![[Literae]](/images/literae.jpg)
poetry, prose, and other strings of words · 1993 - 2003
From Stillness Into Strife
Number 163
December 29, 2002
An eldritch wind of the oldest
Forests caressingly carries me
Into the night;
This street is not haunted, but—
Out of place, out of time;
Whose ridge was this once?
What warrior, what farmer—
What lover—
Once carried forth, here?
What human has tread where I tread?
What human has breathed what I breath?
Beneath the vaulted heavens white eagles
Swiftly pass, piercing
Without eyes,
Without talons.
Whose tree draped in lights,
Whose grass, verdant still, blades firm
And untouched?
Though young, said tree has been
Waving an eternity, waving,
Waving, waving
As the sea once over this land did wave.
Memory's swollen gut feeds like
A dark spider,
Swinging
From hilltop to hilltop.
Great lights, no phantoms here, auroras
Play out across the south,
In a land forgotten.
Lover, farmer, warrior—left behind,
Ranger's work on a red night,
Leaving me, standing—
Alone but for the cars purring
Along the highway—
In a land delivered from stillness
Into strife.