You have cast my thoughts
Into drab colored artifacts
Buried in the overgrown backyard
Of my ground-ridden grandmother.

Once there was a lattice arch
For the grapes to love and grow,
Now weeds and splintered paint
Twisting my mind in bird shitted

Brain matter. Books lift thoughts
Like a breeze lifting a child’s
Paper plane, only to be let down
In a puddle or crumpled on concrete.

Where is the lonely mountain, emerging
From the green pastures of an Earth
Filled with the haze of a warm rain
In early Spring, morning light softly

Shining on its blushing peak, showing
Only dew and snow in simple streaks,
Shadows every bit as beautiful as the
Warm light, an orange kiss from God.

I intoxicate my mind to retain these
Recollections of a distant and dismissed
World, to conjure beauty apart from the
red-orange blaze of a rifle at night

Singing pain and death in a fun movie.
This world is still the world the poets
Of old laud and praise with elevated
metaphors, but still I see children 

slaughtered by sick and decaying spirits.
The world matters in all its swimming
Playfulness. Sunrise light means much
Whether bloody or soft on a snowy peak.

But the smile of a child at recess
Means more than any ray of light, God
Given or accident: the irrupted laugh
Of a child moves mountains and valleys

Like the word of a sleeping prophet.