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liquid mysteries
like nights in Icosium
savory perils
From my books Range of Motion and Riverthink
Mystery
All posts tagged Mystery
“Playing Cards in Fryeburg Maine” by Eastman Johnson
Sensing mild adventure
My spring forest beckons
Boughs like green-handed arms
Overhead sweep me in
Crackling twigs underfoot
Start critters to scurrying
Darting through shimmering
Figments of latticework
Sun-woven shadows
Cast down upon air fairly
Pungent with pine-scent
And redolent bark
All the while looking
For traces of passage
Among mossy trunks
Around angular boulders
Half or more never seen
Dry icebergs that jut up
From brown-needled beds
Sprouting tussocks of turf
Alert for the odd bit
With color or form
Suggestive of artifact
Waylaid by history
Bull moose and whitetail
Track snowmelt-charged streams
Coursing rocky treed foothills
Where smugglers annulled
Prohibition by hauling
With oxen-drawn sledge
Furtive freightloads of spirits
Canadian contraband
Routes marked by ruins
Crude stopover shacks
Rotten planks overgrown
With woodland encroachment
Local lore hints one such
Way-station stood up
Right here on my land
Though no one knows where
My crown-antler Bowie
Hacks passable trails
Through vines thick as thumbs
Sturdy saplings like pickets
Slow progress until one good
Yank frees a fanned clump of
Maidenhair ferns whose roots
Tangle with rust-crusted chain
My ironwood staff
Pokes and prods fertile earth
Tracing widening arcs
That stop at a massive
Rock shelf cantilevered
Across the slope face
Sharply steepened above
A good twenty feet long
The ledge caps a space
Dense with thickets of
Buckthorn and bittersweet
Grappling to fill every inch
I poke horizontally
Jabbing lush verdure
And jump from a thrill
When I hear report back
Telltale thumps of some
Hollow-backed wood
Well concealed from the eye
Tamping down my excitement
I vow to return armed with
Counterblade loppers and
One-eighty lanterns
Once autumn drops leaves
In hobbling back down
All my pain burns more viciously
Scorching what courage
I might draw from rousing
Inspiriting echoes
An eager mind sounds
But these thought-killing fires
Make me frequently lay-by
Without peace to wonder
How many more seasons
Will give me adventure
And finish my history
A fictional reverie from my books Range of Motion, Music of Scars and Legacies (vol. 1)
Illustration from the Game “Hidden Chronicles”
(A fictional reverie)
Sensing mild adventure
My spring forest beckons
Boughs like green-handed arms
Overhead sweep me in
Crackling twigs underfoot
Start critters to scurrying
Darting through shimmering
Figments of latticework
Sun-woven shadows
Cast down upon air fairly
Pungent with pine-scent
And redolent bark
All the while looking
For traces of passage
Among mossy trunks
Around angular boulders
Half or more never seen
Dry icebergs that jut up
From brown-needled beds
Sprouting tussocks of turf
Alert for the odd bit
With color or form
Suggestive of artifact
Waylaid by history
Bull moose and whitetail
Track snowmelt-charged streams
Coursing rocky treed foothills
Where smugglers annulled
Prohibition by hauling
With oxen-drawn sledge
Furtive freightloads of spirits
Canadian contraband
Routes marked by ruins
Crude stopover shacks
Rotten planks overgrown
With woodland encroachment
Local lore hints one such
Way-station stood up
Right here on my land
Though no one knows where
My crown-antler Bowie
Hacks passable trails
Through vines thick as thumbs
Sturdy saplings like pickets
Slow progress until one good
Yank frees a fanned clump of
Maidenhair ferns whose roots
Tangle with rust-crusted chain
My ironwood staff
Pokes and prods fertile earth
Tracing widening arcs
That stop at a massive
Rock shelf cantilevered
Across the slope face
Sharply steepened above
A good twenty feet long
The ledge caps a space
Dense with thickets of
Buckthorn and bittersweet
Grappling to fill every inch
I poke horizontally
Jabbing lush verdure
And jump from a thrill
When I hear report back
Telltale thumps of some
Hollow-backed wood
Well concealed from the eye
Tamping down my excitement
I vow to return armed with
Counterblade loppers and
One-eighty lanterns
Once autumn drops leaves
In hobbling back down
All my pain burns more viciously
