. But it is enough
To frustrate, worry, and at times to scum
Our happiness quite over with the stuff
Of paranoia. So we wait and see
Which of the many little problems will
Be worth attention, which no longer be,
Which be required and yet be boring still
And in the end, we must remain as ever
Sure of ourselves, of other things sure never.

I Am The Captain

I do not think these thoughts aloud
I only whisper in my mind
Lest I by speech should become proud
Or by imagination find
I've grown upon me, like a rind,
Self-satisfaction, uglily.
So I am in a kind of bind
That presses ever in on me
To touch but only daintily
Upon the thought which would be crowned
Within my soul, to ever be
The emperor of all around:
That I and you are one and will
Remain and joy to be so still.

God and Mammon

The sum of all is I will be with you
That future's mapped, and known, and treasured dear
As are the credits which in time accrue
To balance sheets, or relics which appear
Miraculous in churches, healing ills
That were believed incurable before.
The knowledge of that blessed future stills
My inner sighs, and makes me to my core
Delight in expectation. And I know
Between us there will run, in overall,
A joy that has not, will not, cease to grow
Because we fit together, and each fall
Is but a swoop to rise again, and higher
As sparks that flicker from an endless fire.

? M

Strange thoughts filter through the sleeping keys
As unfelt odd emotions come to play
Slipping by the tired brain to seize
Control, and put the mind out of the way.
An empty evening means an empty head
Filled (since a vacuum always is abhorred)
By things below the sense of mind instead
Unusual, unwished for, untoward.
The manic musings of a brain unselved
May seem a meaning they do not possess
As random volumes randomly unshelved
May, falling open, hint at purpose less
From them internal than from after thought
Which assigns meaning where before was nought.

Hmph

Where are you

Where am I

Why'd I go

But I know why

And you do too

So we both know

The reason for

My distance, yet

We still pretend

That we forget

And ask once more

For it to end

And so it will

But not yet, still.

Changes

The past is not a foreign land

But neither is it heaven's door

It stands but where we used to stand

Than what we did, it can no more.

But there is virtue too in seeing

The way that we once used to be

In noticing our no more being

The past self we look back to see

And in that backward search we find

If we have changed, as change we must,

A somewhat different state of mind

Still recognized, as if on trust,

But different so that we, now grown,

Sometimes find hard to call our own.

Antiphon

And yet I must
Remember she
In whom I trust
Would severed be
By such a change
Being removed
In this exchange
From her approved
And blissful spot
For where I'm from
There she is not;
We should find some
Place we both know
To love and grow.

Dwell

My heart is here
And yet with her
So to be clear
I would prefer
To be beside
Her, yet remain
From two inside
A singled twain
Both here, both one,
Still loving deep
In unison
And both to keep
A single place
As hearts embrace.

Fullness

The moon is brooding over us tonight
Red, full, and troubled by our lives
Unsure if what we do is ever right
Unclear the end to which our toil strives.
It floats above us like a lidless eye
That strains to see the purposes we weave
Pondering in its eternal scry
What we imagine we'll someday achieve
And how our efforts point us towards those goals.
It has no purpose, is, but does not yearn
Cannot comprehend our hearts or souls
But tries by airless logic to discern
The why of us. I cannot help it, though
I know my own, for love it cannot know.

Mayflowers

I cannot long await the day
When she and I will be together
But as when skies are dark and gray
Yielding to winter's foul weather
Holding no heat and letting by
The ice that freezes souls and limbs
And we look up and wish the sky
To brighten, and it only dims,
I know I must wait still; but knowing-
Just as we do on those days
Even though it may start snowing
Summer come will loose the haze-
That my waiting will, and soon
Be rewarded by a June.

Opt

Along my road I wend along
Pretending that there is a road
Down which I trundle with my load
My heart uplifted into song
Please do not tell me I am wrong;
To prick me with that painful goad
Would never tempt me to explode
But sadden me, and cause to throng
The sorrows that now trouble me
No more than clouds seen far away
Distant against the reddened sky.
But if you tell me there's no way
I'll fall from equanimity
And they will drench me, by and by.

