I am frost ringed moon and crystallized breath...
cracked bleeding lips and comfort's quick death.
I am the arrival of dread and the resident forlorn...
the old man's heir... I am Winterborn.

nothing left but Live Oak
surreptitious altruism
all my love's in vain

Undone

On a pier in Durban on a windy night a man hooks a shark. It is dark on the boardwalk despite the festival lights on the beach and the cherry glow of first cigarettes and new love.

The fisherman is Indian, and exclaims in a fevered pitch to no soul in particular that this is the biggest of his life. I look into his eyes and he into mine and then to his observing young son and see a stranger helplessness in this man and know a hunger in the other one.

well worn rod and reel
father and son cut bait
fishing for supper

"He's so strong" he calls out, face to the wind, the dizzying waves crashing below
against piers
against posts
against pilings
immovable
concealing
repetition
of our common drama...

"Towards thee I roll."

Minutes drag on. An hour. The man tires. The son's eyes bore holes through shaking arms and straining line. Over and over with desperation and an ironic lilt come the words "Oh my God." "Oh my God!" punctuated by the reel's siren song. At the first exclaimed, now as a sob. At first astonished, now as if sentenced.

a leviathan
lurking beneath sunlight
steals the bait

Slowly he is gaining the beach, inching along the boardwalk, yet the waves grow larger in shore and the arms weaken as the shark, relentless, but neither panicked
nor resigned, fights, fights, fights.

life feeds on life
embraced by larger power
self-awareness

In the waves now
near the shore
a surge
a roar
of desperation
of fearful anxiety
of wide-eyed wonder
of ambivalent wind
of the dawning
of impending doom
exclamations.

"Oh my God, no."
Quavering.

"Papa!"
Demanding.

A singing reel
an audible snap
a limp strand
a fractured monofilament
a deflating father
a collapsing pedestal
a lost hero
a wizened son
and wordless exchanges
sobs of emptiness
failure
and despair.
Undone.

Eternal Return

The unbearable lightness of being...
I feel no pressure.
I feel no pain.
I dream no endings
just breathe today.

And I feel you say
"Don't go...
let your breath
fill my well
with sighs
and touch my thirst
with scents of green and white."

And you say these things
and you say these things
and you say these things
perhaps not to me.

I want you.
I don't want you.
I'll take you.
I'll leave you.
I know you.
I never knew you.
And this
is where we are.
All desire from afar.
Forbidden stars
gazed upon
on clearer nights
when the breath
hangs
frozen
between earth and sky
where final notes
in Ludwig's head
are not heard
but are not dead
a masterpiece
just
out
of reach
of the maestro.

Lotus

Episcopate or Epiphany

There was no music today
in my Gothic church
at least that's what the priest
perceived.

The organist was away
the choir director too
whilst the congregation's
voices were aggrieved.

Yet a dirge I swore
heard in minor keys
as silenced faithful
shuffled feet.

The ancient floors
took up the refrain
and the boards
sang as they creaked.

A fugue for the church
for the liturgy of Christ
as the epiphany
dimly shone.

Precariously perched
on razors of relevance
empty pews
their doxologies alone.

gifts piled like kindling
split and sorted at the base of the tree
consumed to feed fires