four

[silentjack]

in spaces where leaves dare not grow
the burning orange of the day
goes down to deep embers

the cirrus wisps a fragment
silent sheet of night
licking across the water-deep sky

=====

the scent of kudzu cooking under
late summer sun
the taste of blackberry smothering
exhaust on the highway
the frost of pine on streams of
cool night winds coursing
such is the return to a land
where my name and my face
and my love
still belong to me

=====

this Earth is not going to hell
as is so believed
but rather a hell going toward
Earth as each one of us
departs, slowly snuffing the
flames of suffering
choking off the land

=====

at the hour of my death
i don't know whether
i want to be wholly at peace
and filled with a pacified
magnanimity inured to the
molten rock of a brutal eternity
or whether
i want to be wholly enraged
overflowing with an anger and a
loathing that sends tsunamis into
the frozen still of her heaven
or whether
i want to be aware of
either at such a sacred moment
the only moment designed
purely for me