(c) 2021 by Michael L. Utley
(#25)
Fronds torn by the storm
Willow bathes her wounds in tears
Heaven cries above
…..
(#26)
In konara copse
Broken axe is silent now
Entombed by the ferns
…..
(#27)
In my sorrow
I doubt even sparrow’s joy
Can restore my heart
…..
(#28)
In chill autumn rain
Memories of sakura
Memories of you
…..
(#29)
There is bird-song when
I see my bare-footed love
Smiling demurely
…..
(#30)
All I wish for you
Is that you are happy and
You’ll remember me
“The Trunk”
(c) 2021 by Michael L. Utley
There is a place for things
That don’t belong in
Other places
That sere and weathered
Trunk that hunkers lupine-like
Amid dust-addled attic shadows
Wood split and gouged
With time and neglect
Iron bands and fittings
A crumble of rust
Lockless clasp broken
From endless breeches
And pryings
I should have
Replaced that lock
Eons ago
The ill-fitting lid
Is too loose
More decoration
Than function
And tends to rattle
Of its own accord
Much too frequently
For what’s inside wants to
Breathe
Stretch
Pop knuckles
Champ teeth
And feed
And only I can
Contain it
I am the guardian
Of my thoughts
The gatekeeper
Of my soul
The sentinel
Who slumbers
Far too often
And I have the scars
To prove it
Pandora knew nothing
Of depression
Of the sticky ichor
That coats minds
Chokes souls
Rends hearts
Ends with
Restless bones
In paupers’ graves
There is no light
In this trunk
Rather
It devours light and life
Siphons energy
Drains minds of clarity
Its bitter harvest
A wretched bounty
Of lies and darkness
I have discarded
This trunk hundreds of times
Thousands of times
Banished it to
The furthest reaches
Of the void
And when I turn around
It’s still there
Lurking stealthily in
Tenebrous attic shadows
Slavering
Grinning
A dead-blue
Feral glow
About it that
Bespeaks of
Baleful knowledge
Best kept under
Lock and key
Mere vigilance is futile
Hyper-vigilance exhausting
This night never-ending
The callous sun
Cannot penetrate
The claptrap slats
Of my mind
I must stand
On my own
In this blackness
And fight to keep
This trunk shut
To render impotent
Its contents
To save myself
Or die trying
“Forgotten”
(c) 2021 by Michael L. Utley
Those who fade away
Dust-covered and forgotten
Hushed in melancholy thought
Those of us denied
Peering through the river reeds
Watching joy drift out of reach
Who will remember
Those abandoned on the path
Those who fall by the wayside
We the silent ones
Mournful ones invisible
Just a burden nothing more
Will our lives echo
Down the road you travel on
Will our mem’ries be erased
As easily as
Closing your eyes and your hearts
As you pass us on your way
To something better
One day you’ll be one of us
Old infirm alone and weak
One day you will weep
Reach out bony fingers as
Youth and beauty pass you by
As you fade away
Dust-covered and forgotten
Hushed in melancholy thought
“It’s Not Lost”
(c) 2021 by Michael L. Utley
It’s not lost on me
How this coral-tinctured eve
Tempers morning’s joy
With sadness and coos of doves
Grieve dying light’s somber end
It’s not lost on me that I
Never got to bid farewell
As sun languishes
On melancholy verge of
Day’s bitter demise
It’s not lost on me
That no matter how I tried
I could not reach you
My arms were not strong enough
To save you from siren’s song
It’s not lost on me that I
Could not give you what you sought
To slay your demons
Could not be your shining hope
In your darkest hour
It’s not lost on me
That I mourn what never was
What could never be
How I wish this night would end
How I wish for you again
“When Field Work is Done”
(c) 2021 by Michael L. Utley
When field work is done and soil tells
A tale of fragrant earth in russet tones
When ground-mist hunkers in secluded dells
And eventide descends upon the swells
Of solemn and discordant distant bells
I follow god-beams west, these tired bones
Sun-gilded in the cool remains of day
As fields pass beside the cobblestones
And honey-hives a-swarm with buzzing drones
And cudding cow in pasture lows and moans
The neighbor’s barn, a faded sun-bleached gray
Leans sleepily as I approach the bend
Where cobblestones succumb to moistened clay
And farm cats mouse-hunt stealthily in hay
And foals and piglets gambol as they play
Ripe apple trees stretch roadward to suspend
Their fruits to all who amble past below
And conifers at orchard’s distant end
Stand sentry as if ready to defend
This past’ral scene from all who might offend
And I, as evening stars begin to glow
And insects tune their instruments and sing
Their night-song, wend my way beside the slow
And clam’rous brook that gleams not far below
As moon peeks through the pines and winks hello
And pausing, I can’t help remembering
The lonely hearth that waits at home, the still
And barren house, silent, unwelcoming
The empty bed, no candle beckoning
No one who waits upon my homecoming
I watch the moon as noisy waters rill
