THE HERALD

Today the snow confronted us for awhile, blasting at windows, working itself into cracks and seams. We listen to what it says because this is the winter it has failed to arrive, except in insignificant bursts. Does it forecast something new, a trend, or does it tell us that any season can be odd ? We strain our ears as the wind calls at us through the windowpanes.

WIND COMES

This is no zephr; it comes high pitched and loud, howling over the balcony, banging on windows. If it had a voice instead of a whistle would it warn of tomorrow, would it tell tales of broken ships and disassembled bridges, would it tell us of something it discerns, gotten deep from experience plummeting toward us from the sun. If so, would we listen? Right now, I am forced to hear.

BALMY DAY

Snow belt, and no snow, temperate weather, a sun too warm for winter. I stroll inside a premonition, I know not whose or what, only that there is something strange in the air. It settles in a half fog on the horizon, as though pensive, as though someone forgot to tell it something and it waits for direction and purpose. So do I. There is nothing exact in this day, only a calm, unreasuring misunderstanding, listless, like the shuffle of an old shoe toward whatever comes...

EPITAPH

She never gave up,
in fact
she is probably digging her way out
right now.

SUNSET

The chartreuse ethic of light descending over the horizon, on whose lap shall it land as these words would to greet you on this whirling earth, warmth and hello, kindness from a far land.

CHRISTMAS PARTY

Every face, with its hidden story, beautifies the room like an ornament on the tree. Age speaks in every sculptured line, and the smiles that swim on skin say love, oh Emmanuel, Maranatha, the godhead swelling in the moving features which surround expression and spoken words, humble verses, the poetry of human lives...

PLACES IN THE WEATHER

We are given one directive, to not be lukewarm; wherever we are under the reach of the sun, we must insist on our passion, so that we can effect the place of our existence the same way it does, definitely, being the cause of beauty and the absolutely necessary element of life, to be so that without us the place where we are would be without life. We are to be energy itself, the makers of zephyrs and tremulous storms, the sources of pure light.