Quartermaster

your love
your devotion
the parka
warming my soul
on frosty mornings

your beauty
your radiance
the lantern
lighting my mind
on cloudy afternoons

your kiss
your caress
the bridge
spanning the abyss
between morning and night

She

each day's
alpha and omega-
blossoming beauty,
blended chorus of ten thousand
thousand dreams.

my lids bow,
my mind trembles,
distinctions blur.
i quit my tent
and pray without ceasing.

Romantic Definition

i watched her disrobe
firelight dancing on her skin
how was i to know
desire's definition
was not the same in all lights

from glowing embers
curling wisps of smoke arose
hearth to chimney draft
memories of e'en's romance
carried to the galaxies

Inlet Flame

at the inlet
waves crash against the break wall
snow begins to fall
her voluptuous body
heating the hearth of my heart

Eclipse

it was like dying.
without pause or preamble,
silent as orbits,
a piece of the sun vanished.
a lemon slice lost;
in its place,
flaming phosphorus.
blackbirds fled to their roosts.
my surroundings dissolved
into dusky deep indigo.
alpenglow painted
the beach's bare dunes.
it was the last sane moment
of my life.

the world was wrong.
the beach grass glowed golden:
every detail-
stem, head, and blade,
shone artificially distinct-
an art photographer's print.
the sky was navy.
my hands were silver.
the distant waves black india ink.
everything was lost.
i fell down a chute of time.

a lustrous leaf loosed
blowing across the day-star;
a luminous lens cover.
my brain's hatch slammed,
my eyes dried,
my arteries drained,
my lungs collapsed.
i was a dying man
rotating, orbiting,
embedded in the planet's crust,
while the earth rolled down.

my mind was light-year's distant.
i had, it seemed,
once loved the planet and my life,
but could no longer remember their ways.

the world imploded.
i knew a superior light
had usurped the sun's throne.
trees withered,
sand became glass.
i was alone in eternity.

i grabbed my bucket and shovel-
grammar and lexicon-
and blundered about the beach,
scrawling in the surf,
but writing
the breadth and simultaneity
of such an ethereal event
was like scribbling a crayola sketch
on a construction-paper Christmas card-
the angel of the Lord,
the glory of the Lord,
the multitude of the heavenly host-
shepherds wouldn't be sore afraid.

my mind warped,
reeling through space.
the universe,
the clockwork of ceaseless spheres,
was overcome with stupefying,
unauthorized urgency.

i screamed!
seeing it happen,
knowing it was coming,
couldn't prepare me
for the dizzying dispatch
with which my retinae
carried the blinding image
of her supernoval beauty
to my brain.

Sacrifice

dropping a hundred
in the brass offering plate
the lone sacrifice
i ever make in my life
is letting you out the door

I Try, Anyway

my heart screeches!
an atomic blast,
a mushroom cloud
orange blossom
on the horizon.
fascination overwhelms
sensibility
obliterating
meaning itself.

words fail me,
but i try, anyway.
i sift my brain's
buried alluvial bed,
picking the strata
for morsels of bone,
silver slivers
that might- perhaps-
explain the inexplicable...
beauty of you.