reality
I, Firefly
The rain and cruel night wind have stilled
And sleep on dreary darkling clouds.
Weeping leaves shed heavy tears,
That strike the pond’s still black water
Like clock ticks of drunken Time,
And floating withered autumn leaves
Scurry from the watery craters.
There beyond in wet woodlands
Sodden birds tremble in the night
And unseen voles flee starving shrews
‘Til frighted darkness flees the light.
The chorus of the night sounds clear
Yet each voice sings a solo song
in a different tongue but all proclaim
That to listen is not to hear;
And what’s unseen is not unreal;
In a bright flashlight beam,
As thick drops strike black still water
They fire off a flash to declare
With prideful human vanity
“My reflected light’s eternal.”
Stone’s Child
Dust from the graves of time-dead stars
congeals within the magma of a planetary core,
Is delivered of a molten womb
against the will of jealous gravity,
devolved from star-dust to stone.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++
The child of stone is born blind, dumb,
and helpless as star-dust, yet asks why
we sing and weep, find and lose one another
on a rock whirling between the poles of infinity.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The sculptor seeks whatever hides within the stone,
aware that only what’s unseen is real.
Stone’s child knows that nothing real
can be confined within our universe and time.
Northwest Almanac 