A HALLOWEEN

HALLOWEEN

She filled her hands

With winter light and October's

Crows, a calcophany of wings

Against the blue of early evening.

Children used to come here.

There were hills and copses and woods

Challenging the imagination with shadows

Caught alive in stories of the Fall.

The road ended at her mouth,

Full of weeds and drifting terrors

Searching for a body to accompany

During the dark evenings of the waning year.

Shaken, she reaches for the twilight

As if it were a vessel of some kind,

Easy on any sea, unmoved and with sails

Painted in the colors of forgetting.

To dream was to vanish into memory,

The twinkle of an eye,

The brush of a hand across a shoulder,

No place for sharing stories, whispering.

This time of year is full of stuff

Like this, fine of hand and bathed

In a crystal construct made of wood,

Made of fire, made of singing.

She was not given to understand

More of this than her hands covered

With the cool and brilliant light.

She wishes us luck as we continue

Toward the shoreline, the same light

Glinting  off the water, infecting

Our minds, making everything in life

A challenge and the turning of the days

Borne on the backs of black birds

Exploding time with cackling and shrieking.

FALLING INTO THE FIELD OF TIME

 Fairy

William Ricketts Sanctuary 

Pink Cloud, Locke, Ca  - D.R. Wagner

FALLING INTO THE FIELD OF TIME

From the edge of the boat 

We could see the stars

Reflected in the water.  We knew the

Many names of the moon and sang

To the fishes there below, the ones

Who swallowed stars and dreamed

The night sky beneath the sea.

The fish believe we are their rapture

As we sing.  We believe the fish

To be gems of priceless value,

Wandering through the mind,

Bearing the names of the seas.

That night we slept on deck

Listening to the wind and waves

Tell stories of fire on

Islands so far away that one

Can but learn their names,

To visit these places is simply

Not possible in a single lifetime.

When dawn came we could no longer 

Tell if we were male or female.

Deer gather at our feet.  We

Feed them from bowls.  We see

Death with its flocks of birds

Wheel and circle overhead.

We decide to make music forever.

We dance and sail on.

WHERE I WORK

a snapshot of most of my studio in Locke, CA where 

I'm doing much of my writing these days.

THE PERFECT BALANCE OF THE SPIRAL

This poem was originally published in my book A LIMITED MEANS OF EXPRESSION, 2011 - Rattlesnake Press, Pollack Pines, CA.  It is out of print.   ISBN 978-0-9834433-0-8

The Perfect Balance of the Spiral

I started out to tell you something,
Something of the morning, the exclamations
Birds orchestrate as marks of color
Against the insistence light makes
Upon us as we move slowly away
From sleep and into the crisp
Air of Autumn before everyone
Is awake and we can sit for a moment
As the day establishes itself in our
Minds as something substantial but untouchable.

But I got lost turning around and
Around on the lawns far from
The house, eyes open, seeing that
Small grove of trees,then the
Lane toward the house, the creek,
Its stone bridge, the two hills
With the folly upon the higher one
Trying to find a classical landscape
This close to the city, finally,
The house itself with the window
Glass looking golden and unreal
As I reeled round and round.

Perhaps a song would help here
But the whole thing will not stop
Turning and the earth itself knows
that and continues to throw up
Wonder upon wonder into our being
Here in early October.  It has its
Own music.  The birds still sing
In the nighttime and we have a piece
Of the whitest moon to take to 
Our beds as we move through the
Picture galleries and the night views
Of the fountains from the second
Floor toward the garden.

We hear string music come from afar.
Closing our eyes for a moment
We find the balance once again,
The bowing to each other, the delicious
Fragility of the dance.

THE STARRY RAMS

COLD RIVER PRESS will be doing a chapbook of my work.  It will be titled ETERNITY REMEMBERED. I am delighted they are doing this and am posting a poem from the chapbook here today.

THE STARRY RAMS

The starry rams that vex

The starry plow and trundle

Cross the heavens at the edges of the hex

Signs, tipping huge and noisy beacons

Toward the table of the morning,

Lower head and butt, no warning,

But continue toward the dawn.

Oh sparkle, clean and burning,

Clustered in the arms of the sun

That makes no claim to

Planets. Air like flying junk

That litter space as it races

To the limits of what is known.

The starry rams perplex us

And the starry rams suspect us

Of having forgotten them.

They left us perhaps, we left them

And see them only in the heavens

Or caught inside a wish

They could be less than poetry,

They could be less than verse

Or could become a simple myth

And the whole construction burst.

ALLOWING THE LANGUAGE

Mike Worrall

Toward Darkness - D.R. Wagner

ALLOWING THE LANGUAGE

We cannot ever bring back the dragons.

That was the agreement back when we

Came to the high camps.  Even if

We were without hope we had vowed

Not to say their names aloud.

Their gift for this was a new language.  it took so 

Little time to gain its usage.  We were amazed

To be speaking it in groups within a fortnight.

It had a quality of song about it.

I am going to allow the language

But it will speak as tigers, terrible

As the dawn might be or the nights

Great majesty, for the words have power

They power all and you may dance or you

May fall, swirling on a pause that

May be a comma or nothing at all.

The eyebrow of the beast may twitch

And we will run from the forest

To the shore and I may

Never know you or I may know

You all.  There is no sound upon

The page

As we see the tiger in its glade,

But its eye will see you,

Smell the warmth of meat of which

You are  made and find you almost

To Charon’s boat, now blue,

Now only a shade. 

The burrs of understanding

Every language in the world,

Their curious cadences we use

To ride.  The horses come from heaven

To do our bidding as we beg

to become the night that we might

See feel the language fill our sight.

I am going to allow the language to

Dwell here for its famous moment.

A purity we are amazed to have privy to

Even as we open our mouths.

FROM THE BOOK OF THE LITTLE PAST

FROM BOOK OF THE LITTLE PAST

I made a picture with my breath.

What colored it is filled

With death.  There was a war

We had to leave, we had to

Store our things away until

Another, brighter day,

And burned the house,

And burned the barn

And hid deep in the wood from harm.

Anyway, when we finally returned

We had already heard the adagios

Where the clouds are able

To get lost.  Morning was

Pure frost on all the panes

And we couldn’t see if

This was indeed the place we lost.

It either was the same or gone

Completely.  We swept up

The campfire and tried to

Find the foundations of

The house, but they too were

Lost as lost as was our

Morning long ago, standing in the snow

Watching the places go up in flame.

Mother crying softly.  the horses

Stomping the ground, breathing

White air and threatening

To tell the story to our dreams

Every Winter night since then.

And so they have until

Today, when once again

Here upon the heath

We have come together underneath

The oak still charred

From the decades of the

War and we have no place

Here any more.  It all has

Passed into local lore

That talks of ghosts who

Lived there long ago.

I made a picture with my breath.

“Those islands far away are mine.”