December Edges

Frost has started

the hues are faded now.

I breathe and savor cold

on uncontested paths.

Winter suits my wandering

in between the torrents

a softer tread

a crisper vision

my howls travel farther.

What should I gather?

I chase more than I need.

Give me dry sticks and matches

I'll suffer nights

beside a crackle of embers

to wake with passions intact

with boots that need thawing.

Reactor

A steady eye

notes the ridges of a mountain

and can call them by their names.

And hands that grapple with a face

may slap or grip

or slip from any hold.

Feet choose their place upon the scree

and might turn stones

or ankles when reaching.

Beneath

A turbid stream still flows

with old frogs and tadpoles.

You can catch them

if you dare put a hand in the murk.

Wipe the smear from what you find
to see the designs

that throbbed before receding

to age in sun and mud.

Complicit

What if we ignore the nudges

to do what we feel?

Our voices pinched and hands pocketed

by what might be.

It can take everything

to conclude.

And hesitations continue

to swallow possibilities.

Lift

I take a broken rod and find a way to catch a fish

extension is my wish

and to go far.

I aim to move

what I am is what I have to prove

the value of my paces.

I sometimes drop what I have found

my boots repeatedly gripping

then leaving the ground.

Punch

It’s easy to be insulated

dreaming in a forest

or a carpeted room

while others build the world around you.

Membranes form around a still life

but any sharpened will

can cut holes and emerge from the gooey plasma

fit to craft or orchestrate.

Magnum

I’m feeling like it’s time to release my guts

spill some backed up trapped sentiments and such

see I’ve been waverin’ in the middle

afraid to touch the griddle

to expose my hands to the spit or the spittle

Sss-ha

if I take what I have whittled

and hold it to the masses in a way that won't belittle.
I’m looking for a way

in a world of pages

to assert my ideas

and write them through the stages

of doubt and scrutiny

uncertainty

of how they’ll touch the world and my identity.

People I see

try to give it all a name

with insufficient claims

evangelize their point of view and lock it down in chains.

But I’m leery of such action

and all the factions

that hold half truths as the basis of their traction.

So what’s my source?

I take my sermons from the rivers

and they deliver

some clarity to help me see that wonder is the giver

of insight, mental might, a way to keep my spirit right

and STRONG

flexed among all positions

and all the mysteries, histories, and traditions.

The people that inhabit and embody all of these

contribute to my notions with their varieties.

So what’s my course?

I’ve been waiting for my notions to grow and fully form

to dig them from the vent-fed hole where they’ve been warmed.

But if I hold my tongue

it may not extend

or be informed by the sources that contend

for position in my mind in my soul in the folds

of every chasm, schism, dogma, doctrine young and old.

I will not be confined by false comforts designed

to deflect inquiry and breed one-eyed minds

because it’s more than god’s will

it’s not just how it goes

there’s a catalyst to all we see and know.

And what we can’t explain

we can’t pretend to define

rather seek, feel, reflect, connect, and climb

to a deeper understanding

without reprimanding

anybody with a different view on anything that can’t be proved.

If there’s an argument with no malicious intent

then civil dialogue can yield a mutual ascent

to communal arrangement

no estrangement

from each other or the places where we thrive and suffer.

So this is how I see

how I hope to be

I don’t expect you to follow or agree.

I continue

flawed and motivated

to hone and improve upon what I have stated.