Rule

The winter, bleak and dreadful will remain
Beyond forever, if it has its way.
It will not pause or cease in its domain
But rule eternally in awesome sway
Wielding snow and ice, a sceptre grand,
Against the petty lordlings of the spring
Shaking its fist above the conquered land
Daring any challenger to bring
Their best and brightest to the battlefield
Promising they will be swallowed whole
By dark and cold, until they beg to yield,
But forced to fight until, with frozen soul,
They are assimilated. Yet fear not
He always tries, and summer still is hot.

Vortex

As you return, I sorrow in my heart
To know I will not be there when you come
And yet that sorrow cannot make me part
With my deep joy, which fills me with the hum
Of my ecstatic knowledge that you are
Once again returning to my shore
Once again not quite near, but not far
A time zone out, but now that and no more.
I thrill to think that you and again
Are close to one, and growing closer still,
Looking toward the nearing evening when
We will achieve it, and we know we will.
So though I wish in sadness I were there
It cannot blot the happiness we share.

Weight

I wait for her return
Not passively, but slow;
Patient in my turn
Since it's her turn to go.
I look at little screens
And from them take relief
Observing little scenes
That beggar past belief
As words from her appear
Despite the distance crossed
Almost half the sphere
And yet none of them lost
As I watch, I write
And so we pass the night.

Lunch Break

Where are they all gone
The people, busily
Going on and on
So other folks can see
Their total industry
Their go-getting supreme
Their growing property
The crowning of their dream?
Didn't they just teem
A little while ago?
A seeming endless stream
Of shuddering ego.
But here I find none left
Not that I'm bereft.

Snowstorm

I look out onto whitened street
And feel the cold within my bones
As every footprint creaks and groans
With moving snow beneath my feet
Complaining even in retreat
Of my indecent haste in tones
Beneath my notice, but whose moans
Still make unpleasant even fleet
Excursions out. And so I sit
Inside, and ponder having gone
To places distant, where the dawn
Warms the sky, and won't admit
Such cold complaint; and there you are
From cold and me both far too far.

Past

Let the sky become the endless stars,
The sea expand until the ocean roars
With here be dragons. Let the nears be fars,
The fars be nowhere, as horizon soars
Into the infinite, and then beyond.
Let every inch become a country mile
And every foot four furlongs. Let the space
Between each atom in a lattice be
Unbounded by the distance you could trace
In aleph-countable infinity
And still, despite that separation, I'd
Search and find you, to linger by your side.

Hearth

The night is dark and cold
The moon, invisible
And everything feels old,
Creaky, wrinkled, full
Of half-forgotten things
Throw half away, and dropped.
The nightengale who sings
Has just abruptly stopped
And all is still. And dead.
But yet my heart is light
For in my soul I've fed
On sun, and so despite
The gloom, I can renew
By contemplating you.

Full

I look up at a full moon in the sky
And think that you might somewhere watch it too.
I wonder if you'll also stop and sigh
Staring at it beaming down on you
And think back to the day you thought you knew
Finally knew that we were meant to be.
I think of it, and keep its orb in view
As best I can, so that, persistently,
That loved and much debated memory
Floods into me, and makes my insides warm
Despite the freeze outside. I hope you see
The same moon in the same full, floating form
And in the heat, amid the palms, think of
The time that we discovered such deep love.

Turn

Happy New Year say we all
Winter though has just begun
And the dreary end of fall
Still weighs down on everyone.
Snow still lies upon the ground
Or, newfallen, clogs the way
Everywhere with cold is bound
Even through the cool midday.
What if in July instead
We began a sunny year
Not when all is dull and dead
But when we are full of cheer?
Ah, but then the days shrink fast
Now they just begin to last.