COLD SPELL

Loose leaved trees and bushes,

Caught off guard by benumbed air,

As an image from a midnight dream

Intrudes upon the day and

Exchanges a sunlit memory with a shadow.

As if by hocus pocus a sudden adagio

Changes the light’s spin and

Conjures up giant spectacled wafts that

See up ahead and complete the shearing

And slow detachment of deciduous sheaths.   

Cold winds converse in hypnotic tones,

Recitations, and wheeling incantations

That lull the rooted into somnolence as they stand

On the face of the earth and begin their

Rapid descent into silence.

© cmheuer

FALLING

Like spears thrown at the earth,

carried with the wind’s force,

brown needles hunt blades of grass

impaled and singed like battlefields

strewn with weapons and flag staffs.

The bull’s-eye thrust pales in comparison to broad-leaf

shields and standards ride the falls with

winged glide and spun descent;

banners embroiled, discarded, and night drenched--

in a dreamed fall, the earth doesn’t get closer,

plummets end in mid-air, and frenzy vaporizes.

The closest step down without looking back,

and the unfallen hang on, place holders,

above the fray and discord, who see a

panoramic spread of the final assault thwarted,

a dream upended .

© cmheuer, 2014

IN MOTION

Lead foot, pedal to the metal,

There is no stillness,

Not even the dead are without motion--

Caught up in a web of spins and shafts,

Flung far outward and far inward--

Speed rules.

Not the windless day, nor the stone,

Nor absolute zero, but wheel tracks,

Cheetah paw prints and falcon flights.

Driven fleet of foot;

Driven protons plunge headfirst

Into the upper limit we try to break.

Rocket, super-sonic dash, close to the speed

Of light, pre-set cruise control haunts as

Matter touts energy for two sides of a coin;

Our flip side waffles back and forth in the wind

Full gallop, full speed, pre-coded ritual

Race against orbital pulls and an outward blast.

© cmheuer 2014

UNDERGROUND STREAMS

Trampled hay leads to the woods;

Phantom hooves wander in the night,

Spell out make-shift paths through briars and thickets,

Follow veins of creeks and streams,

Linger by rain-carved gullies.

Passage into tangled depths;

Navigation through wild growth,

Where vines grapple with tree trunks,

Thorns dangle at eye level,

Fallen logs trip a foot, and

Poison oak touches the skin.

Jagged steps steer west,

Past shallow ditches with mica deposits,

Through insect swarms,

Copperhead crawl spaces,

Predators’ dens, hutches of prey;

Imprinted on the wayfarer,

Multitudinous copies consumed

In the shadows of back wood acres.

Carried out into streets,

Where cosmic explosions are mimed

In corridors of war

Fabric is slit

Bullet struck protoplasm desiccates.

At the end of the day

At the end of the hoof prints

Underground streams

Trickle slowly beneath footsteps and

Repeat the designs of all things.

© cmheuer, 2014

LITTLE POND

Rainwater ponds flood and evaporate,

A mirage of water that overflows its banks

Or disappears beneath the earth’s surface

With the slow crawl of an animal’s thirst.

Rising to the top of the dam,

Twice the size it should have been,

Overflow creeps into grasses and briar patches,

Floats logs, turtles, frogs, and water lilies.

Or sodden bed of leaf decay dried with

Muck-laden spatterdocks left aground;  

Broken spiny branches’ flailed arms prod mud and air,

And rotted, silver-plated tree trunks lie stranded.

Two ends of a pendulum’s arc, swing of time

Between rain and drought,

Between oasis and illusion,

Between face reflected and shadowed.

© cmheuer, 2014

THUNDER MOON: July, 2014

Horizons that are vast and open

Present a perigean, full moon in the east,

Rising near a sea or a newly mown field,

The photogenic, low-hung illusion is

Touchable and oversized, like an evening giant,

Who stalks the earth, scented and eyed by dogs;

They howl louder and tides run higher; in the brightest

Reflected light, a collision of earth and rocky satellite

Does not happen. 

Horizons that are hidden by a wall of trees

Present it rising above the loblollies, oaks, and gums,

Without illusion, at a later hour;

Not as close, large, or bright, but

Each pine needle plunges into a pool of moonlight

Swept across the treetops and diffused

Upon the air in a quiet display of the sun’s light

Reflected onto earth and a rocky satellite

Glows like a compact white dwarf. 

As if in a reflection there could be a glimpse of tomorrow,

Prototype of light not yet shed,

Preview of a cataclysmic narrative,

Synopsis of a star’s evolution,

Like words reflected on the page from a mind. 

