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A dog trots beside its owner

Like a well-trained soldier
The metal tags around its collar jangle
In syncopated rhythm 
I hear this with my human ears
And wonder how mine must sound
In the celestial realm.

Barren

Spring brings a fog

That cradles our belief

That home is not just an elusive boundary
Of imagined comfort and safety
An illusory hope, a mirage
But one we manifest concrete (or so we think)
With four walls, a two car garage...

The dead of winter clears the mind

Time slows, allowing for new sight

And we remember this is our sickness unto death;
Just like Thomas Wolfe said:
You can never go home again.

Return, return in the fall I did

To see what I'd left behind

A full season between us 

I walked for miles in a straight line

Searching the shore for your black truck,

Trying to imagine what it was

That had made you love this patch of beach so much.

Ready to give up, I rested by the surf to watch the osprey hunt

Many moments passed, yet none appeared

And I thought to myself,
"I'd never go fishing here."

Vantage

I watch with equal eyes

When I hear the roar

Of screaming machines

And see their paths cross 

With the silent hawk

I watch with equal eyes 

Those dense earth bones

Whose only dream

Is to also see with great distance

And to rule from above

The great big below

I watch with equal eyes 

As I think how far we’ve come

In another whirl around the sun

Like Icarus who wore 

His father's faulty wings

I tangle my glory in yours

I watch with equal eyes

As we fall out of the sky

Then remember how to soar

Fortune

Fruit
Not of the sea 
Washed up
On the beach
Juices leaked 
Into the arid sand 
Ripening

Driftwood

Planted ashore

Crowned with

A nine inch iron beacon

Half hammered

Rusting

Pilot

He will never walk among

The kings of wands.

An obsession with desire,
Though a desirable affection,
He is only king of my thoughts;

A beautiful craft constructed from
Aluminum touches, muffled voices;

His hands grip the yoke.

Tonight, I tell him which way to go,
And he teaches me what I already know—
Go fast, go slow—what difference does it make?
Our destination is always the same;

The pilot owns the navigator,
The sky owns our fate.

ERIS

Nature loves to hide
Within the mortal coil
With the wrath of a woman
Who owes nothing,
To whom nothing is owed.

She spurns desire and

Delights as it incinerates 

The insides 

Of all men;

She demands no sacrifice,

No tribute

For what could she possibly need 

From the weak and pitiful?

She offers loyalty to none,

Her only devotion is destruction

In a land of fruit and brimstone

Vengeance sprouts 

Vine-ripened

And words are not spoken,

Chanted.

The Forge

First unmade
To be forged in fire
Remolded and reformed

Born again, ablaze
Baptized in flame

To emerge as something new
A weapon, a blade 

Perhaps a tool 
First unmade.