TUG OF WAR

Just a game, played with a long rope.

Two separate teams

Pulled in opposite directions

until a line is crossed.

Stamped in memory like wax seals,

badges of wins and losses.

Not beehive splitting swarms,

nor super organisms,

nor colonies.

just schoolyard competitions,

teams dragged back and forth,

for success or defeat,

their strength lost in a tug of war.

And they carry it forward,

the pattern copied and repeated,

pinned onto every endeavor.

Sacred, shabby archetype,

preserved in stone and paper,

lies beneath conflict and bones of contention.

© cmheuer, 7/2020

MONOLITHS

Giant, carved, walking stones 
     with their backs to the ocean,

Their large eyes filled 
     with white coral and black obsidian,

Standing, mute and still, 
     in the light of the moon or the sun,

Their sculptors’ remnant bones 
     lying along lava cave floors.

Vessels holding sacred spirits 
     toppled after centuries

Raised again with silent, aged faces

Born out of porous, fleeting volcanic tuff,

Weathered and disintegrating, 
     obscure and beguiling.

Ancestral vigilance walks over 
     each new generation,

Diligently follows each era’s stepping stones,

Rolls up narrow carpets that lead from

Ancient memories to prophecies

Set upon the quiet lips of sepia images

Framed and smiling

For they know what we cannot know. 

© cmheuer, 2020

TURMOIL

Some days disorder surfs the wind,

sifts through flaws in window frames,

infects every surface and breath,

tears apart wanton chatter,

and spells out gibberish upon the walls,

like a maniacal howl of laughter.

Discord dominates,

cacophony drowns out symphonies,

undergrowth rises from the earth

spinning around

stems, stalks, and broken sidewalks,

until passages are shut down

and light is dimmed. 

Illusions of uniformity fade.

Symmetry disappears.

Knowledge becomes a memory.

Angles shift and rearrange into

mosaics of sharp-eyed views askew,

like Picasso’s portraits.

© cmheuer, 2020

MILKWEED PODS

Dazzling arrays of spidery floss,

     Light, but shielded,

     Hollow and waxed filaments,

Capped off at one end with dark seeds,

Spill out of slits in dry, fibrous hulls

                    Covered humbly in small spicules,

On the outside,

Soft splinters are airbrushed  

into rough coatings for

Smooth waxed insides where

Gossamer threads are spun

Into simple wings to sail upon fall winds

And float among rain drops to moist soils.

And the pale green pods, dried into brown shells,
           Held by shriveled veins with graceful

                       Curves and twisted knots

                               hang aloft on plant stems 
                                    next to leftover leaves.

An unacknowledged beauty

Overridden by delicate winged seeds that

drift among hay field grasses

To bear milkweed for the monarchs.

© cmheuer, 12/2019

UNWOUND

Wound up tin toys.
A row of ducks, a ladybug, a locomotive.
Set upon a bare wood floor

With whirrs and clicks

To run for preset times.

Wound up music boxes and carousels.

Ballerinas and horses

In predetermined spins

Set in time to the music’s meter.

Wound up spheres swirl

In predestined eddies and gyres.

Collide, explode, and devour.

Unwound, the die is cast.

Fate is sealed.

A row of ducks, a ladybug, a locomotive

Sit upon a vacuous plane

Unseen and unheard.

©cmheuer, October, 2019

BEAR SIGHTING

A windbreak of trees, thick with leaves,

In the light bending heat of summer,

Obscures what ambles along a gravel path

Beside the mowed, lime green field;

Blots out all but small, murky shadows

Of an unfamiliar shape that slinks

In and out of sight as it passes by

The gaps between the trees.

Shuffled, the broken shades resemble a

Prehistoric four-legged animal drawn on paper,

Fleshed out skeleton fossil,

An animated movie character walking across

A Jurassic Park stage set in

A triumphant return to nature’s

Wood-cleared paths.

Ambling in and out of sight before

My brown eyes can connect a shadow and an image,

Before my mind can remember a similar shape and size,

Before my mind can assign a name and a set of memories,

My ears perk up and my eyes stop blinking,

Engulfed with alarm and curiosity, motionless,

As squirrels and birds freeze soundless.

A photobomb near the end of the day,

Meekly clearing the windbreak and

Standing on all fours, headed for a garden,

Not Faulkner’s Old Ben, not a legend,

Not a child’s story bear,

Nor a dancing circus bear,

But a bear, nonetheless,

Wandering down from the mountains.

©cmheuer, 2019

THE DOLDRUMS

The leaves look rigid,

without the slight brush of a bird’s wings,

the squirrel’s dash across the limb,

or any breath of air to set things in motion.

Sculpted in place by a lack of wind,

stranded high above the earth’s reach

on branches and twigs with only
the chance of a steady, airborne course

navigated by the tree’s thin arms.

Like a flotilla stranded aloft,

stagnant in stale, upper echelons,

haunted by memories of rugged twists and turns,

of hair-raising dips and roundabouts, and

of romantic two-steps on a dance floor.

Tranquility seems ominous and unnatural

for living things, left afloat in the heat of the day,

stalled with eyes cast towards the horizon

watching for a sudden storm as if clear skies

and calm seas breed the worst of beasts.

Rather than moments of imagination

carved out of wood and set upon a wave

to mark the days of an ancient being,

side-stepped and deserted, on its rushed,

final journey to a rocky shore.

©cmheuer, 2019