Harbingers

I

These are not the expected angles;

These are hills leaning into houses.

These are children in the mouths of lions.

These are dashes of light

And dim possibility.

The clouds resemble approximate silence,

They are vague and unnamed.

The hills father away are bleaker than dusk.

A nervous sparrow, flits and chitters,

Flies to the wire, soon other sparrows arrive,

These harbingers of the dead,

They gaze my soul like a cold day.

Rising in unison, they settle once more.

A pattern emerges, a low disquiet hum.

Inside, the fluorescents blare like a migraine.

The day whirl its empty spindle.

II

I wake to frost, I take it as omen.

All shun their lot, praying for comfort.

Judgement fails.We are lost.

One year passes as twenty.

A rumor of storms dying over the Atlantic.

III

I dreamt I was veering into a din of birds,

Their cries diffuse darkening light.

The New Lord's rising from Rome.

The Moon is wrenched from the Earth.

A month of feasts begin

Blood is shed to insure prosperity.

IV

The telephone poles extend their arms,

The crucifixions have begun.

The birds will not settle,

But pass with strange cawing.

Westward, the dark trees rise,

Mountains stir their mourning

V

Time is elliptical. It is built on memory.

I sit in a theater of stars.

I am a child again.

My Father sits next to me.

He does not motion.

He is a veil I pass through.

There is nothing more to learn.

No doors hold me now.

I am the last witness.

I have escaped into light.

I enter the mouths of many tunnels.