aloft alone
purgatory in its sincere blue
the cold so true

curvature
and statue stealth
the cities steam
with common wealth

I've yet
to turn over
I've yet to stir the dog
dreaming at my feet
while others have
gone
started shifts
driven cars
tested the cold
that grips the land
for months and
days

All _my dear sublimes
I would by now
be a cold black coal mine
So don’t think of yourself less
Others don't understand you
as much as they ought to
let that be a calculated guess
let the poetry stay

does one kill an autistic child?
no way
I profess
keep yourself running
in the composing process

So far so many decades have lapsed
but the poet in me
has yet not collapsed....
despite some who wished it!

I'll never walk that way again,
in bottoms drowned by this new lake
unless I sprout both gill and fin
a change I guess I'll never make.

I picture the flat plain once there;
I'll never walk that way again,
with legs which took me everywhere,
which conquered hill and stream and glen.

I remember times there with passed kin,
this plain now barred to halting tred.
I'll never walk that way again
with loved ones gone to final bed.

I dreamt that I was lost at the sea
with no one there to comfort me
the sound of waves spoke to me
"Unaided you will never be."

and then I felt a gentle nudge
a curious dolphin swam to my side
I stroke his head and he asked me
"My human friend, do you want a ride?"

I rode his back and laughed aloud
as high he leapt in the air
before diving into the water,
gently washing away my despair