Across the shambled ruins
Of empire,
The wild winds
Of innocence
Shift the sands
Of bitter bones
And the fragments
Of forgotten footprints.
There by the wave
Of the waters of the great
Sea, the barn owl,
Who, of yore,
Invoked
The falling
Stars, flits in moth-dreamed
Elegance
From cliff to cave
In the silvered night
Where the stands
Of singing pines
Await
The bright
Rising
Of the moon, whose cowl
Of fire
Gleamed
In the time before
Time,
From the mist-cloaked
Hill of haunting
Stones.
Written around 2004
Photo: Steve Allen / Dreamstime.com