They have a certain curvature of the back

– a graceful arc under perfect 15-year-old skin.

This arc is the result of many sunny hours of youth

spent indoors under the soft glow

of computer screens.

This is a new bending of a line –

a new curve in a season where curves appear.

But this flawless arc is a darker symbol than the blossoming of youth.

It’s a defense, an escape, a quiet act of surrender

 to a life that provides stimulation in mouse clicks

and lonely words on lonely walls.

Outside the world burns and beckons

and the stars on a October night miss the gaze of youthful eyes.

But everywhere there are these arcs — fallen trajectories,

perfect skin pulled taught

over a bent and bowed frame.

And the quiet sounds of mouse clicks.

Along the river are trees,

bowed and burden by snow.

They are beautiful,

Their hoary loads cold and sharp.

And as I walk by, I involuntarily

grab the tip of one of the trees

and gently tug to release it of its burden.

The snow and hoarfrost slough

from its branches with a hoarse whisper

and I am surprised to see

that even unburdened,

it only rises a matter of inches.

And this becomes my prayer tonight:

not for salvation,

but that God would come by and gently tug

around my edges

and that as the cold and hoarfrost begins to slough away

I would rise, ever so slightly –

Just enough,

to wait in silence and expectation,

for warmer days.

I ran across this poem that I wrote a while back. And here it is…

Tonight across America

the glow of ten millions screens

illuminate 20 million faces.

They cheer, they laugh, they weep:

the room grows warmer from

human emotion.

Tonight across America

the sound of postmodern life

echoes on textured walls.

The buzz of the dryer,

the beep of the microwave,

and the hum of the refrigerator

sound their quiet industrial symphonies.

Tonight across America

five hundred thousand people

hunch their backs and peer

into their computer screens.

They stare at smiling faces

and other longing souls,

hoping that their clicks

their gently pressed keystrokes

mean a chance at happiness and love.

Tonight across America

I leave America behind.

I climb the trail through the woods

and see the lights of life

yellow and blue and cold

shining  below from a thousand empty streets.

Tonight across America

it is my voice, my breath alone

that penetrates an abandoned world.

Tonight I am nature’s child,

an Adam in a world

that all the other Adams

have left behind.

Tonight across America

one man stands illumined

by the diluted lights of the city.

Breathing in the night

Breathing in the night.

Backlit snows on distant peaks;

The rest of the world is shadow

The wind is strangely absent

And it’s clear that it is going to rain.

Two thousand feet up and fifteen miles away

is an alpine meadow.

The fireweed is burning red,

The only sounds: the whispers of leaves

Alighting on the grass.

It smells of ripeness and rot,

of a summer coming to an end,

portending the deeper silence of December

_____

The room is stuffy as students shift in their seats.

It smells of body odor and misapplied perfume

The only windows in the classroom face the hall,

Witnesses to a silence, cold and institutional.

There is frustration and boredom on the faces of my students

Frustration and boredom in my mind as well,

Creeping like frost into unwelcome places.

I consider a landscape that is quiet –

Where I am noticeably absent

And the muted sounds of autumn are not attended by my ears.

Something inside me breaks at the incongruence

of where I am and where I want to be.

I will have to remember next time

To harvest the scene

more carefully with my mind

– the smells and sounds –

as sustenance for future days

and for future years.