THIRD VISION- In your dark day of reason, do you come to a damp passage? Is it the shoreline of memory where dreams reside in green pools Beyond any slumber of miles? Now, as in a distant whisper, Mountains reveal old echoing voices. You and I have always deserted the Waiting faces For the gray light under a full moon. It is a time to dream yourself alone and is of mist more than rippling water, The way this winter blurs, makes a day waited more unremembered. Only gulls stand weeping in the blue rain. It is not a journey only the dead and I have known.

WHISPERING IN THE SNOW- It went many years, but a day had come when the light had left their eyes. And the passage of time was easier now for them to recognize. From the old farm road where they loved to walk each struck a different path But, agreed to meet on the other side of the woods where the road bent back. Under the moon she sought in vain the aspen's shimmering glow And it hurt her to hear those same leaves dying, whispering in the snow, While he slowly stumbled across the field with none of his former grace Long after the winter sun had gone, a shadow swept his face. So they wandered alone til the trees grew strange, the last woodcock had sung And the stars shone clearer and brighter now as they had when thy were young. In the morning a hunter discovered their tracks and sent word back to town And a stone was set where, side by side, two whitetail deer were found. =====Oct. 16, 1996

WHEN CHINA CAME- Let fall another grape among the weeds and think of dust, Watch it swirl and settle slowly on the drying crust. In ancient days, when there were clouds and no one talked of heat or drought, The people floated lilypads and laughed til they were caught. In evening grays they dressed in purple melencholy pain. It was a time of deep regret and loss, a time of rain. If through the mist of time these pyramidal mountains stay the same Then did they trade the days for dust, or dreams when China came.

Window Glass I found my breath on window glass, On winter nights made a fine canvas. In the slow unsteadiness of youth, On winter nights I painted truth. Among the mountains, dragons, moons, The clearer glass, the stars shone through Assyrian astrologies and old Chaldean prophecies, Foretelling how our lives will pass Like skin on breath, on window glass.