How much sadness could one know
she wondered
kicking idly at the drifts
someone answered
perhaps me
that love had yet to come their way
and they had had their fill
of mute and barren days
she nodded and allowed that
the shine had mostly gone off things.
We walked on.
Tired of being confined to
such obscure, ordinary souls
our hearts took wing and
punched through grief-tinged clouds
seeking solace in some new Calvary.
Painting by R. Waiksnis
Of the calmness in you
of our thousand lush moments
when blood was banished
and blessed shine came on
beautiful as a singing child
Painting by R. Waiksnis
Flat depths
Drifts of empty roads
A tuneful vault clean as digits
The earth shines, an alien jewel
Staggering under your frozen harvest of regret
you trudge on
leering at the weeds
*
*
Painting by R. Waiksnis
A blue memory of sun
slowly threads its way
across an all-too-human sky.
*
*
Painting by R. Waiksnis
Stood I humble on the mountain
Witness to a massacre of light.
West of fire, south of flame,
The heaven’s countenance starred with tears.
Now what a gorgeous doom unfurled itself!
Slain by the sky’s bronze sabres,
The clouds lay in silent state till
Awesome night, resplendent in velvet,
Drew close its mourning cloak
Of richest blue.
*
*
Painting by R. Waiksnis
Suddenly you are everywhere at once.
The air pops like champagne;
Cardinal-mitred leaves chuckle in the wind.
The earth holds you to itself, and
Happiness surrounds you like the sea.
Somewhere, deep inside,
A child has begun to sing.
*
*
Painting by R. Waiksnis
You, to whom pain happens;
trembling heir to the thousandfold fear;
mote, illuminated by no sun–
the Creator could not restore
you to wholeness.
August rage hums, a tremendous hive.
Every single point in the universe
has its knife out for you.
Splayed like an insect
across a filthy windshield,
you hurtle on, you hurtle on.
*
*
Painting by R. Waiksnis
Take me down, Leviathan.
Roll my weary bones in
your fathomless embrace.
Listen, brother: the land, my home,
spit me out like a cracked seed.
Better to shiver out here, stormwracked,
under an honest gunmetal sky,
than let them in my life and love.
The brine that cakes my skin
is as sweet as honey
to this willing Jonah.
Blessed now, and wind-driven far
from the Sirens,
this exiled child of the sun
will find his final truth
in surging, green-hued halls
far, far from any shore.
*
*
Painting by R. Waiksnis,
“Storm and Sea”
Saps
for not having bathed
ever fiber of your tired being
in that high river valley.
Plains-dwellers,
silver water was crackling like foil
across autumn’s riotous carpet;
veridian shoals of liverwort
breathed slow misty kisses;
and a lone cedar
made mournful love to the sky.
Sole witness to it all: this humble acolyte.
*
*
Painting by R. Waiksnis
