The Snow Hangs Heavy ―

The snow hangs heavy

With snow up to my ass and a relentless bitter cold
that penetrates the snow-bound crust to the earthen marrow
This frozen moment crawls naked , coursing knee deep
through overwhelming sparseness of shivery barebones

Disheveled subterranean depths sleep like the decadence
a heart long forgotten ,  arrest in its own neglected silence

Winterlude  and a newly befallen atrophy
takes this desolate hillside to an uncommon abyss
Benumbing aloneness bespeaks in onomatopoeia ;
the only voices heard in eons are the birds  chirrups
and coyote's urgent appeal
                        for life sustaining needs

            The brumal words of apathetic pleads
                        tersely thaw the moment,...
                    murmurs unto the heavens echo, 
                     splintering the probing silence :

                      " You who are my home ―  My salvation lies in your love "

                                         The melancholy air thickens ―

                                    The fleeting birds startlingly scatter
                                  like the rising cloud of spoken breath
                 that wisps across these raw cracked and chapped lips
                                                unsettling the silence
            
                      Overwearied, alone again in a biting polar darkness
                       Sunlit hues of snowbound white on white echo off
                                  the wasted time I’m living frozen in ―


Moonset  ricochets a gut wrenching Déjà vu ,
an abhorred circle repeats as I can’t even remember
the last time I saw bare pavement ,
              nor when the dreams wearyingly stopped ―

                               The hidden reasons
        too loathe to remember  ―  too loathe to forget

I can’t even remember that last time at the end of the road ;
or was it the beginning or another circle's blurred lines 

                                   of fleeting time ?

             It's a long and twisted road I've been walking on ―
        the unfathomable map, but a wadded up paper dream

The fir boughs hang down , propped up by the wintry ground ,
      entombed by the heavy burden of gravity, snow and ice

                     My tongue  frozen to these raw unspoken words ...
             Ink pen like a chalice of ice-cold stifled heart filled with algid ink ,
                       unable to rise up as reflected light so bright echoes
                                     in blinding uncharted lumens .

                          When twilight illuminates the frigid tundra ,
                the snow hangs heavy 
      like the weight of burden’s despair.

Such primordial enchantment , a facade to the chattering teeth
    of elemental misery ;  the grasping , clasping choke hold
of single digit desolation , a contradiction of the harsh realities
  a fickle infatuation with the beauty of an affecting moment


harlon rivers ... January 15th, 2017

Diary of the Falling Dominoes ..." Who will look after us ? "

" Who will look after us ? "    1. 11. 2017

    Its getting too dark               Too dark see ―

There abides a fog that entombs a lonely silence

like the peace on a shoreline that will never be 

Genetic seeds sown, unweeded cancer grown tears ―

An unpicked mango sized tumor, to be reaped like tears of grief

The kind of hidden misery losing love breeds

Like a bullet to a lonely heart that only wanted to be

an unthrown stone within an unknown mazy blackness

that has grown into a mountain too steep to climb

My head is heavy and heart empty bleeds

A river of teardrops coursing beyond this deliverance

a twisted line to some predestined nebulous black seas

Where is the love ?           Is this amazing grace ?

A heart broken no longer runs after love

like  a thirsty  deer to the reflective mirror pool

The silence of this blinding snowfall

embalms the ground of this garden

I’ll leave behind in the parting wake


A bitter sweet symphony unchained

an unsung song released 

adrift in the indifferent breeze

An elusive peace  like  a  crystalline deep river 

will never flow close to me ―

Harlon Rivers … 1. 11. 2017

When a tree falls in the forest ... will anybody hear ?  1. 11. 2017

 note: 1st line nod to Bob Dylan    

from: Knockin' on Heaven's Door

Where is the strength to be strong ?

Where is the strength to be strong ?

For strength is not a passing season ;
it does not come and go lightly,
by and by
The true nature of stalwart love " is " ,..
an enduring friendship cannot pass alone ―

Strength knows not colour
nor measure of dark or light
The creed of its roots ;
the plea of its strife,
within misery becomes belief

Yet is the sorrow felt a contradiction ?
Our own vision's
day by day devise
to bear diminishing life ?

Where is the strength to be strong ?

The doubt in faith that ebbs and flows ;
lost in gravity of deepest oceans'
blackened push and pull ?
No matter the despair embraced
that which makes the broken feel whole

Where is the spirit to be strong ?
The verve that emboldens strength ?

A Life is driven by a Will to BE ― is ―

Manifesting transformation ,..

Rise up the hidden fountain springs within
where all spirit waters begin

Sturdy strength ― Resilient and strong
"Never enough" belies love’s urgent calling

"Never enough" is of enslaving device
a fleeting moment
ne'r  a candle burnt out

The Will to BE
  is always enough!
    to BE ―

© Harlon Rivers ... January 6th, 2017

note:   written for a struggling friend,
and for anyone who can relate to the 

side affects of life's waning wintertide ... 

thank you for reading