Dancer in the Woods

I've never seen someone dance across the snow as she did.
Despite the weight of the act, as she moved as though to save a life,
No prints were left on ground, no one but me will ever know she danced here.
With arms raised as the silence fell around her,
She turned with the earth and beauty unfolded around her.
Snow like sand slipped through her outstretched fingers.
She spun at the center of everything, every movement made with purpose.
We might as well have been a world apart as she glided before me.
Her laughter bloomed and rose and was swallowed by the trees
With her tears falling and freezing on their journey to the ground.
She was the land, the weather, the storm; everything mysterious and pristine.
She was a force of nature and all I could do was feel guilty for being there.
She dances for these woods, these ghosts, for me.
She dances knowing it will all end, that she may well be the last dancer in the woods.
Soon she finishes, smiles, and bows to me; her lasting gift an only memory.
She is gone and the world has become poorer for it.

Long Road Up

Every kid growing up wants to be the hero,
Few are ever taught how.
We're handed visions of battle and change
And are told that we just have to show up.
No one ever tells you how you'll get your faced shoved in the dirt,
That the princess doesn't always want to be saved, that she will choose the dragon.
So where do you go from there, retreat and lock yourself in your castle?
If so, then soon the fog will spread, leaving you alone in it,
With only echoes and shadows left among the ruins.

This should not be your end.

So be strong and loyal and hold fast
Whether you must dig a grave or simply walk away.
You must rise, grit your teeth and hate yourself if you have to, but you must.
You will at times be bloodied and battered, lost and alone.
You will at times be burned and bruised, scarred and abandoned.
Still your steel, inlay it upon your bones and bind it around your knuckles.
Raise your fists and laugh when you stand;
This life looks to kill you kid, let it know you mean to endure.

Significance

I found myself afraid to die one night,

Terrified I'd choke on my reheated pad thai.

Does anyone grasp the scope of it all?

Shouldn't the fact we're on a floating rock hurtling through the dark

Scare you down to your core?

I hope there's an encore, because I blinked

And you're gone again.

So here we are, all clothed in faded glory,

From the freckles of your nose and the apple green of your eyes

To the dirt on my hands and heart taken down off my sleeves. 

You whispered a resolution,

Leaning in close so every word made it across the void.

The world did not end, 

The world only continued to spin. 

Lost at Sea

The fire took her completely, from bow to stern.
Flames roared along the sails and masts, illuminating the sea for miles.
I know people were screaming and the fire was roaring down into the water
But I never heard any of it.
I felt the heat from the ship and tasted the salt of sea but still I never heard.
I saw the deck burst up into the night and all the splinters turn to ash,
Falling like snow around me, hissing into the water.
The beast slipped below to slumber in the deep, the fire still burning as it fell.
There are faces filling the water, all leaving and going the way of the ship.
I have lashed myself to this wood and it's all that's keeping me above the bottom.
Now I'm alone and adrift and the rain is falling.

Day and night and what does it all matter?
Not much while begrudgingly lashed to this sliver of hope,
My floating cross to bear.
It was days, maybe years, might as well been centuries before I solved it all.
This is a joke, everything in the cosmos has built toward this,
And I get to be the punchline.
The joke is that there is no joke.
And I never got the punchline.

Nobody expects miracles here in this hellish watery desert, I never did.
My body may have resided on the surface, my soul had long been drowned.
Yet hope still floated with me, whether I wanted her company or not.
It was the other beasts of the deep that brought her.
They lumbered and groaned out of the abyss, these guardians of the sea.
They sang such songs of mystery and majesty before vanishing below.
Now as I clutch the sand and feel it on my face, I realized so much.
We were never supposed to rule like this, fake kings in a fake empire.
We were made to feel small and helpless,
So we can notice this world and realize just how far we have to go.

Questions and Wind

There is nothing like being alone and feeling the wind,
In your hair and through your fingers.
This silence, it roars around your ears
And the clouds are all ships and oars above your head.
The grass sways in time as its own song swells,
The warm spring air hovers above it all.

How long has it been since you remembered to be still?
Do these breaths surprise you, startling you as you find air filling your lungs?
Now you drift on the breeze and find yourself across new horizons.
This journey you've undertaken, do you understand your part?
Can you begin to even tell others where you are going?

