APPARITIONS

Apparitions live within mind folds;

dart in and out like zig-zagged thunderbolts;

briefly illuminate the dark with summer heat lightning.

These vague, shadowy creatures have to be read silently

without lip movement or voice;

they roam at will across sensed landscapes

And haunt bleak, time-filmed realms.

Eavesdropping discloses their dialogues as

they assemble themselves

into harmonizing strings and babbling tin-cans—

strange, discordant flickers of ephemeral text—

unrestrained, jagged pulses that surge forward and retreat.

These shades command attention in dark nights;

seize upon stillness to breed their frenzied lineage;

torment their hosts with incessant jolts; and

fling open doors to fear and invention.

Hovering specters flood cavernous minds,

shapeshift to elude capture and

taunt any who want to behold them. 

©cmheuer, 2018 

LEAF FLOCKS

Leaf flocks turn up on bald branches,

Appearing overnight it seems—

Communal roosts that won’t fly away at dawn—

Filling in the blanks between heaven and earth

With rusty red and green quill feather strokes.

Leaf colonies stretch out across the forest floor,

Indistinct and unseen, at first—

Tendril drops hidden in a tree clump’s old carpet—

Threading their way over fallen decayed logs

With broad, embroidered green lines.

Leaf migrations follow strange routes,

Invisible expeditions without miles—

Journeys born of spring and foiled by winter—

Catching rain and hindering footsteps

With swaths of dense green words. 

©cmheuer, 2018

TIME CHANGE

Time surrounds us like a strong wind,

Swirls at different speeds,

Assails with gale-force buffets,

Scatters dead leaves around

To see what lies beneath,

Drops pine cones, gum balls, and

Branches from tree tops in a fitful rage,

Before it moves on and leaves

A mime’s impression of a light breeze to

Stir the heap of remnants with

One-directional hand-spins, sun shadows,

And verb-tense changes that can craft narratives.

The invisible, fourth-dimensional coordinate

Scratches out its effects, strange hieroglyphics,

Clues to a new lexicon,

Spoken and written only by time itself,

Etched into our faces,

Engraved onto our countryside,

Imprinted upon our skies and horizons,

Woven through layers of earth.

Translators and code breakers surrender,

Leave its secrets untouched for a new generation,

Know they cannot outwit its stealth and mastery

Of all change, transition, and ephemeral being,

Cannot reset the rambling itinerary,

Cannot escape its edicts even if they can calculate a way,

Unless time, itself, changes. 

©cmheuer, 2018

CONTINUUMS (A PONDERING)

Possible-probable-certain.

Perhaps there are discrete bubbles

Of descriptive states of being

Or of things in and of themselves.

Perhaps it is all nothing more than

Laws of scale creating continuums

With overlapping bubbles or circles

That confuse and perplex a mind’s need

For clarity and cohesion. 

Perhaps the mind’s feeble set of skills

Fail at solving conundrums. 

Perhaps uncertainty principles and

Incompleteness theorems are thrown aside,

because the mind shuts out what is

difficult to know.

Is that why so many don’t know the difference

Between what is possible and what is probable?

Is that why improbable conspiracy theories prevail

Despite the age of enlightenment?

Is that why the earth’s temperatures continue to rise,

why rapid-fire weapons are hawked to civilians,

why our poor, our immigrants, and our refugees are belittled,

why peace on earth is no closer today than it was yesterday—

why our children die preventable, senseless deaths?

©cmheuer, February, 2018

IN BETWEEN THE RAINDROPS

Buckets of water sit beside an old iron pitcher pump.

They are emptied into a reservoir until

a gush of cold, ground water flows

with each downward push on a rusted pump handle.

Water splashes across the sun-struck, concrete, well cover;

basins, buckets, and animal troughs are refilled;

bird calls spread throughout the air,

as if sugar-pop nectars bloomed in swarms,

But sun-drenched afternoons give way to dark clouds

that move quickly and stream their own water falls

along the edge of a roof’s overhang.

Out there, in between the rain drops,

there is dry air, cooled and set in motion

as heat rises above the tree canopies,

as water drips onto grass blades, leaves, and petals,
as some burrow in tree hollows
and others crouch under wooden eaves, 
there is a deep breath.

Heavy winds clamor in the fields and woods,

carry undisguised truths hidden in their pockets--
until the chilling water's flow
bursts through the air, floods the earth, and

spills into underground streams that fill the well

and quench a day’s thirst for knowledge.

© cmheuer, 2/2018 

QUIET SPACES

There are quiet spaces,

snow-covered fields without footprints,

deep forests without bird songs or wind sighs,

empty nests, architectural nooks, or

a creek’s lazy flow that soothes a finger’s touch.

Once the drive-in picture show shuts down and

speakers are set back on their stands;

once windows are steamed and fogged,

all eagle eyes, tied to motion, turn inward,

where words tumble around in vacuous spaces,

collide and connect, create symbols and metaphors.

Yet, there are quiet spaces,

at the end of a book or a song,

after a sunset’s burst of light,

before a storm breaks on the horizon,

where words evaporate and music is silence,

where time stands still and waits. 

©cmheuer, January, 2018

COUNTDOWN

Ten seconds are but a brief measure of time

to end the year with crystal balls and fireworks,

for merry-making crowds awash in winter’s cold,

their fortune-teller omens drowned out by noisemakers,

as the year’s boundary reaches a hair’s breadth away.

The rise in fever pitch slows down the descent,

flashes meteoric memories behind the eyes,

blinds any view beyond star-struck gazes,

as dinosaurs must have stared

before the K-T boundary was laid. 

The countdown gets closer to one,

the doomsday clock looms above the bacchanal,

unseen, it beats out a metric drum roll,

unheard by multitudes who believe in and

count down to

tomorrow.

© cmheuer, 2017