© cmheuer, 2014

MIDNIGHT

At the stroke of midnight

One day slips beneath the next;

Clock sounds rumble from a

Subduction zone where the crust of time

Descends into a molten past;

Percussion waves reverberate in the dark,

Move across folded minds,

Shake out the sun-built edifices, and

Crumble their brick and mortar walls.

When all are flat and dark,

When all are scrambled,

When all are broken,

Survivors crawl out of the rubble,

Heave up to the surface in desperate bursts,

Like deep sea divers who rise and float

Briefly among the debris,

Before they hobble across the land,

Turn back to see the extinguished,

Plod through the uproar and gather round

For the break of day.   

© cmheuer, 2014 

PHOTOGRAPH IT

Perhaps a spirit has been stolen when the shutter snaps

Taking a split second of light and freezing it on a flat surface;

Even if it is a scene and not a portrait,

Ariel, imprisoned in a tree, was freed.

Thus a spirit is engraved and exposed

To my eye, as a memory is to my mind,

Point of view and visage, stage and curtain,

Intercepted and pinned,

Like butterflies caught in a net,

Like words held to a page,

Each fleet-footed spark

Catches fire and burns away

The lost and unseen ashes

From which the image can rise again

From the depths of light. 

© cmheuer, 2014

SEASHELLS

Buried in sand, our toes divine them like a water stick,

Surf-polished exoskeletons, four layers deep,

Sculpted in whorls and terraces when the

Ocean floods and wind-dragged waves

Dash back to the sea.

Bones wash ashore,

Lie disguised by grace of form;

Such outer shells, like pearls,

Conjure up thieves of ocean scraps,

Bait our steps along the shore,

Surround our eyes

With structural remains

In a low-tidal charnel house

Left adrift before an open sky and dune of clouds.

Relics sift out,

Like fossils unearthed and prized,

For a history of carrion,

Whose rigid shapes are borne upon their backs

And set upon display,

While our hidden bones are

Buried earthen deep and

Marked with name on stone.

© cmheuer, 2014

BRANCHES AND TWIGS

The annual shearing of the trees in temperate zones

Coincides with cold winds and long nights,

Synchronizes with axis tilt and color changes, and

Staggers the fallout across the breadth of days.

Tentacled trunks, stripped lean and spare,

Proffer their leafy harvest in a cyclic exchange of

Quid pro quo with the earthen underground table and

Stretch their branches and twigs in a yawn upon awakening, 

From a deep sleep beneath the leaves’ thick cover.

Deciduous trees throw off their spring and summer spawn;

Layered and woven by wind and rain, the dark russet

Blanket slips and falls across the soil’s girth.

And from every tower grown upwards in the search for a sun

Beyond an earth-bound reach, each branch and twig

Is another intention sprouted, a slightly different decision

Born at an angle from the others and joined

In a circular maze upon the breached air.

Their stark ambition exposed in the harsh winter months

Their suppliant offerings refused and fallen,

Their lined palms extended in a bow to the cold winds.

© cmheuer, 2014

GATHERING CLOUDS

Huddled against the wall of a back room

Where the oaks’ large limbs couldn’t fall,

Knees drawn up and held with clasped hands,

Fuses pulled from the breaker box, antenna disconnected,

Wind-whipped clothes pulled off the line, damp and unfolded,

As gathering clouds blotted out the light.

Silently they watched through the window;

Early winds billowed the voile curtains,

Stirred the over-heated room like hand-held fans.

Rain drops hit the screen and in a spitting flash of light,

A tear in the fabric appeared,

The foundation of the house shook,

Windows gasped,

And dark clouds descended like swarms of locusts.

Eyes and ears are covered with trembling hands,

As glaciers calve and melt, seashores submerge,

Oceans bear oil slicks and plastic islands,

And elephants and lions disappear,

Those who speak or write of it are not heard or read

In the thundering clouds.

© cmheuer, 2014  

HEADWINDS

Tall pines are rarely still, even in quiet sunlight

The highest needles sway while the lower branches and

Trunks balance out the motion with horizontal and vertical calm.

A recognition of upper winds travels through veins,

Knowledge being a tree’s birthright,

Headwinds forewarn a gale, counter the normal easy passage of

Air through the conifers’ slender fingers,

Create the power to bend and twist each branch

Caught up in an invisible brawn.

There is a line between a breeze and a tempest,

Like a spider’s first thread cast as an anchor in the wind,

To forge a way across the silence to the loudest torrent of air and water-

Fierce, rapid drumming against the ear. 

