Author: poetryfest

Charred trees remain
from a fire twenty years ago – a dying
memorial. Bird song floats
over their graves. Some people plant trees

to mark as a tombstone, yet we do not achnowledge
these stumps as ghosts. Smoke lingers
over us from Yosemite’s fire,
and I wonder: how many graves will stand there

(and how many will be cherished
as such)? How many have fallen
miles away, never
to be thought of again?

Tonight, I light
a candle for the downed trees
and remember the soft heartbeat of a blazing
wildfire.

Yesterday it was here.
Now it’s not.

I’d been looking at it.

It was on the milkweed
here by the porch,
its rounded, slightly raised
oval body almost translucent
in the late afternoon sun,
its ink lines of legs
impossibly sensitive,
impossibly long.

Two boys in a field,
all grass and weeds,
sharing a jar full of bees.

Softly, quietly, small goddess
in flight – we stole her life

– trapped her in a bee jar.
We closed the lid

and they ripped her apart.

Do they watch us with a billion blinking eyes?
As if our existence is too much for them to comprehend.

Do they stare in gaping awe and marvel at the only other beings in the
universe who can look back at them and wonder?

Do the stars count us? Do they number and name us? Group us together in
vague shapes and tell stories of our creation like constellations?

Is there anything out there with eyes to see us and a heart to love us?

Will some higher being pity us enough to save us from ourselves? Our own
extinction? Surely we must be on someone s endangered species list.

I want with all my heart to believe the stars are a promise of our future.
Some great god s gift to us, a glimpse of what we may become.

I fear they may just be the memory of someone else s past, echos of
lives once lived. Glimmering fragmented dreams dimming. After all even
light fades away. Even a star has an end.

I suspect both may be true and all that remains of anything is a glimmer,
a shadow then darkness, lost within the expanding void between of suns.

Green breath, nature’s pulse
Existence for the sake of what?
A woodpecker feeds, a metronome
Squirrels scamper and bounce
A branch falls, heavy winds destruction
Shattering a cars mirror
Destruction, production
Weeping sap for syrup
Warnings its friends with mycelium
If simple existence is their purpose,
Could there be unknown intention?
Existence with lack of purpose
Would that breed positivity?
Or is chaos the true order
No rhyme or reason
Fundamentally, existence is good.
Instinct wants us to live
Yet humans live to create
Through creation we destroy
So instinct led us to destruction
If existence is instinct,
Existence is also destruction.
Branches of understanding
Always changing with the leaves.
We’re not meant to comprehend, but to climb.

You filled my hunger, and I tore you down,
While you soothed my senses with your endless blue skies.
I smeared your beauty with my dirt,
And though you give without end,
I am a human with consciousness of gods ,
Yet I have learned no gratitude.

You gave me the river’s song, the forest’s breath,
The gentle warmth of the sun, the shade of the tree.
I took it all without a thought,
Harvesting your gifts with greed and haste,
Leaving scars where once there was peace.

Instead, I steal from you with all my might,
Ripping at your heart, blind to your pain.
I ravage your lands, destroy your soul
I am a thankless child,
And you, Mother Nature,
The giver of all,
Suffering silently under my hands?

When my soul feels empty,
I drift, lost in search,
Chasing questions, swallowed by doubt,
Blind to the answers that lie within you.
Do I not see the truth you offer—
The giving, the unconditional love?

Your grace endures, even when I falter,
Yet I cannot seem to learn.
For I have forgotten how to truly see you

For in your beauty, I see only what I can take,
And in your silence, I hear only what I have broken.
Will you ever forgive me mother ?
Says your lost child!

Sun, lend me your shine
Don’t let yourself be consumed by time.
It will only be p.m. when you decide—
As your shadow would have whispered to mine.

Come find me,
I will follow you.

Don’t let gravity pin me down here.

Come, my tender sun.

And when I fly away,
Carried by your star,
Towards the boundless hole of the Milky Way,
How I will praise you,
As I fall, oh, so far,
Where stars are born and fade to grey.

To the striking sea of fire
Who tricks the eye
In its wake of strokes
Of Hell-red acrylic,
Of deep sea oils, and the
Gasoline shine from the sun:

I know you are real,
But you shouldn’t exist
In the dark red flames
You’ve acquired. (Limbs reaching
From the depths of Tartarus.)
And around you, angelic white.

With one bone-colored arm
Of some forsaken power
Reaching down the dark blues
To save one, maybe two.
The rest resigned in death
Like their ancestors before them.

When will the tide run clear again,
And these harmless people, put to rest?

We stood at the edge of the garden,
hand in hand, roots entangled beneath the soil.
The lavender stretched toward the sun,
whispering secrets of the earth,
while the vines around us twisted tighter,
binding us in a dance of nature’s making.

The wind rustled the leaves,
softly urging us closer,
its breath, a reminder of how we too,
had once been wild—
unrestrained, unmarked by time.

Now, we tend to the garden with care,
planting seeds of understanding,
pruning away the thorns of yesterday.
In the quiet of the earth, we grow,
a thousand blooms between us,
each one an answer to the questions
we never knew how to ask.

Once upon a time, a connection between human and nature,
Where there’s a calm and beneficial to each other.

Both simply linger in the same rivalry.
Except only the dominant increase that is humans.

Such a beauty in custom regressive without warning,
Take away together with those beneficial.

Slowly the rise of the human that’s scattered all over the world,
Making the wall of victory among them while putting nature down on them.

While forgetting the quiet living purpose from the forest and the sea,
Those peaceful sounds, aromas, scenes, and senses exist only there after they achieve balance side by side.

Even with the harsh long history of humankind,
Gracefully the nature remains, hoping air can be a transaction to victory.