Recovery Ward

Have you ever been shaken awake by someone you love?
A toss and turn of a body or the weeping of someone unexpected.
A gasp and you're awake, be it innocence or tragedy.
You could have been dreaming; it could have been about love,
But what do you know about what it means to love?
Perhaps love is a couple huddled together for warmth
In the sterile cold of the cancer ward.
It's the same thing when a husband holds his wife,
Watching their kids perform the sounds of Christmas morning.
It's the same thing as a couple swearing in a car,
Too stubborn to leave and too young to know better.
All just different sides to the same coin.
So why limit love to your dreams when it's real?
It's a hard battle and it'll tear you apart to mend your bones at the end of the day.

This Old Forest

Oh you old soul you,
What's it like to lose a part of you when you buried it deep down,
Down inside someone who is long gone from you?
As you sleep at night you pray for that piece to come back to you;
Roots shooting down and heart pushing skyward.
Maybe friendship is being able to let someone walk away
So that they may chase their own dreams,
Dreams that are no longer tied to yours.
So you keep all the ghosts of fellow souls close,
Bringing them out on parade at night.
Why is that we awake from sleep,
Remembering all the unsaid perfect words?
When the mourning breaks and all the ticker tape has been swept away,
Truth will be left and new growth in its wake; be loyal to that.
So stand fast as life shakes you awake,
Be at peace for all your nights asleep.

Fog

You were in love last November,
When the cold rain thundered down on your roof.
A quiet soul you were, with your thoughts of certainty.
So why do you now sail on grief, alone and aloof.
This is not where you started nor where you will end
Or so you hope with no true way of knowing.
You have few constants to mark the voyage:
The waves greeting your oars, drumming a song on your hull.
The freed gull visits you every now and then, never stays long.
Then there's yourself, the most insufferable guest you have.
You have your demons and angels and you fight them all.
What are we to make of you, young boy of a man.
Is there iron enough in your bones to make this choice?
Or will it just bring you closer to the bottom below your boat.
What was better, your endless numbered days
Housing the sun that dances from horizon to horizon?
Or what about the deep dark nights,
When the ocean teems with life glowing in her depths?
Now we are in limbo.
You never did think it would be this heavy did you?
The only directions you recognize are up and down.
North, east, south, west; all lost to the great grey wall.
You know you can't stay anchored like this forever.
You must sail on, little one, you must stay the course.

Post-Elegy: Movement Towards Home

It's been a long way North,

Time now to lay our burdens down,

To shake the dust from our shoes,

Melt the snow from our coats,

And lift our eyes to the stars. 

This is safety and this is home.

It's a harbor for our ship and a peak for our nest. 

This is where we rest, where we can dream free from fear.

Through storms and tides, endless deserts and dark forests;

Our journey has swept us along all the while leading us here. 

This silence speaks volumes for this place
Because fallible people cannot speak fitting words for whats before us.
Down below, amber lights fill the houses as dusk fills the sky,
Marked by the sun's farewell trip beyond the mountains.
Our last walked mile brings us closer to the sounds of home.

This is how it ends and begins,
Without our burdens and with our homes.
Our books, our chairs, our beds; all in order.
We met our neighbors along the way; others who made the trip to here.
Broken and unbent, we were the journey and now the we are the home.

Clear Eyes

And there is beauty here,
Something that challenges you to hold on.
You find it in the taste of wet salt on your "Goodbyes"
And in the warmth of holy sunlight bathing our homes.
It seeps up through the soil and curls through the grass below our shoes.
Let us make this ground hallowed and cover it in milestones.
There is nothing harder to define than love,
So let the silence of the field and fire in our souls show our faith.
These stories that we weave, we must make them something of worth
As we fight hard to make them our own.
My God, it feels like we just arrived here.

Confession Booth

I have never been been drunk but I have been blind,
I have never been high but I have lived with my feet off the ground.
I have smiled and turned the cheek only to complain to those behind me.
I have lied to love and have stolen it when I can;
No refunds, no returns.

I'm the liar and I'm a thief
But for some reason I'm convinced that I'm always sincere.
I've clutched God and love like a sword and shield,
waving them as pretexts for my fears and dispositions,
based on my fears and hesitations.

So I take heart, dear heart, and take risks to be vulnerable
And for some reason I find peace enough to sleep.
I want to be a legend and I want to be a monolith
And I fear the sea and change for all their depth and erosion.
Maybe it's the exposure that I fear in the deep and wide places of the world.

For some reason I always believe my daydreams are better than what others dream,
That me, myself, and I have it all figured out better than you.
It's like I'm living a life built over ancient ruins, hiding beautiful architecture
And where wasted sunshine shines on empty streets that I once walked.
I'm terribly sorry I do these things; I promise to feel just as bad next time.

