He remembers auburn hair,
like the color flickering before him
along Hwy 261.

Thoughts of yesterday
fill his mind —
on his journeys.

Roan Mountain fades
as he steadies the wheel
along a stream of white hyphens.

Flashes of her
blend into the mountains
and trees, when he travels.

Their daughter has ringlets
bright as the autumn patches
among the forest display.

He dwells on her
and their daughter —
when he’s driving.

i.

implications are not words--
they rarely cut to the chase
merely insinuate the distance
between cold sheets of light
and the water we throw on our faces
to awaken
from the gloom and doom on the one-way
street that
reminds us silence is the path around those razor hedges

once words were green fields
blue skies filled with echoes and clouds of unknowing,
dandelions
roar with their big heads
poking through
and no one hears the wheat grow
bending into the softness

ii

THE ILYAD

In Paphos, one momentous spring, (when nothing much was happening)
A rock-fall in a tomb caused consternation:
Behind the rocks, revealed at last, a great epistle from the past
In ancient Greek, which needed true translation.

Unfortunately for us all, to translate what was on the wall,
A vagrant Scottish drunk blagged his way in.
What follows is his woeful verse, which made a bad job ten times worse
In his grave old Homer’s having quite a spin
================================================

'Twas over forty years ago
came The Hammer and the snow.
The flying mountain which brought ruin,
freed the wolf, the lion and bruin.

Near a full year of no sunlight
resulted in near total blight.
Of trees and plants a sudden dearth
and famine came to all on earth.

"'Merica" was called this bitter land
ere the glaciers came to hand.
Their conquest still shows no retreat
none ever have enough to eat