BREAD CRUMBS

A pittance for the scavenger.

Scattered at the edge of the water to feed

Minnows that swarm in shallow depths;

Spread along the dirt path for birds to find;

Swept from the table or counter with a

Curved hand and flicked wrist.

Caught up in a twisted roll of the dice,

Scarcity asserts itself in bold deprivation;

Hunter-gatherers search for open landscapes

And the end of hunger in a noon or midnight

Crawl, flight, or stumble towards food

With desperate haste to break through the numbers’

Lock-jaw claim on the set of those who are starving,

Who scrounge for what can be found along the way,

Who battle against the odds,

Who covet tokens gleaned from stone.

While others bear arms;
stock guns and bombs;
take hoards;

destroy plows, herds, fields, and homes.

No more than a set of villains
who worship a dead-end set

and leave wanderers in stunned silence with

Bread crumbs in their pockets.

©cmheuer

TOTAL ECLIPSE

Candle-smoked pane of glass to view a ring of light;

A circus hoop on fire for a tiger to leap through;

Orbital motion foretold with atomic clock precision;

A new moon’s umbral shadow cast on earth

Tracks a round silhouette and cat eyes

Gathered in silence and darkness.

Minutes of time to see the paler fire wall,

Prominences and filaments,

Spewed out and seething,

An angry lion’s ruff;

An inferno around a black hole;

A sun eclipsed by a moon;

Reason eclipsed by myth.

Deep in the forest, light returns,

Cat eyes subside and slink away,

An unlit face slips out of sight

And in deep time will be too far away

To cover the sun.

© cmheuer, 2015

WASHING WINDOWS

Pollen streaked, dust smeared, and soot fingered

Until line of sight breaks, distance smudges, and

Vision reduces to a clouded lens.

Traveling light stops, and the past,

Thrown up against the glass like a bird in

Running flight, does not pass through.

Surged crest, fallen before the gaze connects,

Flounders unseen and lost at the edge of

Opaque squares set among the walls. 

Windows sketched in rooms and buildings,

Rag-washed and dried repetition clears a path

Through grime and soil for countless scenes. 

A long line of frames stored like album prints

Pocketed in clear, slip-in sheets for preservation

Grow pale and unfamiliar, disconnected.

The foreground uncoupled from the background

Until ladders are hauled out, cloths are gathered, and

Washing windows begins again. 

©  cmheuer, 2015

OUT OF MIND EXPERIENCE

Moonless and starless nights

Overcast with charred air,

Laid down in deep layers,

Give rise to a ghostly form

That hovers above my mind’s

Shrinking amorphous shape,

Sees insubstantial, sumless parts

Laid bare of their senses with a

Doppelganger’s swelling rise and reach

As it sifts into dark corners,

Stretches around my shrunken head,

Embodies a classic form with arms and legs

To walk toward a beacon of black light

While sleep waits in the wings.

© cmheuer@embarqmail.com

SUN

I can see the sun on the other side of the woods,

After the leaves fall, a growing flame,

Hidden for most of the year, draws a thin red line

Behind the tree trunks and as the night-sea crossing ends

Curls up and stares from low on the horizon

Into the windows (another version of yesterday’s light),

Red-eyed from a long unblinking night,

The solar wind casts shadows and polishes the walls with

Fleeting hand-glass images that disappear without a trace.

Tempting in its full-crested rise of hope,

To see all and to know all at the day’s break,

There is no Faustian bargain; only illusion reigns;

Omniscience hides behind a wall of light,

Behind trees of knowledge,

I see no more than a glimpse of all there is.

Dark hours and dreams vanish, forgotten.

The sun climbs trees in gusts of color,

Pen and pastel pencil ends sharpen the day,

Stream through blank spaces, yet

I know no more than I did yesterday

Even though I can see the sun rise

On the other side of the woods

After the leaves fall. 

© cmheuer, 2015 

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