Exile at Home

America the Great knows what to do with the poor, the tired, the hungry
But what should it do about the heartbroken generation dotting the landscape?
We were promised so much and handed even more than we could ever hold.
We wanted to dance in the streets with joy; that was before we feared outside.
And did you ever stop to wonder that perhaps the why in sexy
Begs us to ponder how we come to trade in love and relationships and risks?
How do we even discern between the people and the monsters
After we've chased the all monsters away and taken up their roles?
It was not a brave new world that we have woken up to,
We woke up to cinders and smoke and our childlike dreams away at sea.

Someday the seas will claim the shores,
The forests forsake their borders,
 And the mountains will move east.
America the beautiful indeed.

Blackwater

Sometimes you can't feel something or it just feels off,
It's not working right now, maybe not tomorrow or next week.
You look for that spark, praying for it like a sign.
You wrestle and chafe, trying to pin down the elusive
And pretty soon you're just battling yourself.
Now you're in the thick of it, among despair and doubt
And your words hold fast onto your tongue,
Daring you to try and dislodge them all.

So why do we all find cynicism so easy to wield
When it's encouragement and affirmation we want from others
And we remain content with questions over hard answers.
We consider it pretentious to ponder things like existence,
 But what are struggling to achieve as we erect our monuments.
Sometime we are called to doubt and to wade through the bogs and deserts,
To harden us and forge us, tempering us with humility and perseverance.
You'll feel dwarfed by it all but we cannot stop now in the face of everything.

Thursday Evening In Passing, June 1952

It's nearing dusk, in your small corner of America.
The trees are still and the grass still green
And here hope abounds along the streets.

You find yourself passing through a park
With children laughing among the trails,
Marveling at the world made brand new.

Heading back through town you pass the church,
Lights aglow with steeple reaching for the stars.
Hallowed hymns on hallowed ground.

Stopping at the bakery on Main Street,
Something warm, something fresh;
A loaf of French bread would do nicely.

Passing through the neighborhoods,
Runners and sprinklers and sometimes the both,
Decorate the sidewalks in the deepening evening.

Home, the lights are on and music unfurls through the windows,
Marrying itself to the crickets, the creaking trees, and distant thunder.
Was there ever a more magnificent life than this?

What Has Come to Pass

I remember when you were little,
Wanting a pitcher of coffee dark as night
That conjured up typewriters, detectives, and newspapers.
You never understood arcade exchange rates
And always trusted that adults told truths about monsters.
Do you think your blood is still drying
On that rock in the vacant lot football field?
And do you think those strangers still remember
The scrawny little runt of a "you"
Shouting out at them if they had seen the white whale.
Digging holes to expose the dinosaur bones,
Hiding just below the next shovelful.
Van rides that lasted years,
and the neighborhood park that was miles away,
And summer ending was your greatest fear.
Beauty was the the sound of Christmas morning
And your mom signaled the beginning and end of the day.
Fireflies used to exist back then, you never see them anymore do you?

Patterns Emerge

Same
Loop,
Same mistakes.
How does this story end?
Here, infinite complexities
Marred by what's skin deep.
Why is this?
How can we even begin to presume our role here
When we're stuck staring at the ground.
We should be better than 
Who we are.

Long Way North

You will love
And you will be open and terrified.
Like great heights and bottomless seas, it will test you.
It will ask of you all your strength that you can muster and then more.
It will leave you shaking and euphoric, wondering how you came to feel this way.
It will leave you afraid, because no one is afraid behind walls and doors.
And it will also leave you.

You will stumble into deserts that you never thought would be possible,
Dwarfing you with the towering amber dunes,
Blinding you with the sun and heat and sand in your eyes.
No reprieve for you from the wind and the heat and the scope of it all.
No direction, no compass, no map.
And you will be alone.

You will be abandoned at times out in the dark forests,
As you struggle through broken landscapes with tempting lights in the fog.
Know they're not real, for here there be monsters and broken souls,
Lurking and waiting, unwilling to go on, those that have settled.
You know you could easily join them, those that have become lost.
And you be tempted.

You will find true home and shelter in all manner of places.
The honest thing is that we all feel safe and warm with someone in our beds.
Whether it's a parent comforting a scared, small child
Or a couple laughing late into the dark in the face of a hard day.
Home is a work of labor, a harbor with the lights left on.
And you will love.

Don't End, Ascend

The door changes every time but the house remains the same.
You've seen these halls, you've walked these floors,
The stories go down through your years, the base long gone in fog,
Each brick laid down by the years, each book written from memory.
Do you feel guilty just for being here?
You do, yet you still reach up for them.

