AN OCHER SKY- For those of us who chose this way- To walk the evening paths alone And see the ending of each day High in the clouds and overblown; We watch for wings to come and go We listen for their haunting cries; Geese fleeing the approaching snow That briefly fill our ocher skies. The velvet ripples in the stream Reflected in each searching eye, See in the twilight how they gleam And shimmer neath the ocher sky. Reluctant, as the darkness nears, To stand condemned as you and I To wander through the lonely years Beneath a pale and ochre sky.

SECOND VISION- You and I reside in time alone. Only now, come to a deserted passage, Beyond any dreams of green pools or distant voices. Stand in the gray light where only unremembered faces Lament the winter moon, full and waiting to reveal the night of rain. It is more than a weeping dream. It is blue gulls always at the shoreline, Making a journey of miles damp and dark. Your memory blurs into a whisper. It is not for yourself a day of echoing reason under the mist. In this is a way you have known more mountains. The dead have waited always. I slumber, as do you.

Being Alone- Over all he cherished solitude, The unshared silence each day renewed, In the lonely call of the canyon wren, In the secret places he had been. Half a century passed and he'd kept apart From the world of man and hidden his heart In the darkest depths of untold dreams, On forgotten paths along mountain streams. So had he fashioned his life's desire And peering through smoke and the flames of that fire He reminded himself, on the cold bench stone, One more time, how he didn't fear being alone.

CROSSROADS- When winter lays a final blanket on the heart, When eyes have dimmed enough from time and rain, Then, once more down the road I will pretend to start A bitter journey I shall surely never make again. To climb the crumbling tar of Berthoud Pass, That winds in solitude across the Snowy Range Where naked aspen push aside the snow like grass And all the quiet winter ground is stark and strange. I'll search the sleeping trees, the downhill side; In leafless wonder watch as daylight dims, While overhead, perhaps ashamed of what they hide, Clouds with their own regrets spill shadows on the canyon rims. And driving through the desert Colorado lands The towns (saloons),Red Wash, Dinosaur, Greystone Forgotten realm of purple shale and yellow sands, I'll see the crossroads shining underneath the moon. Before I learned a road or choice could kill a man I kept the straight, remembered route in view. I'll take the crossroads now and follow if I can Less sure, but unafraid of all I thought was true.