Beethoven

 

The rains had soaked the fallen leaves and pine needles;

Birds and squirrels sat hushed on their feeders;

It was a quiet winter morning without any wind.

 

All had stopped as Beethoven’s sonatas played

To towering trees and their decayed leaf mounds,

To evergreens and unseen wild things, and

To patches of blue and grey sky

That appeared transfixed and devout,

As the notes completed their handwritten,

Penciled score from the depths

Of the mind of a man who would lose his hearing.

 

They all bowed as if in a prayer

To restore the music of the spheres,

While I read about war-torn countries

And the killing of their poets.

 

©cmheuer, 12/2023

AT A LOSS FOR WORDS

 

Words, untied from their moorings,

And cast adrift upon a meaningless sea,

 

Wind-tossed, wave-driven,

Empty hulls that heave in rough waters,

Sail into cyclones and jet streams,

Crash onto rocky clifts, wash up on sandy beaches,

 

Disconnected, senseless,

Bandied about in mass deceit and manipulation,

Empty husks of sounds floating around,

One voice to another,

until

Nothing is known,

          and

All are speechless.

 

©cmheuer, November, 2023

 

A BLIGHT

 

 

An ancient oak, larger than life,

          Added a new ring each year that I grew;

          its branches stretched

                    higher and wider than

                   my near-sighted eyes could see. 

 

Its summer canopy kept me cool.

Its fall acorns fed pigs and squirrels.

Its history lay hidden under

          thick layers of bark. 

 

Its roots spread onto the dirt road,

          as if it could travel, too,

          keeping our stories in its ring cycles.

 

Then standing without new leaves,

          with branches breaking,

 

Falling before me.

 

©cmheuer, 7/2023

VERNAL EQUINOX

 

Light is different now,

          not just that the day is as long as the night,

          but that it strikes head on

          instead of arriving at an angle.

 

It has a new clarity,

washes off blurred beginnings,

creates a sharp focus,

exposes cherry blossoms destroyed

by a night’s deep freeze,

          highlights bird and squirrel feeding frenzies,

          unveils the forest floor bare of underbrush,

          warms the beech trees’ tawny leaves

                   still branched and shifting

in the wind before

they fall.

 

It stretches out the length of the trees

                   to greet the stars,

          sheds images of small spaces,

peers into deep wells of mystery

that surrounded long nights,

          uncovers what we can know,

                   all the way back to the beginning

of the first light.

 

 

©cmheuer, 3/2023

UPHEAVAL

 We balance on a transient tightrope strung across

          a crevasse too wide to bridge,

We sway in a catastrophic wind listening

          for earthen tremblors and volcanic explosions,

We tremble from visions of apocalyptic

wild fires, tornadoes, droughts, and floods,

We scan the horizon for an asteroid impact  

          like the K-Pg mass extinction event,

We calculate that the sun will become a red giant

          in five billion years and engulf the earth,

We hypothesize the end of our universe and

          baryonic matter,

But above all we sense the aggression and violence

         of our own kind whose maniacal dance

wobbles the high wire and causes us to

lose our equilibrium and slip into oblivion

like virtual particles

popping into and out of existence.

 

©cmheuer, March, 2023    

A DISTANT POINT

 

On the horizon of sleep

there is a distant point,

          evasive and unknown,

because it is never remembered

after being found,

 

After a long search

          through blankets tossed and turned,

After mantras recited

          and silent lullabies sung,

After eyes are closed tight

          And breaths taper off,

After sheep are counted,

          the point is untouched,

          while the hands of the clock

                   crawl past midnight.

 

The sunlight strays into the window

          and ends a dream remembered,

          but that distant point found

          after a long, restless struggle

          is still unknown.

 

cmheuer ©12/2022

RUBY-THROATED HUMMINGBIRDS

 

 

It is the sudden movements through the air

     that catch my eagle eyes,

        the wild dart and loop,

           the calligraphy marks,

             sky written and invisible,

     amid midair hovering, feeding, and fighting

     with wings that beat

          thousands of times per minute

            and hum louder 

        than the earth’s quiet murmur.

 

It is the flying jewels, neck feathers,

glistening in the light,

the ruby reds in a vibrant sun,

that draw me into their supernatural memories

of past migrations,

of rich nectars and flowers

along hundreds of miles

between breeding and wintering grounds.

 

It is the heralding of spring and fall,

without pomp and circumstance,

that their appearance and disappearance

foretell with a sharper vision than my eagle eyes

will ever know as I wander from

room to room, window to window,

in search of their beating wings and sword-like beaks

when the flowers blossom and fade. 

 

 

 

cmheuer, © October, 2022