It's All Black and White Now

For an instant
Before sunrise
Heaped on fragile spines
Bisected with long trunks
Until the snow's
And clarity’s
Demise

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A thin frail branch rests
against winter’s translucent sky
a single wrinkled leaf clinging

Barga

Like too much water
color
diffused
pastel
buildings
in the light
bleeding
on porous
paper
the city
at night
in fog

Reflections

A threshold, its once bright smooth gloss dulled, opening into a dark room with only one darker exit.  Inside the air is close and smells of decay. In the dark the obstacles, of which there may be many, are daunting, the traverse bruising and painful. The room may be vast or small, expansive or narrow, it's impossible to tell from this vantage point. There may be light in there or not. There may be a stove and wood or it may be cold, damp, unwelcoming. It is most certainly well lived in and will require constant attention, the walls crumbling, the floors worn, the furnishings threadbare and dilapidating, the fixtures gradually dysfunctional. One item after the other breaks down, to be retired and put aside, limiting its usefulness. There may be compensations, other comforts. Voices echo in the void, but sound disipates. Once clear windows are obscured. The deeper one goes the more suffocating it becomes. Like a house of horrors. Like a hall of mirrors, reflections multiply until The End.

Night

red embers pulsing
in the black ashes
lights burning
on the black hillsides

A Fire Blazes

Behind glass
In a cast iron stove
In a 400 year old stone building
In an over 1000 year old fortress
On a hill
Surrounded by forest
In an apartment
With WiFi

Harvest Moon Revisited

In the middle of the night
In the middle
Of the window

Its glare
And tears
Flood
The furrows
Of the pillow

Turn
There were dreams
To reap
Doused



Harvest

a plastic cup
bounces whorls and echoes
across an empty square

Desperately Seeking Sustenance

In the deep magenta blossoms
On the dark bark
Of the Judas tree
Taking deep breaths
Of scented lilac Wisteria
In voluptuous cascades
On pocked black volcanic rock
In salted island air
And whitewashed stucco walls
Steadied by weighty red tiles
Long crooked limbs akimbo
Of inside up umbrella pines
That shade all roads
That led
To Rome
The choppy sea
More mirrors my
Interior landscape
As I head
For home