Postcards held in your hands, just pulled down from the shelf.
Children laughing along the roads of 4th of July,
Soon falling on the ice.
Pulling childhood daydreams into landscapes,
Down into the dirt and grass.
Everything looks smaller than you remembered.

The ghosts are in the room now, darkening it as they reach for you.
Time to go, close the door, and lock it tight,
Knowing they'll get back in anyways and you'll let them.
Throw the bed, the chairs, yourself against the door
But you, you yourself will take those defenses down
And you'll be right back where you started.

And then some days you stumble into a room bathed in sunlight
And then the house is alive all around you
With music and sun and love and life and creation
As you lay new bricks and bind new books
And this new room blooms open for you,
Free of ghosts, full of the promise of better rooms above.

This house is yours, make it as you will.
There will be ghosts and there will be these rooms,
Rooms where you smile as you enter amid amber sunlight.
Remain and stay and fade away with this light; night is falling below.
Ascension is all that you have left, progression is how you move.
These stories are yours, build them strong and build them tall.

A Canvas Across the Land

What's it like to write a goodbye letter to a somewhere?
A someplace that's been a home or a hideaway or a stop;
Anywhere that has felt the presence of your feet among the streets,
Leaving memories in the ripples of their wake.
Anywhere that has sheltered you away in the company of friends,
Whenever you needed to hide for a little while.
The world is not safe but this place is safe enough.
How many seasons have you weathered here?
Spring passes through summer and falls into winter,
Growth through failure and love through loss.
Then there comes the season where you must press on,
Past the horizon, over the next field, down the next highway.
This is not wrong and it's not right but remember, all seasons make circles.
Take this place and clutch it close, all that it has and hasn't done for you.
Maybe you'll stay and change or we'll remain the same when you're away,
So let's be honest and free with our truths, knowing nothing familiar lasts;
Home and hearth may fall apart and memories get lost along the way.
So take home with you out across this land and build it up again,
This place gave you the materials, so go and be the home now.

I Before E, I After You

Maybe you're a little tired, a little worn, a little scared.
Maybe I'm a little meek, a little hopeless, a little risk.
I know that we're all a little bit selfish and a little bit lonely
And as for the human race I know that we're all a mess
But all I can ask you is for you to try and do your best
When all you can say is "Maybe" and maybe that's all I can ask.

Valleys of the Land

People always claim God to their side

And spend their time filling the sand with lines.

How do they live with God in a box?

Infinite complexities boiled down,

Down to a vanilla frosting for cakes,

Cakes they bake and never eat.

If God is inestimable and indescribable

Then how do you limit him to your side?

My God is in the valleys, the fields, the streets.

He walks the halls of homes, hospitals, and hotels

Seeking the poor, the rich, the apathetic, the political

Seeking the lover, the loner, who you are and what I am.

So don't limit what's larger than you and

How dare I try to do the same.

At the Bottom

Seven miles down and still breathing air
Wondering how you got here
And how beautiful waves look, crashing overhead.

And you've always been told
That it's darkest before dawn
But then again you are seven miles down.

Shallow enough to hear the waves and glimpse the light.
Deep enough to touch the face of darkness.

In the towns, the drinks, the dreams we tread
There's a reason why we put relations with ships
Perhaps knowing they'll sink before we try to sail.

This sea will surely shake you to your core
It does not love you and it does not fear you
Sinking or swimming are all that you can do now.

How long will you hold your breath down here,
As the waves crescendo above you with possibility.

Down here, held in suspension above the bottom,
Weary and wary of loosing sight of the surface,
But tempting the thought all the same.

Waves are not meant to be your masters, remember,
This is not your end, the deep is not your grave, and
The ocean should never be your final home.

Oh my friend, how long have you been down here?
I would have you endure, swim if not for a bit longer.

Giants Dwell Here

Have you ever dived down among covers?

To pretend they're waves rolling over you,
As you slumber in the deep.
Are they caves that keep you warm,
As you endlessly go spelunking in their depths.
The covers push up above you and spires loom,
As you dwell beneath and slumber with the earth.
It waits and groans as you wrestle and dream.

Sleep on, small one, for we are all giants here.

Calling Old Friends

Don't you dare,
Don't you dare settle for a life less extraordinary.
It's all right to be a mess and to be confused.
It's all right to be human and sometimes feel bruised.

It's not okay,
It's not okay to remain that way.
Forgive and forget and seek on.
Fight and triumph and remember how far you've gone.

Never forget,
Never forget how far you've come.
Take a risk on the people you will see.
Take a chance on the people who remember who you used to be.