So Near, My Love

So Near My Love
Too close again to see That one—alone May never know the Touch Of Trust Or any closer Than the Distance Of most Kindred Kindred Spirits be— Closer still— As God will allow— Did He not make One? But it is His choosing of The two— The same That moves this Spirit between us— So near— My love So close that we may see That each—Alone Must know this Hand Of trust—upon us Before two may closer be.

Call to Forgetting

Every sentence, every thought,Every word a crafted moment.
Hard is the time for loss,
Harder still the time for memory.

I

A warrior roused for conflict
His weapons sleeping
And weary limbs draw him down.
Yet the ranks fall quickly about him
To a deeper sleep beyond marching
Or the call of any new battle.

II

All silence is an act within
A carried item of weightless luggage
Once forgotton, it is difficult to find again

In (alone) I sit

In (alone) I sit—As much of me is—
Is incomplete.
Nobody knows—
Ever comments on
A poem
Never seen—
And it’s alone,
As much as words
Of me
May be.

Complete? Ask it—
When it shows
A form to you.
When—you know—
As much as words
Of you may be.
Or you’ll never
Sit alone—and
Understand. Who
But God may
Cease both
Whispering alone
And Silence?

Among and
Becoming
One of these—
Though without
The spirit of
Sameness that joins
Any group lacking
faith
Or The Faith.
Complete? These are
Not—these will always
Be “other”—not the
“same” in words
Or on the winds
Of God’s Whispering.

Memorial Day

Who must bear this standard of decay?Broken tombstones—buried ready flames
Every act of hindsight burns away

The memory of a breathless final day.
All these spirits broken break our chains—
Who will bear our standard of decay

Across the muted battle under way,
Beyond the fear that life may not soon wain?
Though every act of hindsight burns away

The hope of pain through lifetimes of delay;
Without the option—quite—of going insane.
Who must bear this standard of decay

That fades as one will never truly say
The truth that may always half remain
Though every act of hindsight burns away.

Though never new will blooming flowers stay
Without the blood from dying—all the same,
Who must bear this standard of decay
While every act of hindsight turns away?

Darker Passage

Then the men into A Darker Passage rush, shouting,
“This is our Place of Light
In us may fall no Shadow!”
Then—into Man the darkness
Rushes—Shouting
“This is our Place of Passage!”
Dig down further into
chambers of imagery.

Why do none ask before Shadow?
Both speak gently to the
Soothsayer
In tones that pass for whispers—
But to one who stays
And listens—after
Some session is deaf.

He may pass by in manlike
Movement
But the Spirit and the Darkness
Don’t understand
Manhood–or Man
Only silence
Either of peace or stupor
After writing so long he is the scholar—
A cramped Professor
Prepare another lesson will you?
Till forever Bent
The World and words soon become a
Case—
Either Doctors or
Darkness
Prevail.