Farther and Faster- Knowledge is power, they used to say. They couldn't know or guess today How many count moments of quiet as waste In their need for speed and urgent haste. How many move farther and faster by noon Than Lewis and Clark through the phase of the moon. How could we miss what we never knew, What we never saw in the languid blue Of a morning spent slowly hiking alone Past ten million years of canyon stone. And what of the Utes and the bison, dead And the glaciers gone where the rivers bled Faster than buffalo grass is burned Farther and faster than what was learned In an instant flash of noble truth When Clark first fingered a grizzly tooth. Farther and faster and further still Than we ever would or ever will Again remember or know or care If we still believed it was ever there. No wonder we have to quicken our pace, No wonder our fear of open space, No wonder the hollow faithless prayer, No wonder faith in God so rare.

The Sleep They Feared- Come, lonely world and sleep. Winter spirits will silent keep, Drawn near enough, kissed cold and deep. Know this, the slumber of so many years Is not some dreamless dying fear. More than loneliness of leaves is here. Look not on tree that slumber yet never sleep But, by lying dreamless, watch and weep. Their dying rest is not one soon cheered Who grimly sleep the sleep they feared.

MORE- In the silence, after sunset but before the light was gone I have searched among the shadows in the woods when day is done. Even as the rain is falling and the snow difts on the peak Is it not enough to tell me what I should or shouldn't seek? And I've listened for the voices and I've whishpered in the leaves Coming close to understanding when I prayed among the trees. Still this far forgotten forest makes it clear I'll never know More than autumn rain at sunset, more than silence, more than snow.