Samurai snowflakes
bird song slice through frigid air
light-hearted, the moon

~~~~~

poet code-talkers
running like fine race horses
speaking many tongues

~~~~~

never the same leaf
blossoms, silent the cherry
everything is light

~~~~~

golden calf is living
high off low economy,
rich get richer still

~~~~~~

there are debts to pay
Lucifer comes collecting,
what is left behind?

We've been together for so long
memories of the times before
now seem out of place and wrong
like bare shelves in a busy store.

How can it have come to be
we've shared three and forty valentines?
Though time has been unkind to me
you've improved like rare red wine.

Our path has often been unsmooth
as we've traveled through the many years.
You haven't anything to prove,
you've already shed too many tears.

I pushed aside the low brushwoods new
To find my peace there hidden from view
These many years since I returned to see
There waiting for me my favourite tree

Amidst a sea of emerald grass seen
A seat for me to sit and dream
These dreams to my mind shown
Normally touching my soul alone

I feel the presence of the years
My inner self releases its fears
Not tethered to a physical being
A free spirit climbing to places hidden

WOLVES
[1911: mountain village in the southern Apeninnes]

They came down
from the hills
riding an icy wind
lost in the white and gray
of a winter’s day.
into each village and town
they roamed
looking to feed
looking to kill
driven by hunger’s pain

They smelled the dying
and the dead
scratched at the earth
of the newest tomb
hungered for the flesh
still in a mother’s womb