Desert stars are butterflies

of smooth obsidian.

Their twinkling glance

a reflection of the moon

On fluttering wings of shining stone,

hovering, just beyond man's reach.

The Stonecutter

His long fingers touched,

divined natural fissures--delicate striations

in the face of the limestone.

Hammered wooden wedges in the minute cracks.

Kept them wet with splashes

a day and a day and a day.

Until the quarry face rent and split apart

In cubic chunks, flat square sheets.

He pressed with adzes, cut and carved,

polished with obsidian

the malmy newborn stone.

Subdued the waxy, workable surface

before the wind enfolded cured,

made it strong.

Imperishable as granite.

The Rememberer

I was but small when my father took me there

astride his great shoulders.

Through the forest of

dappled moonlight and moonshade.

Beside the pyramid,

among the people gathered.

the Rememberer sat inside a circle of smoky light.

The moon had finished her monthly meal of stars,

was full fed, gorged to her roundest and brightest.

The man's voice was old,

his telling covered years of greatness, death and mystery.

He know of wondrous things of the sea,

things of the night.

Gods and owls and great green moths,

night flying herons.

In the time of full dark,

I slept, ensorcelled, in my father's arms.

New Fires

In the turning of the fifty-second year,

yellow blossoms

fill the sir with fragrance.

High on the near mountain,

we watch with night eyes,

we pray for stars to climb above midnight clouds.

Pale cluster, six, or is it seven?

Followed by the bright red star

Slowly, not veering from their course,

not breaking asunder.

Right in place, right on time,

undimmed and new again,

after all the sheaves of years.

Talent

If your gift is only small do not scorn it.

The Gods can take even that away.

If your talent is great--remember.

The Gods denied this gift to someone else

that you might use it.

Dogs of War

The brass cannon jumped and thundered.

The sound of the horses iron-shod feet pounded the sand.

Riders put their mounts to a full gallop.

The great dogs ran alongside.

The horsemen came to the crushed and smoking ruins

Spears glinted, swords touched light

as they cut down the survivors.

The men turned their mounts and rode back.

The dogs remained.

My ears rang.

Distantly I heard men shrieking,

staghounds roaring,

I saw them returning,

their fearsome jaws smeared with blood.

Northern Lights

Long curtains of light

sweep the horizon,

sway and stir in cosmic breezes.

Making no sound,

Glowing coldly white, pale green, pale blue.

Soft, undulating

colors changing places, merging.

Eye of the North Sea,

omen of time,

marking six and sixty years.

One Life

Go the way you choose.

Take companions with you

a long way or a little.

Walk to meet the soaring eagle.

Give the sun the blood of your enemies to drink,

feed the earth with their rotting flesh.

In the shadowless noontime,

learn what all must learn.

There is only one life and you must live it,

your chosen one, most of it alone.

Before the blackened mountains

float between red water and purple sky,

before the sun draws down a sleeping mantle at the days end.

Milky Way

The ancient ones saw

milky stars in the night sky

tracked the backbone of the world.

Above the sun and the mountains, the sacred ground,

tamed and measured by man.

Stars broken apart and scattered into dust.

Fear

A white dove flies in an endless sky

sun kisses her wings.

Above the wild flowers, higher, higher,

captured by storm clouds filled with thunder.

Wild winds blow on a darkened world.

The dove falls to earth, broken.

A wolf stalks silent in the night.