cold thoughts about warm dreams

I sat cold,
watching her approach with a smile
like a dreamless sleep.
Beautiful and pure.
The lightest touch on the knee
and me in my best shirt.
Her, a nativity scene
and my hibernating soul
awoke to discover its host,
merging to completion.
Solitude is a blessing
when you are not alone.
When there are two souls,
one with a darkly framed face,
soft hair begging a soft hand,
and the other waiting to discover
who he is.

Part VII...

He walked for a little while, coming to a small group of trees. He was almost certain that the shore lay beyond the trees and entered the small forest. It was dark and the smooth trunks of the trees were a deep red, almost black. As he passed, each tree would brighten for a moment with a pulse of brighter red that lit the area around him for a moment. Jonah wondered if somehow the trees knew he was there as a he walked.
He continued to walk until he began to see the tree line clear somewhere up ahead. He was almost to the shore he realized, and walked faster. As he neared the edge, he began to hear a strange humming around him, followed by short chirps and snickers. He froze and remembered his friends warning about the voices. They seemed to be growing louder around him and when he looked, he could see other trees around him in the distance, pulsing with the strange red light. He knew something was out there, probably following him. Maybe the saw my bed fall from the sky, he thought, and began to run.

He ran and ran, the humming and chattering growing louder and louder behind him and around him until, finally, he reached the edge of the trees and darted out onto the black sand of the beach. He stopped then and looked behind him. The line of trees stood silent, but the humming continued and between the pulsing trees he glimpsed dark shadows moving. He looked at the sea. It was dark and calm, the sand soft under his feet. He turned, the water on his right, and walked north, remembering that as long as sand was beneath his feet, he would be safe.
The beach continued for what seemed like miles, further and further north. From time to time, Jonah would glance to his left and whenever he did, he saw the trees pulsing and the shadows moving. They were following him, but they would not leave the trees so he continued walking. Finally, after a long while, the beach began to slope upwards, and here and there patches of grass grew through the sand. The more he walked, the more the grass replaced the sand and Jonah worried that perhaps the shadows that followed him would begin to emerge. The stars however had told him not to worry, so he forced himself to be brave, though with each hum and chirp that he heard it became more and more difficult.

When Jonah reached the top of the hill, he looked to his right at the cliff, dropping straight and severe into the black depth of the ocean. To his left, sure enough, the tree that the stars had told him about, stood tall above the rest. It was much closer than Jonah had thought it would be. The sky had brightened a great deal while Jonah had been walking, although it was gradual and he didn’t notice until he had reached the top of the hill. The strange thing was that the light was very obviously coming from the direction of the tree. In fact the tree stood silhouetted by an orange and red, pulsing glow.
It was the only tree glowing though, and Jonah took that as a good sign. The shadows had stopped following him and it seemed safe to go back into the woods. So he walked to the trees and entered again, following the glow that he supposed came from the orb.

I'm reading about shit...

I’m reading about shit in a book of prose poetry. Scat. Scatological. My uncle asked me once if I knew what that word meant and I said yes, that it always reminded me of my grandma and the habit she had of examining the piles of animal feces we would find on our walks through the New Mexico desert. Chimney rock and it’s surrounding canyons and cliffs. Chimney rock was this beautiful sculpture of red stratified rock with a sort of mesa at the top and then a little pillar of rock barely connected that stood like a chimney. I used to speculate whether a climber could jump from the mesa to the chimney and make a camp on top. I concluded that nobody had ever tried because of its obvious danger. My grandma and I would walk with my mother and sister, sometimes Jim Hall or my aunt. My mom had an eye for arrowheads and spent some time as an amateur archeologist. My grandma’s uncanny gift was being able to deduce any number of things about the environment and nature simply by examining the excrement of the areas numerous animals. I always thought it was weird. Now I see the strange beauty in what she was doing. Immersing herself in every part of the natural world. Appreciating every piece of matter and mud and rock and chlorophyll. Appreciating the beauty and, in so doing, joining the community of seekers who can find deep spiritual truths and lessons by entering into natural creation. There was a rock climber that my grandmother knew who, in my mind, always appeared as one of these people. I would picture him climbing a rock sheer, his hands on the stone, feeling and listening to God through that rock and learning his purpose and his passion. He fell from one of those walls and broke his back. By the time anybody realized that he was gone, he had died. Somebody carved a bear out of soapstone and it sat for years where his body had lain. My grandma would sometimes take us to that spot and I would stare at the bear in awe and respect of the man that it memorialized. To me he was the epitome of adventure and an example of one who sought peace and found it amid rocks and sage. The fact that he died doing what he loved only reinforced my idealistic image of him. It’s funny that now I can’t even remember his name but I can picture the little smooth black bear surrounded by rough sandstone and dust.

Boy's story part VI...

Jonah spun and spun, quickly at first, towards the large planet, but gradually he slowed and neared its orbit. The red star was huge and bright on his right, pulsing slowly, its colors blending and swirling from ruby to maroon to crimson and blood red. His bed shuddered for a moment and made one last rotation before the sight of the red star. Jonah worried that it was no longer the force of Tristan and Madeline that moved him as he watched the frightening star.
He was still floating towards the planet however, and that reassured him. He floated closer until he was caught in its orbit. The planet’s gravity was strong and pulled Jonah’s bed through its atmosphere. He thought for a moment that maybe he wouldn’t land where they said he would and what would he do then?
Jonah forced these thoughts out of his head and watched as he sailed through the planet’s cloudy atmosphere. It was strangely dark and he passed through dense smoky clouds that he thought should make him cough until he remembered that he no longer needed to breathe.
After a minute or two he broke through the clouds and the vast landscape of Jude’s planet was laid out before him. It was spotted with tall mountains of red rock surrounded by orange-leafed trees and plains of yellow grass. He watched and saw that he was indeed headed for a clearing near the shore of a huge black sea. He wondered what color the water was during the day, if it every turned to day. The sea seemed to cover half the planet as Jonah rushed to a landing.
The shore and the land grew faster and faster before Jonah’s eyes until, finally, his bed thumped to a somewhat gentle stop in the middle of one of the yellow grass fields. He looked around him, making sure he knew which direction the shore lay. The stars had told him to find the shore. He decided that it was definitely to his right and, mustering his courage, Jonah pulled aside his blankets and slid barefoot off of his bed…