Montana

As all ours do, my patience has an end
And yet it has not come, somehow, with you;
It has with everyone I call my friend,
So that, by now, I must expect it to.
And yet I find that nothing that you do
(No matter how annoying it might seem)
Rubs me awry sufficiently to screw
My patience from its sticking place. I scream
Internally sometimes, or in a dream,
But do not find myself inclined to say
I'm done--my patience rises as a cream
Over my frustration. Though I fray,
I have not yet unraveled. Nor shall I;
My patient love's unbounded as the sky.

Vancouver Sunset

The ocean boils out into the west
Framed by peninsulas that almost seem
Islands themselves, trapped by the mainland lest
Its ornaments be fleeting as a dream.
The mountains rear above the darkened slopes
Whose trees are shielded from the falling sun
From whom the final tendril slowly gropes
To make the sea and sky appear as one
Melted together in an orange embrace.
The ships that shadow as they cross the sky
Appear to dawdle. But their well-worn trace
Is faster than it seems. So by and by
The sunlight fades. And yet beyond False Creek
An orangeness still illuminates a peak.

Ansible

Imagine not that I am far from you
Although the memory of leaving me
Is fresher than the yet untarnished dew
That sits incipient upon the grass;
For I am always with you, inwardly.
My presence is the weight, but I the mass
Unchangeable by fickle gravity:
A constant, giving my own context to
The readings of the scale. This too shall pass.
I am of you, as you of me, and we
Are one to eyes like ours that see things true.
Be resolute and strong--think no alas
Knowing the truth: that we are not apart
As long as we are matched inside the heart.

Baggins

The hours pass into the mist and I have lost the way.
The day grows dark and threatening, and night begins to creep
Upon the edges of my eyes, and I see shadows deep
Flicker against what was the brightness of the day.
And yet as all begins to tend towards black through mottled gray--
While all kind sounds are silenced, and the mind prepares to leap
Towards danger and towards worry, and will start at every cheep--
I cannot help but think of you, and what I think you'd say
And even in my mind alone, without a hint of sound
Without the blessing of your face, or of the slightest clue
That you are anywhere near me, or know where I have strayed
Your conjured voice convinces me that somehow I am found:
That everything will be all right, and I will stumble through
Without the path, and yet with you, and therefore unafraid.

Do

Neither could alone
Do what we do together
Seeds that we have sown
Through (truly) filthy weather
Await the thaw to reap
And two hands to the scythe;
Together we must leap
And bind, and stack, and tithe.
But though the task is great
And cannot sole be done
We need not contemplate
The burden upon one
We are and will be two
To do what two should do.