Impassive of Time

Sheltered strong on eighth sixteenth note
Kept high on black mid-arching
Eyes scan breathless wastelessly marching
Fingers still feeling uncertain the fret

Stretching over leaping to violet bliss
Surfing under and over grey surface
Breathing of sandy and whitening purpose
Long and absolving more conquering mist

On land taking steps as giant as manstrides
And skipping concise as footprints
Ground caving in as gravel been put since
Fleshing out burrows and forming a couch

To Any Who Have Watched for a Son's Returning

He watched his son gather all the goods that were his lot,
anxious to be gone from tending flocks,
the dullness of the fields.
He stood by the olive tree gate long
after the caravan disappeared
where the road climbs the hills
on the far side of the valley,
into infinity.

Through changing seasons he spent the light
in a great chair, facing the far country,
and that speck of road on the horizon.
Mocking friends: "He will not come."
Whispering servants: "The old man
has lost his senses."
A chiding son: "You should not have let him go."
A grieving wife: "You need rest and sleep."
She covered his drooping shoulders,
his callused knees, when east winds blew chill, until that day . . .

A form familiar, even at infinity,
in shreds, alone, stumbling over pebbles.
"When he was a great way off,
His father saw him,
and had compassion, and ran,
and fell on his neck, and kissed him."

- Mary Lyman Henrie

What To Never Leave Me

What to never leave me
To what I will remain
The letters white and blue in white
Beneath the picture frame

Sincere the face of whispers
It speaks both day and night
Painted in my bedroom
Untouched by natural light

Words untouched by thinking
Thoughts untouched by sight
Cheerful silence kept in motion
Like hummingbird's still flight

But time—it came a'thieving
Pounding at the door
I came outside not knowing what
Would turn to nevermore

The sun—it came out staring
On me its truthful gaze
It burns my eyes, and browns my skin
And dries me in its rays

Mists of blackness follow
Like vultures take their share
My lighted steps becoming scarce
Slipping unaware

But what to never leave me
Those words of white and blue
I left the letters sitting by
The candle in my room

And what to never leave me
Remaining from the start
Sincere your silent whisper
Is framed within my heart

Earth's now toning brown
The sky—it shades to grey
But still to never leave me
A blue and simple day