Alstroemeria, Southern-rooted watcher of the skies,
Angel tongues of Peru, with your ******-blushed annunciation
Or Incan-hued sacrificial fire.
So much like the moon tongues of all rivers in first frost or first harvest.  

Like first love, first death is the truest form,  
And blooms in scorn of all its many-mirrored rivers to come.

Venezia, its musical key of brick and shade
And the canals in rejoining polyphony
Sweeten the dour Church-ear.  
From the impasto knife and loose brushwork,
A thumb-smear of waves and gently-bristled strife
Rise to assumption of the cloud-submerged bay,
Mural of cristallo, only-light without landscape,
Made too from the winds of Murano,
Its clayed blowpipe of waterways molding
The lagoon of blown glass and bouquet of colored sea-shadows.

The Tiber lies on its side, like the lion and fox,
Licking its paws at empire’s dust,
A drifting gaze of water that already foresees
The swift-run northward to Romagna,
Where the veined fur of the roe will succumb…
A ripple twitches like one dark claw of the Borgia…

The watercolors of the Arno are a fresco
On the wet plaster of the lips of Firenze, Tuscan fire-dream.
Or like the warring leg in curve of counterpoise,
Sprung foot-forward to the daring world
And arm slung down in stone-victory
From this valley, too much like Elah,
With taunting eyes turned from the Medici toward Rome.

Yesterday,
You were the glacier
that fed the rivers in my eyes
Today,
You are the sea -
kissing the horizon with guile
Tomorrow,
You'll be nothing more
than a speck in the sky

Just as water runs, so does he.
He can't be contained, like a river running to a waterfall. Even with all his strength and power, he can't help but choose the path he is on. All I was to him was simply the dam to restrain his natural stride. He does as he wants, not needing to have an excuse. It's just nature, isn't it? He's the river and I'm the waterfall.
Falling for his guise, hoping that I'll run back into him soon enough.

Silence speaks —
its say beheld in its
own truth laid bare

Its voice is deeply felt
but rarely revealed
in the tight economy
of considered words
it quietly whispers —

The reality it bares,
soundlessly eroding with a
shameless emotional deluge
that rivers through
the poet's heart

When you feel alone
in a crowded room,
you overhear the drone
a racing heartbeat ...

    When you're
going down the road
feeling bad,  chasing
    the centerline,
reckoning some kind
a life passing by
out the rolled down
       window ;
hearken in nature's
     tone poems
blowin' in the wind
                                                            ­    ­
    It  was  thence
    i came to know
my sum of simple truth:
Organically self-wrought
Environmentally  molded
    from the clay of life
    a survivor of many
    a passing storm

    Season's change,
water seeks its own level
The silt does not get to say
how far down stream
   the river carries it

and we still wind up
in the same old place
parsing the watermark 
       stains of time

and a poet — is not a word
i'll longer use to describe
   who i've become


harlon rivers ... December 7th, 2018

White violets in the window
Scarlett leaves tumble across
the mossy hidden stones
mound beneath a chilly winter's dawn

A cold wind bares the dogwood tree
where puffed out plumaged woodpecker
gleans on creations' plump red bounties,
beheld subsistence beget for feral wings

Bright crimson fattened rose hips season,
lingering in the frigid morning dew;
stirring warm memories of fruitlet tea's
steeped from gathered garden magic spells
A spoonful of love and raw honey mellowed
a life once so lovingly endeared

Hot Blueberry dutch-oven scratch biscuits
imbue the wafting fragrant air —
life's cherished moments tarry
in the head and heart;
sipped by ruby lips still tasting
the untamable passion
of a breathless goodnight kiss

White violets blossom in the window
the morning fire's crackle echoes
a pining  memories' gentle whisper
awakened by the incoming wintertide

A dulcet breeze not soon forgotten
— melancholy traces linger
like a passing season's swan song

as your memory — leads me on...


harlon rivers ... December 5th, 2018