Spirit Garland

Mysterious visitors in the night arrive

and hurl dire mis-explanations of war,

then bark out dark orders of verb confusions.

Among the populations,

poignant and once-pregnant mothers wage words of worlds,

then scatter like distraught vessels of light.

And fathers, they are reduced to silent stars of brave, historic tears,

dripping from stolid, patriotic faces.

As I gather my survival gear,

I spy an ironical, open eye romantic moon

 as it peeks briefly between smoky clouds

to complain of mechanically inspired, thunderous rains of pain.

I recall how we kissed our last goodbye.  Somehow, I think we knew.

Suddenly heaved skyward like an obscene ghost, my hum-vee spins wildly,

and for an instant,

a flat horizon is revealed in a fiery flash.

It seems so eerily unlike the tree lined,

native land I fell in love with.

I ascend like a wisp of smoke.

We always did sense each other with clear and powerless love,

and no memory of a kiss is ever unseasonably written.

But tonight, intuition and clear love arise both from irony and destiny.

The clues they leave behind are bleeding below in the dust and iron,

uniting red and brown rivulets of wonders and unspoken, but given,

forgiveness (for leaving too soon).

Thus, sit I now alone,

waiting in a lush field where we once blessed a willow tree.

In meditative, patient surrender,

I remember how pretty she looks in white & yellow, so

I rise up to gather and weave

flower-chains of light and love.

Take this standing up or laying down,

dear woman,

or while praying upon your knees,

tell those who come to give you comfort,

how, before they told you I was gone,

you felt your poet tingle upon your skin,

as he graced you heart and head

with a sweet crown of wild daisy spirits.