Scorching what courage
I might draw from rousing
Inspiriting echoes
An eager mind sounds
But these thought-killing fires
Make me frequently lay-by
Without peace to wonder
How many more seasons
Will give me adventure
And finish my history
(originally posted April 2013)
Image From pinterest.com
inelegant illness afflicts him
who bumps about corridors
rattling locks
with the bones in his tail
stalking for deer
with a rosin-swept bow
in the malformed aesthetics
of calabash pipe-smoke
tainted with henbane
that curls around houndstooth
staining the Inverness cape
knowing bliss has no keys
he kicks open doors
of two-cornered rooms
no doctor would bless
finding stairs Piranesi
could have designed
their paths up or down
all land the same place
where a grandfather clock
ticks the tempo of fear
and brocade paranoia
drapes barrister boxes
of leather-bound brains
and mementoes of sins
hiding fine-pestled clues
behind acid-etched glass
in plain sight
yet unseen
in differently hued
hallucinogens
that powder
alchemical bellies
of porcelain mortars
where hundreds of
gripping good crimes
would be solved
(originally posted March 2013)
Mississippian Culture Mounds in Central USA
earthen faith
raised up misty terrains
from dirt and devotion
to ritual passage
between moon and sun
mystic sky set as altarpiece
tumulus tied by the chieftain
and priest to a
tribal cosmology
common to living and dead
heights reaching
to temple and tomb
leaving nothing to trace
of their hearts or their minds
all we have are the
weathered down shapes
of the mysteries
formed by their hands
From my book Small Noise
Orient Express Travel Poster
Image from ebay.com
(Regarding Agatha Christie)
wagon-lit luxury
intrigue aboard
posh with privilege
conferred by the
grande dame of mystery
intricate plotlines
set stories cerebral
to pace pensive rocking
of finely hand-built
lacquered carriages
transcontinental
foreshadowings
first cast enticing with
complex of question
and quandary while
billowing steam attends
clickety-clack through
dim outskirts of Paris
discovering clues of
fruition by Strasbourg
and Budapest courting
false leads across
grim mountain passes
once held by the
bloodlust of cruel
Transylvanian princes
eventually finding
surprise of solution
while nearing the ancient
Byzantium terminus
Istanbul fresh with
exotic malevolence
ready to board a new
tale for the whodunit
mind of one Benelux
sleuth on his westering
trip of triumphant return
Moriarty & Holmes
Image from baritsu.org
underworld overlord
keen as an executioner’s blade
misrespected tweed don
with a calculant mind
pursued by deduction
through valleys of fear
across moors and deep
shadowy switchbacks
of criminal enterprise
fevered professor the
mastermind Mesmer of thieves
seeking final solution to
problems of houndstooth
tenacious for justice in
protagonist deerstalker grasp
these intractable nemeses
carry the chase up steep
ridgelines of glorious alpine
neutrality reaching the
Reichenbach cataract aching
to dance on its precipice
knowing full well that
to fall is to fly and to fly
in that rarefied air would
propel their grave legend
to prominent place in
the canon of mysteries
“Intersubjective Epistemology”
Painting by Andrew Cambridge
From annual.cofa.unsw.edu.au
all that we know
that we think that we know
holds the most of its truth
beyond reach of our minds
all that we see
that we think that we see
hides the most of itself
beyond reach of our eyes
all is intrinsic with mystery
much more complex
than the limited powers
of human perception
the death of a rose
the mechanics of rain
the precursors to time
the stuff of a sunbeam
we have eager science
to give us its clarity
vested in certainties
few of us challenge
our philosophers
pose the right questions
which few understand
and most tend to ignore
yet we manage to function
we trust our conceptions
carry on in the artifice
bliss of our ignorance
leaving we faithful
content to be taught
by an omniscient
omnibenevolent God
Father Brown Book Illustration
diminutive priest
nondescript bearing and mien
maladroit of life
steel trap for a mind
resolute anti-hero
with God’s own mercy
Illustration from harrypotter.wikia.com
see what never was
or is it just too clear
to wear its mystery
Poesy plus Polemics 