The Last Winter Rose...

Full Cold Moon

December 28th, 2012

~ Please Share The Experience ~

The Last Winter Rose...

Coyote howled to another dawn

The cold Winter Moon is a bitter sweet mistress

Luna’s final full phase of another passing year

Hope can grow faint so subtly,

That it is barely noticeable,

Until its former presence fades away…

Falling from love’s spinning wheel

Feels as if gravity has drawn out the Ocean’s final tide

Visions of grandeur adorn new beginnings

Their smoke and mirrors embellish illusions,

While leaving a pathway of footprints,

Leading to the conclusion of dead end dreams

The victim of my own imagination watches

As the imagined remaining natural elements 
Become obscure

The more things change 
The more they remain the same

It is daunting how the chicanery of the mind

Plays tricks on the lonely heart of it’s flesh

Loss of balance leads to mere mortal ambiguity

Being pricked by the barbed stem

Of a beautiful thorny rose,

Is like a dart to the heart

You feel the sting at the moment of penetration,

However the drip of blood cannot be heard

Over an emotional sigh too deep for words.

Life slowly trickles out drowning the spirit of the soul…

Silently, without notice from the outside world

A broken heart bleeding out one drip at a time is painless,

Except to look in the mirror and watch it happen,

Knowing all the while the end is near,

Watching as sheer agony unfolds...

The only way to stop the bleeding,

As a broken heart suffers

Through the ache of unrequited love,

Is to stay away from thorny roses

Under the lonesome shining light

Of the fully illuminated Cold Moon…

Harlon Rivers…December 27^th, 2012

"Bury Me Alive"

"Bury Me Alive"

I taste the earth in my mouth

as you bury me alive

Emotions buried alive never die

A new dawn was stealing

over the mountain tops

of the distant horizon

But now ethereal shadows fall

as if a Broken Moon

blocked the Sun’s newly rising shine

Once, a ray of hope shown

through the parting clouds

giving birth to a new day

Born of mother earth

she fills the corner of my eyes with dust

while muddy tears chill the diminishing light

Out of the corner of her eyes

she watches the remaining struggle

for the signs of the last remaining sighs

Fearing an earth filled mouth breathes like a tree

rooted deeply in the bed rock of the terrestrial planet 

Silently exhaling essence into other realms

Foot prints on a heart ~

A promise of understanding ...abandoned

Dirt blankets any traces of love left uncovered

I feel the earth in my mouth

as you bury me alive

suffocating slowly…

Breathless…

as darkness temporarily eclipses ... 
~ life ~

Harlon Rivers...December 21th, 2012

A Prayer at the Vertical Crossroads ...

Standing at the vertical crossroads

Standing tall on bended knees

Kneeling at the foot of a stairway to the clouds

When the spell was finally broken down

What remains is pulled in two different directions

Feeling an uneasy wanderlust in my soul

A journey stopped short at these crossroads

The decision to turn back is no longer mine to hold

Scanning the unseen distant horizon

Imagining vividly the outlying realm beyond

Searching for the lighthouse lantern burning

Listening for the Mission bell’s ringing song

"Guide my ship home to safe harbor"

Hope's shining white light of amazing grace... beckons me on

Take my hand my sweet Lord, please guide me ~

Reach out and touch my heart and soul...

Will all my trials soon be over?

Is it truly darkest before the dawn?

I'm drowning in a river of my own tears

For the shame of fear in doing wrong

Faith assures we were never born to drown here
Safely crossing many rivers wide going home

 One love cannot stay on hold forever
A heart needs a home...

Harlon Rivers ... December 11th, 2012

The Hush of Understanding

You could see him walking hesitantly across the vista hillside

Each step seemed to be carefully chosen

as if the fragile earth could be damaged by his footprint.  

Stopping as if he had arrived at the final destination.

 

His stature left the impression of a gentle man

You knew at first sight, there was more to him than that notion.

Always alone... like he was serving some life sentence

A solitary confinement that banished him to a life of solitude 

"Why do you trust me so,"  thought the gentle man,

staring into the tall field of grass? 

He realized what was thought in his mind,

was spoken out loud breaking the silence.

They just looked back at him with raised ears,

then looked away into the wooded grove as if to say,

 “you know why”…

The soft baritone voice would often be heard

in the hush of nature’s tranquility.

He spoke to them as if he could understand their silent response

from some other ancient level of existence.

He sat on a nearby mossy rock very quietly

imagining he were part a oneness with the small herd.

He had a spirit that belonged "somewhere."

His ragged beard and salt and pepper untrimmed hair

left the impression he was from a simpler time

From a place where the world no longer passed by

on its search for rhapsody

 

Blending against the stillness of that boulder,

He felt so grounded in nature and yet so misunderstood,

Irrelevant and abandoned by man, 

dreaming he was no longer human

as he melted into the arms of mother earth

Some slept, some watched with curiosity
His heart ached for the sigh of human touch

None moved away from the presence of the moment...

With heads and ears to the sky, they all seemed to move closer

in an unguarded air of relaxation as he continued to weep

"Why must I always feel like I will never be loved?"

"Why have I never been accepted as I am anywhere but here?"

Becoming fully immersed

in the spontaneous soul flow of harmony,
The silence of the deer replied... 

That One in the Mirror

...an autobiographical poem from "Diary of the Falling Dominoes" ... by Harlon Rivers

There is someone in the mirror

I can’t recognize

Although it seems like

there are eerie familiarities

I used to know by 

heart... 

There have been so many changes;

You win some and you lose some

Recognition feels like trying to identify 
an unknown face, 
from behind an impossible mask ...

All the ships that sailed away

all the here and now's that came and went

Those hollow eyes look scarred and tagged

by the salty tears of what they saw

Crow’s-feet are growing more vivid 
with each aching heart's opine...

Lines extend back from the corners 

Rooted deeply in an unrecognizable evolving 

mind ... 

Fingers fumble about these dark circled reflections

Nervously… smudging a fingerprint's smear of haziness

As if the face were a paint by number self portrait

The color number for the shade required is called 
pain ...

In this long glance ~ 
… Déjà vu …

“Your faded memory 
is beginning to come back to me”...

“Yes you’re the one that’s uncomfortable in here”

“The one who can’t stand crawling

inside of my own skin”…

2012 Harlon Rivers