When the Music Stops

Beautiful clown of porcelain and silk
Gold fabric and silver filigreed lace
Wind the key in the center of his back
A sad song plays delicately
A single tear lies motionless on his face

His head inclines; arms outstretched
He looks as if he is longing to embrace
Soft is the whir of his machinery;
The music box invisible
As he moves with awe inspiring grace

When the song ends he stands frozen still
Gone the tinkle of his beautiful chime
Silent, the whir of his mechanism
Silence is louder than music
It speaks of the life within the mime

He is one of many in the collection
But his is the favorite song
Trembling with sadness and beauty
Only he can make you close your eyes
And weep silently for his perfection

That I could have been a porcelain doll
With only a single tear I might cry
Your hand would have wound my heart
I would have played the violin
As the painted sadness slipped… from my eye

The jester will quietly cease moving soon
His embrace comes to a coda and stops
His efforts of animation ended
His beautiful music silenced
They will carry and lay me in my box

The Playground

The sun scraped his knee on the playground of heaven
Bleeding freely across a turquoise eggshell of sky
And though he is a big brave boy, a few tears of rain were shed
But he’s sure to return in the morning, warm and bright

The August moon came following, as baby sisters always do
With a glow of admiration on her face
Chasing the tears of the sun across a vault of midnight blue,
Wrapped in a veil of tattered yellow lace

The twinkling stars sang nursery rhymes in silver shades of silk
Their chorus number; grains of sparkling sand
Skimming stones across the sky through puddles made of milk
And winking at the foolishness of man

To the Mountains

Vast and rolling ancient hills of smoke
The drifting steam of cobweb dreams
Weaves a web between your green
And wraps around your shoulders like a cloak

The pink of dawn upon your rosy cheeks
Rests there like a maiden’s blush
Painted by exquisite celestial brush
Through your veins wind tiny streams and creeks

Rise like mother’s bosom; breath and heartbeat
Teats where I was suckled as a child
Nourishment that made me free and wild
Your wandering paths were velvet on my feet

Perfumed musk of early woodland dawn
Drifts through branches; intoxicating
Drawing the traveler deeper; waiting
Smell of wood and moss and leaf and loam

Lichens, mushrooms, ginseng growing
Laurels thick as honey round the lake
Birds sing to the music that you make
Your arms are full of history and knowing

Oldest, grandest mountains of the earth
Not so high that you are cold and bare
Pioneer settlers raised their children there
Mothers offered offspring from their birth

To play in the woods with Cherokee friends
They were here three thousand years
Until the infamous trail of tears
And whites replaced the noble Indian

Daniel Boone fished and hunted these trails
Before the signing of the Declaration
Before the war that helped to build a nation
Legends and heroes walked among your hills

Though much is recorded in history
Collected in eddies like swirling foam
Bubbles resting green and white as home
Fade into abstraction and mystery

Snows of more than a million winters past
Have melted into your flesh and bone
The bones of men who died lost and alone
Are cradled in your loving arms at last

More beautiful than gentle in your fashion
Glorious are your vistas in the dew
Mountain mornings make all things new
How I love you my dear Appalachians

Heartsong

Color all my soul with song
Paint my passion blue and green
So earth and sky might sing along
With every note of being

Charcoal sketch my lonely hours
Soft as sable robes of night
Heal my heart with summer flowers
Mark my days with golden light

Fill my mind through eyes of beauty
Make my spirit smile and sigh
Give these precious moments to me
Not the words of sad goodbye

Hold my hand; a tiny bird
Whose heart might flutter like a wing
Terrified by life uncertain
I’m a frail and tender thing

Taste my tears just like the sea
Salty full of life and old
Blended by eternity
Hear the stories in me told

Make my epitaph a poem
Offer me no eulogy
Of mourning words when I am gone
Not for simple, foolish me

Youth is wasted on the young
Wisdom is not taught at college
Age would have its memory sung
In understanding more than knowledge

Feel the fire that is my blood
Burning in my secret part
When my song is understood
You will know the poet’s heart