Tag: poetry

Peace is a Semicolon

The sun spills white as judgment
across the stone.

There, a man lies
stretched on the pavement,
another body given over
to the boulevard.

The marble burns.
But the poor learn early
to take fire
as one more thing endured.

Men pass.
Their polished shoes
speak first,
and never kindly.

No one bends.
No one kneels to ask
whether breath still labors
in that hollow chest.

Nearby, in the charity of shade,
a dog keeps watch.

He knows the arithmetic of streets:
the cruelty of noon,
the patience of hunger,
the brief mercy of shadow.

O brother of dust and gutter,
quiet witness at the curb,
you and this fallen man
belong to the same republic—

that wide country of the forgotten
whose only law
is endurance.

Star Under Cloth

And sometimes—
when ritual hush fell like snow
and the air thickened with older names,
when gestures turned like keys
in locks I could not see—
I felt each soul as a star kept under cloth,
each life a fire sworn to its orbit;
and I knew the terrible tenderness of it:
not all stars are kind,
yet all must burn true.

So you made a temple of me, O light—
not of marble,
but of measured hours and reined desire,
of mercy laid as mortar,
of truth squared to the tongue,
of love obedient to will.
And because you built, you exposed—
for temples gather dust as surely as cottages.
The brighter the lamp, the clearer the dust.
So I sweep, and let the lamp judge.

Deafening Silence

It comes without warning,
like snow deciding the forest has said enough.

No hush, no shhh—
only abrupt vacancy
where small sounds once rented rooms.

The clock, once ticking like nervous fingers,
now pauses between seconds,
unwilling to be first to violate the truce.

In this wide, white room without echo,
even memory moves softly,
careful not to wake the next thought.

Silence is not absence.
It is a different density—
the weight of everything
that was nearly spoken
pressing inward against the ribs.

Here, grief finally releases its breath
without excuse.
Here, joy learns
it does not require an audience.

Stay.
Let the hush complete its long sentence.
It has been composing it
since the first word learned how to sound.

The Trial at Breathward Keep

In Breathward Keep, where cedar lanterns burn,
The Council sat beneath a vaulted turn
Of stone that held an elder, waiting air—
A hush made weight of oath and prayer.

The Hierophant stood, staff fixed like a line;
The Veiled One watched, her silence fine.
A Scribe named Justice held the iron quill;
Strength kept the threshold, straight and still.

Young Aldren came, road-stained and drawn,
The Book clasped close like borrowed dawn.
He loved its hush more than a Chair;
He feared the Dark that thinned the air.

“Show us thy art,” the elders said.
He set the Book where light was spread.
He drew his circle—swore too loud
That fire would serve and not be proud.

He spoke a Name. Flame answered sweet—
A dragon coiled in furnace-heat.
It rose, a crown of living brand,
Obedient—then left his hand.

For air remembers how to lean.
A valley-breath slipped in unseen;
It tipped one instant, red and bright,
And bent his dragon out of right.

The ward unspooled; the rafters caught;
His thunder fed the blaze he wrought.
One page-edge browned. One letter charred.
The Book endured—but pride burned hard.

The elders stirred. The Veiled One spoke.
Green silence fell; the dragon broke.
The Hierophant’s calm Word laid claim;
Ash settled where had stood the flame.

The hall held breath. The village stilled.
Aldren knelt—ambition spilled.
His iron certainty ran thin;
He felt the fracture lie within.

He touched the singed and trembling page
As one who knows the cost of rage.
The Chair seemed small. The Book seemed vast.
His borrowed brightness thinned and passed.

Before applause could gild the loss,
He wrapped the Book and crossed
The outer gate, unnamed by flame—
Leaving behind both seat and name.

The hidden Art is wrought in patient Breath;
One Still Word bars the gates of Fear and Death.

Trial in Winter

Winter came early to the valley’s throat;
Frost carved its scripture where the deer lay cold.
Aldren went down through reed and rimed stone
And felt Time’s clean blade set to the bone.

Beneath root and drift a small life shook—
So slight the world would pass and never look.
A field-mouse, drenched; its breath a thinning thread;
Ice starred its whiskers; blood ran thinly red.

He remembered fire that would not obey,
The proud blaze straining to unhouse the day.
He would not summon dragons into air;
He chose a heat too low for grand despair.

He cupped the creature in his steady hand
And bent, as one who seeks to understand.
No flare. No roar. No banner of the flame—
Only a coal that would not speak its name.

The warmth lay hidden. It did not rise.
It moved like truth beneath closed eyes.
The tremor stilled; the buried pulse grew sure;
Life answered life—and chose again endure.

Something altered in the bitten air.
The cold withdrew, as if it knew a Face.
Fear came—no footfall, yet a weight profound—
A mountain listening through the ground.

The mouse looked up. Within that open gaze
Moved morning older than his days.
No wing was seen—yet all the valley hushed,
As first light through the buried root had rushed.

He bowed. No speech could bear what burned within—
A banked, unboastful flame beneath the skin.
Not terror. Not command. But Presence near—
A mercy sovereign over fear.

The creature slipped into the whitening field;
No track remained; the drifting snow resealed.
Only cedar hush upon the breath,
And Aldren loosed from bargaining with death.

He turned toward Keep, road-worn and thin,
And asked to stand for trial again.
The elders watched. The Veiled One said:

“The first trial widens—silent, vast.
It walked beside thee, though unseen it passed.
When thou didst kneel to warm the least of breath,
Thou broke the claim of Fear and Death.

The hidden Art is kept in patient Breath;
One Still Word bars the gate of Death.”

Apostle of the Creek

Tell me—what makes a good apostle?

a god’s breath sighs
over the roof of your house
on a stormed-in night.

i heard god is the one
who pricks you with blackberry thorns
when you are out gathering.
the creek behind your grandfather’s house
runs full.
you are barefoot,
armed with a basket.

you reach, bleed,
eat greedily.
you taste blood and blackberry.
the berries stain your mouth.

i’ve heard god speaks quietly
because he does not want
to startle the deer.
his voice is lush, soft,
folded into the sound of the creek
as you fill your basket.

he is in the red beads
at the tips of your fingers.
when you eat, he slips
down your gullet and lies still,
murmuring at the back of your throat
as if to speak through your mouth—
but shy, shy—

i’ve seen god in the arch of your foot
stretching across a rock.
i’ve seen him in your desperate faith
when you leap
from bank to stone.

he watches you
like a fox hunting a rabbit.
a yearning, childless woman.
an oak straining under a vine.
he tastes your blood with you.

tell me—
how do you worship
without a name?