The wolf demands

what the shepherd

can’t protect

 

A busy hand

helps the angry heart

forget

 

(Pine Ridge South Dakota: July, 2019)

‘To Mari Sandoz’

All discovery

—but one grand paradox

 

(University Of Pennsylvania: May, 2020)

 

Hiding in their basement caves,

the ‘journalists’ deride

 

The light of facts and truth cast dim,

a downward fatal slide

 

Where once out in the open,

clear vision far and wide

 

Credibility buries deep

—their fear a den of lies

 

(The New Room: February, 2021)

The shape of my spirit,

the weight of my soul

 

To measure the longing

of wishes unsold

 

Tomorrow the color

of yesterday’s stain

 

The taste of each memory

—this moment retains

 

(University Of Pennsylvania: February, 2021)

Silence…

often the loudest voice of all

 

(Dreamsleep: February, 2021)

Mesmerized by his own success,

swimming naked and alone in the dark

 

Drowning in what he forever professed,

he rose and fell with each critic’s remark

 

Hypnotized while diving for fame,

he sank while caught in the tide

 

His pleadings washed up, divested and bare,

exposed—with nowhere to hide

 

(Crater Lake: October: 2015)

What is the human  

perception of time

 

If measurement stops

and clocks will not chime

 

Seconds to minutes,

minutes to hours

 

Pendulum still

—Big Ben disempowered

 

(Dreamsleep: February, 2021)

 

 

Buried in the leaves of a Fall gone by,

memories wait for Spring

 

Entombed in hope as Winter reclaims,

till birds return to sing

 

Cold and dark, the seeds of change,

lay dormant ill disposed

 

Snow is falling, the wind blows hard,

escape routes all but closed

 

Hearing new footsteps walking above,

the weight compressed and strained

 

My sentence malingers, time frozen deep

—the cold to ease the pain

 

(Dreamsleep: February, 2021)

 

“Free speech for me,

but not for thee”

 

All bridges burned

—an ashened dream

 

(Dreamsleep: February, ‘Nat Hentoff’ 2021)

News to confirm,

and not to inform

 

A slap on the back,

new patrons reborn

 

To pander or slander,

a partisan line

 

No minds to be changed

—their chorus reminds

 

(Dreamsleep: February, 2021)