Author: poetryfest

The lonely mountain stands.
With no footpath,
and little exposure
to the world around it

The partners stand tall
Their foundations holding hands,
from dusk to dawn.
Then repeating again the next day

Just like the day before.
They are eternally intertwined.

They have no choice,
But to acknowledge each other’s existence.
They have no choice,
But to forever exist side by side.

They dance in the breeze together,
in unison sing their songs.
Their songs of creaking wood
Become louder as they get used.

Used by the life around them.
Crawled over,
slept on,
eaten from.

They have no choice,
But to grow together.
Get taller, stronger, and sturdier together

They have no choice,
but to allow their arms to reach closer to the other,
with every passing day.
They have no choice.

They have no choice,
but to be forever partners.
On this lonely mountain.
With no exposure to the world around it.

At dawn
Waking up slowly
His mouth, busy last night, is silent.
A boat sailor is sleeping in his boat
Few other vessels are tied on the water,
While untied vessels sail down there to the big ghat downstream.
Far away in the white the other bank is forever desolate
The skyline becomes clear out of a mask of rising ashes
through heaven’s mirror, on it
Day by day coming
Through. Heaven’s mirror, on it
The skyline becomes clear out of a mask of rising ashes
Far away in the white. The other bank is forever desolate
While untied vessels sail down there. To the big ghat downstream
Few other vessels are tied. On the water
A boat sailor is sleeping in his boat.
His mouth, busy last night is silent,
Waking up slowly
At dawn.

The night feels quiet now,
only the slight hum of distant traffic and the soft scrape of wind through trees.
But I am not alone.

Somewhere, far away,
Her voice rises in the dark,
calling me home through the stars.
My siblings and cousins are out there too,
looking at the same sky I am looking at and picking apart the constellations like we always did,
Together.

They don’t speak of it much now—
the heavy weight of the distance between us, between who we were,
but I see it when we talk,
like a

gap

in the conversation that no one can fill.

Maybe that’s why I keep looking up.
Maybe that’s why the sky feels like it has always been ours,
even when we are scattered, even when the world told us
to forget our names
and the stories our families had carried.

But the stars—
they don’t forget.
They hold us all,
even when we feel lost in the dark,
even when the space between us
feels too wide to bridge.

I close my eyes for a moment,
and there you are—
your voice reaching to me
across the distance,
your laughter carrying
on the wind like it always did.
And maybe, just maybe, the stars are the threads

we never knew could tie us—

still burning,
still waiting,
to pull us back together, no matter how far apart we are.

Peregrine falcons
atop scraggly jack pines
-frosted autumn rust

Gale shattered grass fields
Unvarnished rough cockery
-fallow with burnt gold

November moonlight
Shadowed by stark bare tree limbs
quick silver-swaddled

Elegant robe-de-chambre of autumn breeze,
On the bewitching body of rivers and
seas. The sky spreads a very fanciful scent,
The waves, for a while, before falling down, freeze.

Losing its force, the day’s wizard wand broke.
The fall drama queens blow, storm, and evoke
the melancholic, and poetic spirits
Hocus Pocus! All will fade in the smoke.

Campy seagulls fly above a distant lighthouse.
Warm colors, on this gray ethereal sheet
drowse. The whole mise-en-scène shivers inside and
Out. “And… Cut!” Director Autumn, then shouts.

One day the dragonflies will rust
Like cars left to the wind and rain
And all thing will return to dust
The world still to dirt and stone

Like cars left to the wind and rain
Will drip the milk of stalactites
The world still to dirt and stone
As the last brain is fossilized

Will drip the milk of stalactites
Across the stars, stifle the moon.
As the last brain is fossilized
The planets will grind down to void

“Across the stars, stifle the moon!”
The last requiem we hear
The planets will grind down to void
As I grind down the faerie dust.

The last requiem we hear
We see the stone and slowly die
As I grind down the faerie dust
No eyes, no wing, no brain to think

We see the stone and slowly die
And all things will return to dust
No eyes, no wing, no brain to think
One day the dragonflies will rust

except when big boots trample the earth
on pyre prescription from the burn boss.
I wait until tractors finish lining zones to

ignite the birds’ twig-built thrones, and
I watch underfoot for gray squirrel tails
puffing like porcupine quills as they scatter.

Insects dig into blackening soil and wonder––
do they wonder?––what hell their antennae god
thought they deserved. The leaves stay green here,

except when flames flick in woodpecker holes,
heat licking the sweat on my neck. Orange leaves
pile into the second-highest hill besides the landfill,

and I want to move north, beyond smoke leaves
and closer to the Smokies, to see the trees when nature
asks them to change, but I’m stuck with my nose

behind my gaiter, I can budget for that later after
mop-up when the ash flies from the trees to my door.
I’ll leave when the forest isn’t on fire anymore.

I am speaking about the prehistoric landscape
of our home, and the creatures which reside there:
me, a thing which wishes to set down roots and grow old with
you, a morning glory, who I watch from a tundra
of night, between sediment pillows and cosmic blankets,
from inside the geode of our last embrace.
I am going away from you. I am gone. I’m sorry.
The stegosaurus swings his devil’s tail. I will ravage my biome
with absence, but I think about you more than my origin.
I think about you more than anything I’ve been,
the enormity of which terrifies me. I cannot conceptualize
such depths. The future may well be an alien world,
allus and all, and you are futures away from me.
Do you understand? Somewhere, somewhen, I love you. I am trying
to remember that pain is only a fossil record of joy.

I look up to a streetlight,
mini stars that were stolen
to be put on a stick
and illuminate
a faraway place.