Predator wind, vine-wrapped around the trees, 

Flashing air split in search of the tallest

Trunks in a thundered clash, tangled arms broken,

Bark stripped from top to base in a wide swath

And threaded back into soil.

© cmheuer, 2013

MACHINES

Assembled moving parts work a certain way,

Carve into time like notched wheels of old watches,

Insert themselves in a room or a landscape

As naturally as overgrown weeds in a garden

Untended at the end of a season and

Left to winter’s slow erasure.

Hollow vibrations drown out nature’s warning calls,

Create a language of background noise

Overhead in a field of clover,

Fading along the railroad tracks or a country road,

Above the wind’s howl the engines drone and

Pale blue lights sweep every space, indoor and out--

Surround sound and backlit screens multiply,

Seep into every corner and every hand and eye--

A flood of energy moves and heats the air,

Stores sound and light,

Replaces mind, hands and feet,

Becomes as obsolete as wasted muscle and bone

Fails, in the dark of night,

Machines echo off walls and faces stare

Before the sudden sharp plastic metal twist

And there is nothing but silence in the air.

© cmheuer, 2013

OLD PAIR OF BLUE JEANS

Like an old pair of blue jeans washed

Until the denim dye fades to a pale, blue mist

And the cloth takes on the character of another skin,

Thin and unraveling at the knees,

Molded and worn out remnants of cotton twill

Cling to my bare legs and silently languish. 

And the slow disintegration of the woven threads

Begins my descent out of a pale light;

My headlong sprint into the heaviest fog,

Too dense to see my footsteps fall,

With jeans torn, thorns cut through to the thighs,

Blood droplets seed the earth and deep mist spreads

Through the tall grass and thickets as

Tree trunks fuse with the thick, blue-grey haze

And tree tops become obscure.

Breathless at the end of my run, the old jeans are vague now

And disappear among the vapors.

© cmheuer, 2013

HEAT WAVE

Sweat bristles on the skin in a moist film strip,

Runs, transparent and beaded, unreeled,

Light traces out the edge of the dampened hairline,

The shape of the forehead

Dripping wet into the eyes, where salt burns

And clouds the scene.

A heat wave blisters the earth’s surface,

Invades airspace first,

Subdues the things I try to see second,

Traps them all, like animals caged before slaughter,

Like chickens crated and stacked on a flat-bed truck,

Their feathers scattered along a buckled road.

Leaves wilt, water draws back from the pond’s edge,

Mud hardens and cracks,

Trees stare out from the shade of

Their parched green skins and shudder in a slight breeze

That drives in the heat dome and slams shut an unknowable door

That takes away the draft and stifles sound.

Raccoons cool their nursing bellies in a bird bath;

Sun bleach overexposes everything it touches;

Slowly wicks away water and burns yellow and brown;

Heat surfs down to earth, casts a flood light,

Marbles the forest floor with sun spots that grow as

The living curl up, the hot liquid air runs

Like melted wax down a candle where nothing can fly

So close to the sun.

© cmheuer, 2013

FLOCKS

Like stars on a journey

Birds in air and sheep on land

Set an arrow in bow and

One flies point

One walks point

Others follow rules

Steer to average

And the numbers grow

Super organisms

Wing tip to wing tip

Side to side

Time flies, catches a wind

Walks in lockstep along steep slopes

And when the muscles wear down and the wings falter

When the bones ache and the feet stumble

After seed is devoured and grass is gnawed

Branches bow in a weighted droop

And fields and thickets lie trampled flat

The sheer number of them

Crowded inside a skull

Migrate across the mind

Crawl at the feet

Circle about the head

Roost until startled

Scatter and re-group

Descend and rise

A voice on air

An image in my mind

© cmheuer, 2013

A RANDOM THOUGHT

A dogwood petal in air,

A light wind directs its fall,

Motion blurs its surrounding colors,

In its flight, in its exquisite focus,

It is a sail,

At the wide outer edge,

Curled up into two lobes,

A tip of reddish brown above

A wing unfurled

And set upon the grass,

Among others

Scattered around

A tree’s circle, a pilgrim,

In solemn respect.

© cmheuer, 2013

9-11-2001

When the emblazoned shields like glass

break and rain down,

When steel girders melt near the sun

and fall uprooted and twisted,

There is no solace, no ancient

philosopher to stir the ashes,

While our primal vision descends the stairs

and cloaks the ruins,

Where the raw edge of being lies

Exposed and our eyes shudder.

