Poem Shards

  That coder's edge,
     The Sculpted Ridgeline,
  the artist . . .
     also made the Sun and Wind,
    
   That coder's edge
      rolls along the horizon,
   deep crags in the landscape
     allow the Sun to rest within
   just before it sleeps and slips below.

   There were very many poems to read,
       to read them all would take weeks,
         months, the Sun will sleep
      each night
         Reader bring your thoughts below
     like the sun and set
        into your fertile Adorondacks and
     far-away sky-scapes,
    Your Sierra-Nevada ranges
       drapped with the pendant fog like
     chains of bridals breath
     laying along the rills of earth
    atop a grave,
     A willow askcant the river
        fallen in, posie flowers floating along.

    If you can't weep for Ophellia
       you can't weep for anyone
     if you can't let this play go on
       to be
     followed through
      straight to the grave
     you know the plot
        you can't stop the tree from collapsing
     you can't get her 'over it'
      as her worlds collapse into the flood...
   You can't talk her out of her tree
       where she hangs the pendant posies
      and all that they
         mean
      that they be  --
      --  to her  --
         hang their temporary tribute,
     all pedals fade readers  must be reminded . . .
 
    We don't hear the crack
       of the willow limp breaking
    in the play.
      The Queen watches thinking it all a game  . . .
     she drinks in careless revelry
             and dies like the daughter 
                     in law and the children-grand
      which she will not now have . . .

   We can leave the theatre a-wandering off
     into the citied nights of this modern age
     where we hope that dangerous trees
       shall be cleared away,
    rotten limbs taken down
      the streets and roads cleared and salted . . . 
    Street lamps  line the frozen streets
       and create their amber glow 
              towards all those distant mountains . .  .
   like this we think to light the whole world, 
     take away darkness.

   Can you hear that limb crack
      from sorrows weight?
    Such weighty heartache crushes all limbs
     like heavy late-winter snow,
   birtches bent over beneath the load
         of  pain and longing, heartbreak,
   sadness, within such Winter world.

   But Sun gone down
     will arise again
    next morn, next hope.
   And then Horratio can  sing the song
       of fardels borne and cold bodkiins.