POINT OF VIEW

As the sun rides low on the horizon,

Cold air migrates from north to south,

Shadows have sharp lines, and

Light reflects unusual wavelengths,

As a singer might voice high and low notes.

Crest to crest each vibrant color code

Translates into a clear point of view

As illusive as the size of the sun or moon

Set upon a line between earth and sky

After summer’s humid, overexposed light.

Framed, corrected view placed over a haze;

Lucid distinctions and definitions override

Uncertainty and shadows more mysterious

Than the darkest nights or rooms;

Crystal clear creates apparitions of light.

Persistent haunts that cling to the mind

Even with glasses removed and eyes closed

Rims are still visible on the back of the eyelid

Darkness is framed. 

©cmheuer, 2015

OPEN CARRY

For every call to arms may there be a call to books

For every loaded gun may there be a book of knowledge

For every raised gun may there be a book opened

For every shot fired may there be a page turned

For every life lost may there be a story saved.

Only then can someone’s call to arms be silenced

Loaded bullets ejected

Raised guns lowered

Shots unfired

Lives saved to write their own stories.

Only then can school doors open

Form words into ideas

Create libraries out of thoughts

Replace weapons with works of art--

Only then can minds grow. 

(To each and every one a call to open carry a book.)

© cmheuer, 2015 

SUMMER DUST

Summer months are fitted and cloaked

With worthless layers of dusty fabric

Assembled by wind, kicked up by bare feet,

And cascaded by rapid wheels or birds’ wings.

Uncoveted, it collects itself on any surface,

Covers up the appearance of things,

Disguises the wilted and dying,

With a thin, archetypal mask,

Conceals the luster of what had been.

Shape-shifting vagabond, without destination,

Leaves my footprints in the doorway,

Leaves an imprint of the summer’s dry sun

On the deepest well of the collective mind

As I wash it away. 

©cmheuer, 2015

THE TIGER LILY

Wild devotion curbs wanderlust

In a subtle recognition of food left next to

The old fox hole for a feral, nursing feline

And her brood of five. 

Obliged without measure, the mother cat

Staked out the house with patrols

To guard against strays and poachers,

Whose intrusions were met

With Roman back-tail arches and

Grecian serpentine hisses; she

Stalked field mice and moles with

Stealth-drawn, tactical maneuvers carried out

From dawn to dusk and from dusk to dawn;

Years of tireless and relentless gratitude,

Unspoken in the margins of a human world

There are unknown civilizations that build

Birthing beds out of the earth and befriend

Strangers who smile and place food at their feet.

© cmheuer

KNOWLEDGE LOST

Ideas unchanged and ingrained

Create a mind set in stone;

Brain cells languish among convoluted folds

All is assumed and thought disappears.

Words entertain multitudes like strings of music

Stamped out on stage or piped in for angry mobs;

Concrete sounds pump blood, adrenalin, and serotonin.

Conceptual sounds sink beneath the floor boards.

Hand-to-hand conflict and platitudinous verbal jousts

Leave gray matter unstirred by the action and thought

Laid bare upon ancient pages or upon the air of ruminating voices

Become stifled and buried like artifacts beneath unturned soil.

No room for humanity.  In a world of concrete sounds,

some parrot hustlers; some fill the void with their senses;

and some mourn knowledge lost.

© cmheuer, 2015

ASHEN COLORS

Before a summer rain there is a torpid silence,

Leaves face the sun, curled and wilted,

Dry with thirst and ashen colors,

Warped into dragon scales burned and strung across

Limbs that snap and fall to earth for cover;

Until the horizon changes.

Bearing gray over the sunlight

Leaves stir and turn their backs against a heavy wind

Picks up, beats out the morning’s dew,

Twists their arms behind their backs, and

Punches out all the light;

Before a stream of water drips over their edges

And clearly marks the surface dust.

Are the first signs of a heavy waterfall,

Rhythmic murmurs caught in a plunge

By leaves weighted and glossed over

By water too heavy to carry or hold

They bow to earth, dense and saturated in leaf tones,

With hypnotic, dulcet sounds, like insect hums,

Water steps forward and purrs in the cooled air flow

Leaves are dustless and hearing is restored.

© cmheuer, 2015

LIGHTNING BUGS

Broadcast at dusk or into the late night hours,

Signals blink on and off like beacons on dry land,

Dot and dash the dark wood line,

Grab my eyes in rapid flashes from left to right;

Erratic pulses of light meander and beckon,

Attract and confuse, leave the night in darkness--

Without a day’s illusions--

Create strokes on a dark slate.

Untranslated language written on air with light,

Messages I can’t decipher,

Transient words without sound,

Mating sonnets and warrior battle hymns.

With hands cupped to hold a heat-less flame,

I reach for one and then another, extinguished

Before my fingers can surround the flight

And seize a drop of light.

© cmheuer, 2015