© cmheuer, 2013

POND ICE

One footstep on the edge of the ice reverberates

In a slow march across the pond, through air to tree tops,

Broken, hyphenated sounds

Make the foot pull back before the ice caves.

Sound measures when the eyes can’t see

Through clear, corrugated water, solid enough for

Tree images to reflect from the middle of the pond frozen

Still In the light of a cold sun; the sharp surface retort

Rejects the weight of a tentative step rings out

Across the surface and silences the birds’ calls.

Water and air divided, uneven and uncertain,

Imprinted with weightless tree replicas,

Their top branches copied onto the center,

Close enough to touch if footsteps were not too heavy.

A thin crust thickens in time, keeps the fluid layer warm,

Creates a stone silence at the edge of a field,

Holds simple waves captive at their peaks,

Like fossils from the first cold wind left to stand in mid-stroke,

Their march suspended in mid-step,

As a foot, held back quickly at the sound of an alarm.

© cmheuer, 2013

OPEN BOOK

If trees and moss were bound and stitched to a forest floor

Like pages to leather covers;

Nature would be a narrative, like an open book,

Spine aligned with front and back pages,

Leaves slightly bowed up from the center

Or flipped backwards and forwards in a light wind.

Days would be marked on the pages and ordinary things would

Drive the action:  a tree might lose a limb; a fox might catch a rabbit.

As actions become a plot, sometimes on stage,

Sometimes behind the foliage,

The number of characters would be endless,

And on the surface all would appear as a setting where

Only the most obvious plots could be read.

A narrative assumes detail; leaves it hidden between the lines,

Sums it up in a word or a sentence, ignores what is presumed irrelevant,

Because only the largest plots can be discerned

While swarms of the smallest bits and pieces that

Assemble, disassemble, and reassemble,  

Create subplots that virtually appear and disappear.

If a writer were to capture a bit of it, and

Another writer were to capture another bit of it,

Would the sum of the plots and subplots of all the writers create a universe,

Like a Borges Library, or would it always be incomplete,

Like an alphabet of infinite characters with something always outside of it?

© cmheuer, 2013

AFTER THE VERNAL EQUINOX

Quiet drumming on the shingles,

Rivulets run down the slope of the woodland floor,

Flood the naturalized daffodils as the drums beat louder,

Splatter the improvised reservoirs of rain water,

Dammed up behind the moss mounds,

Spread around the sides with channels of current swifter than the drums,

Carry specks of winter’s earth, bits of leaves and brown evergreen needles,

Water the earth’s crust and flow east.

Rivulets join channels join reservoirs,

Patch and cover winter’s bare earth;

A gradual slope slowly erodes and levels,

In a shallow backyard flood, the drums beat louder.

The sun’s heralds recede before it arrives,

The drums are silent, the water seeps into the earth,

Drifts into the woodlands;

New light spreads across the moss mounds,

Flows in rivulets and channels around the tree trunks,

Fills in every fissure of the earth’s skin,

Highlights hollows, ripples, and wrinkles,

Meanders and cascades along the sinuous veins,

Shadows tall pine spires and deciduous tree branches,

Illuminates newborn translucent leaves barely unfurled,

Drenches a multitude of azalea blossoms clustered,

Creates a thin, breathing membrane in vibrant Technicolor;

Pollen spreads in clouds of green and yellow dust,

Seeds sprout and start the arduous climb towards the sun.

All of this,

After the day and the night are equally long,

After neither half of the earth points directly at the sun,

After the northern hemisphere’s vernal equinox,

After the first day of the sun’s New Year. 

© cmheuer, 2013

SCHOOL DESK IN AN ARTIST’S STUDIO

Plain tablet desks queued from the back of the room to the front,

And from side to side, with an occasional one set askew in a corner

Or some other empty space just big enough to hold the functional

Wooden design with slats underneath for books and a

Flat top curved and rounded like a student’s relaxed position

With head tilted to the back of the chair and

Hips slid to the edge of the seat for a day of inornate study drills

And recitations that replayed memories like Gregorian Chants. 

Words and numbers sprawled out across the room,

Reverberated in corners, and attached to chalk boards or paper

For the eyes to affirm what the ears had heard.

Parades of voices played across the din of shuffling feet--

Wooden joints creaked and wooden legs scraped;

Restless, muscled bones shifted in a rhythmic march

Of steps in tune, the cadence set, in a game of musical chairs

Until there is only one left, salvaged and set 

In the center of an artist’s studio for an old poet,

Eyes caught in a flurry of taborets, brushes, palettes,

And an empty dijon mustard jar among the landscapes

Streamed along the wall, cupboarded in floor shelves,

Leaned against one another like books stacked in a library row.

