Musings of Geoffrey Britton
I
The snares and brambles of time
Have caught me in their leaden grasp.
My strength ebbs, yet rivers flow
Strongly as they did before.
Tomorrow certainly shall come,
Though the day I may not follow,
Left behind on eternity’s shores.
II
Where is freedom in the world
If trapped within our liberty?
III
In twilight I find my peace;
In solitude I flourish.
IV
The firm yet thin line in-between
Those opposites we know
Have elements of gray within,
Yet few I know have noticed.
V
The moral excuses people make
For war and strife and death
Cannot help those victimized
By such pointless endeavors.
If we could see beyond the lies
Of starters of these grandiose wars–
For “holy” is unfitting for such
A harsh and indifferent slaughter–
Then, and then alone, would humankind
Find that they are but only one race
Under only one God, and that Earth
Is but the one country in which we live.
These useless wars will all have died
Along with corresponding thought.
VI
I mourn the media’s existence
When each four years approach,
For then time comes solitude;
The year I close away from the world.
For it is then that people choose
Who shall be our president:
The television goes aflame
With myriad visions of their mugs.
They promote themselves, insult each other,
Interrupting favored programs.
As far as I’m concerned, it’s for this
I think the way I do today.
I will never vote for those
Who do such self-promoting things,
As to why–I now tell you:
I won’t vote a child to leadership.
VII
solitude:
more golden by far
than silence.
VIII
The grass is such deep green today,
Unknown in my mind to a February morn.
The snow has run its course for the year,
And shall let the trees regrow their leaves.
IX
The barren lies of winter
Have disappeared again;
Revealing that life retains
The authority it always did.
X
That mound of dirt looks pristine today…
In comparison to the television.
XI
She was a candle-flame
With such burning intensity
That the wick was expended
Long before her time.
XII
The sun falls below the horizon;
Or was it the earth rising to the sun?
Whichever way, the effect remains.
XIII
The sun falls below the horizon;
Myriad shades spread ’cross the sea,
Bathing all in a shade of orange and red,
Fading glorious into black–
Perfect cadence to the day.
XIV
The moon glows brightly on the lake’s mirror surface,
A white, scarred visage lies incandescent there.
A single drop of rain dinds the center of the ring,
Disrupting the tranquil stillness that blankets the dark night.
The ripples fade into the oblivion of long-forsaken shores
As other drops of celestial water are cast forth into blackness.
XV
The swan sails across the lake;
Not a ripple emanates therefrom.
XVI
A mist encloses the shore,
Within which one lies waiting,
Anxious for the ship he knows to come,
Awaiting the fate to befall him,
For it will be one or the other:
No vessel, and thus starvation;
Or the ship, within which waits torture,
Dormant for the one who waits on the mist-enclosed shore.
XVII
The listless leaves lay loose upon the branches–
An amalgam of myriads orange, reds, golds–
Awaiting their return to verdant floor below,
To help those seeds from whence they’ll someday spring.
XVIII
Snow flashes past the windows
In their final drive before spring;
The death-throes of winter have begun,
And soon enough shall they end.
XIX
The darkened forest leaves
Weave hypnotic secrets
Amongst the growth below
And everything above.
XX
The bard rides upon his sled,
Shooting through eternal snow,
In his constant search for answers
To questions only he has known.
XXI
A dirge to winter has begun
To the steady, ever-rhythmic cadence
Of rain instead of snow.
XXII
Isolation:
Some say it’s beneficial,
Some protest against it,
Some say it depends
On what it’s for…
I take the first one.
XXIII
Immortality:
Persistence of the foolhardy.
XXIV
War is when losses are made into victories
And victories are losses to begin with.
XXV
The wave rises above us.
It seems to encompass the entire ocean,
No, the entire world,
In its overwhelming crest.
Jades of sunlight fall through its froth,
Spray reaches down to the earth
From its great height,
Its unassailable grandeur.
The wave begins to fall,
All grandeur turned to fury
As what was once glorious has turned into death,
In as small a time as the blink of an eye.
XXVI
What is death
But another journey
Into the unknown reaches of ourselves?
XXVII
A dream-like shore;
Purple water laps green sand,
Little creatures scuttle over the sea…
A shattered persona appears, withdrawn
Into itself, into its mind.
The creatures disappear as though never quite there
And the spray of the sea is more subdued
Under the visage’s baleful glare.
It thinks of life, of death, of art,
And leaves all else,
As though there was nothing else to think,
Nothing else on which to dwell.
And then it, too, recedes away,
Into the grasp of the flowing winds
And even slips out of everything’s grasp;
It drifts into the domain of eternity,
Where life, death, and art are all there is.
XXVIII
Rending the sky asunder,
The clouds spreading across the sky;
Little wisps of purest white
Within the blissfully empty sky.
XXIX
Little patches of pale brown
Adorn the blanket of grass today.
XXX
And yet the birds still do take wing
As though in mockery of us.