Snow-covered earth; morning-lit, river-tree branches;

Dark-grotto water lilies; frozen and flooded farm fields; turbulent clouds;

Stone boulders; and rock faces.   Sun-lit, shadowed ponds and rivers

Fused the mirror with the mirrored, and the aged poet’s

Gaze enveloped each painting as if wind clouds or

River currents, unbound and wild, buffeted against the surfaces

With light from another’s mind memorized and stored, she

Looked away from the tablet arm because words didn’t need to

Touch the artist’s ear.

© cmheuer, 2013

BIRD’S NEST

To find a bird’s nest where a wasp’s nest had been

Reversed the order of things.

Where a bird’s nest had been the year before,

A wasp’s nest had been built after a snake

Crawled up the porch post and found the eggs in

A corner next to the ceiling. 

The mother bird sat on the railing below the nest

For a week or so, not singing, but

Making a loud bird noise.

The wasps had their mythical chimera, too;

A giant two-legged, two-armed, one-segmented torso

And head brandished a broom stick and felled their paper nest at dusk,

Sweeping it from the porch to the ground.

The wasps returned and quietly

Rebuilt their large paper comb

Out of mandible-chewed wood pulp.

Rocky ledges, treetop aeries, eaves,

Earthen mounds, flat lands, and beaches lure

Nest builders with a ritual numerical chant:

Some will survive against all odds.

All others don’t.

And the mother bird sits on the sidewalk next to the

Bird’s nest where the wasp’s nest had been and

Makes a loud bird noise.

© cmheuer, 2013 

SILENCE LONG PRACTICED

The slight rise of the hill,

Before the sharp right turn,

Obscures more than the earliest

Angle of the cars’ lights

Before the dawn the low slung

Beams spread across the tar

And stone skipped across the higher

Rise of the eye’s need to see

His features cleared,

Transparent in the background

Shifts behind each eye movement,

Each changed lip curve

Implies meaning, a hidden scene,

A word unspoken from

Silence long practiced

Until one eye questions another eye

And the foreground shifts

In front of each early morning’s

Scene each feature is overlaid

Each voiced sound rises and cancels

Out the view until their spoken words recede.

© cmheuer, 2013

LAST SUMMER’S BLOSSOMS

Daffodils sprout in the sun,

Mosses spread in the shadows of the wood lines,

Three-legged pine needles scatter across the ground,

Collect among low-lying bushes;

Pine cones sit at the feet of the trees’ trunks, and

Last summer’s blossoms, dried brown, on a snowball shrub,

Linger like desiccated memories held fast upon neural branches,

As sudden gusts of wind slowly erode each petal from

Last summer’s round froth bubbles,

A memory becomes fainter and fainter,

Edges blur and few kernels of the blooms remain,

Distorted and skewed from the motion of wind and time.

Stalks that bore them are leafless, dry strands that

Bear the weight of the newborn shoots and hold them

Above ground for a season of new baubles to reflect a sun’s light.  

© cmheuer, 2013

THE WAVE OF A GRAY WOOL SCARF

Clouds cover the sun

The rest of the moon’s crescent

And the morning star

Screened through water vapor

Some light emerges

Subdued by the wave of a gray wool scarf

In the slow motion wind

Raises the leaves from their

Late burial

Lifts the wings of the gulls

Drift inland, flock to the edge

Of the brick building’s

Flat roof

Intrudes, cuts across the

Dim, gray air

     The squeal of the gull

     Lies below the clouds

     Above his face

     The shout of the gull

Raises his eyes

Tips his chin away

From the shrubs and the road.

© cmheuer, 2013

WINTER PRELUDE

Everything thrown away collects and litters,

Empty cups and paper wrappers along a roadside ditch,

Broken branches and furrowed bark laid out among ferns,

Like afterthoughts disconnected and meaningless until

An early sharp drop freezes leaves and pine needles to

Moss threads or brown grass strands and

Scatters hoarfrost around like seeds

After strong winds plow through at ground level.

Vapor and dew crystallize in uniform cover

Fields turn into a white-frothed sea

Parsed by bordering tree-trunk pillars

Give ancient Grecian depth and

I wonder when the rime is going to rise

Above the lines of the tree trunks’

Dark high water marks,

 And flow beyond the edge of the field,

And flood the rubbish-mottled floor of my mind,

While a woman, bare-headed, stands in the wings

By bare-branched trees. 

© cmheuer, 2013