Then close my eyes and breathe in willow-air
And stand alone in darkling evening’s chill
And tell myself through iron force of will
To swallow yet again this bitter pill
Then turning back the way I came, I stare
Into the gloaming’s ever-deep’ning hue
As tired feet propel me through the glare
Of starlit tears that blind and shame, and there
In dim distance the fate I’m doomed to bear
I run as moonlit field comes into view
For nothing’s left but field work to do
“Sea of Trees”
(c) 2019 by Michael L. Utley
To slake my thirst
With dew from leaves that never see the light
Arboreal the tears that fall and quench
The darkest dreams
To fill my bowels
With loam whose cloying scent bespeaks of death
Arboreal the taste of living earth
My hunger begs
To see the gleam
‘Neath tenebrous shadows and rayless groves
Arboreal the blackest night in day
Below the boughs
To run rough hands
O’er scabrous bark and hardened boles and moss
Arboreal the pillars scrape the sky
In breezes weep
The silence holds
Forbidden knowledge
The silence holds
The universe
The silence holds
The truth
The path wends through
This living thing, this thing that sighs and cries
And dies and eats itself a cannibal
Whose roots betray sorrowful sentience
Whose trunks hold back the sky with anguished might
Whose limbs strain forth in melancholy pleas
A beckoning
A reckoning
The path into the gloom is just a path
With littered leaves and lichen on the rocks
And overhead the canopy to keep
The sky from falling down under the weight
Of lifetimes filled with torment and regret
It’s just a path
No need to fear
The forest welcomes me it knows my name
Envelops me in arms of somber green
It sings to me a song of silent peace
It pulls me down the path on wings of leaves
It whispers of a place where I may rest
And leads me there
There are others
Herein among the endless sea of trees
Herein among the caverns and the gulfs
Herein among the secrets and the cries
Which echo faintly in sepulchral voids
Herein where many come and none return
There are others
These are my kin
These shades that linger far beyond their time
And welcome me with soundless empty stares
And follow me along the darkling path
And shimmer as mirages in the air
And fade away as if they’d never been
Into the trees
The silence holds
Everything
Arboreal
My personal Aokigahara
My sea of trees my jade remembrance
There is a place just off the path ahead
A place of sodden leaves and broken twigs
And bitter cold that numbs away all pain
A resting place
I am not that boy who saw the sun
I have never seen the sun nor shall
I see only trees
“Ripples”
(c) 2017 by Michael L. Utley
There are no ripples
On this frozen pond
The puk-puk-puk of
The pebble
Skittering on iced skin
Dampened by
Frost-thick air
Breath caught short
In lung-numbed gasps
Silent words
Suspended
In wintry sighs
Eyes pools of
Frigid tear-prisms
Bitter empty gelid rainbows
Where are you
You missed our flight to Tokyo
The cherry blossoms whispered your name
As Fuji, incurious and remote
Gazed white-helmed
At my solitary shadow
My empty hand
Holding more of you
Than my heart could bear
We did not walk
Beneath flicker-flamed
Paper lanterns
On blood-red bridges
Spanning koi ponds
Under the spring moon
The rising sun
Sought to kiss your cheek
But was denied
As I was denied
You missed auroras
Over Iceland
The Arctic colder
In your absence
The night sky draped
In shimmering iridescent
Thought
The emerald musings of some distant god
Snagged in dark desolation
My own thoughts of you
Caught in my own
Desolation
You missed the candent sands
Of Morocco
Capricious zephyrs
Erasing my footprints
In a desert bereft of
Your footprints
We did not dance
In the summer swelter
Beneath date palms
And stars that sought
To light your way
But failed
Your body absent
In my arms
The scent of your hair
A distant memory which
Hot breezes scatter
In the night
You missed our train
To the Rockies
Where larkspur and columbine
Awaited you with open arms
And later mourned in silence
My singular form without you
By my side
We did not hold hands in
Flower-burst mountain meadows
Azure lakes reflected only
My lone countenance
As conifers murmured
Demurely in cool breezes
Wondering if you
Would ever arrive
You missed our drive
Through New England hills
Autumn maple and hemlock
A conflagration burning for you
Yearning for you
The birches and beeches smoldering
In my heart
Red-orange-gold leaves
Suiciding in silent sadness
Loneliness wearing my face
Stalks these woods
You are nowhere to be found
You missed my arrival
In Singapore
The airport a swarm
Of faces
A blur of oceanic humanity
As I searched for one safe harbor
One stormless island
In this storm of chaos
Your face
A lighthouse to guide me home
Your beacon never appearing
No fog horn guiding me safely
Through treacherous surf
Your bottomless brown eyes
Nowhere
Your smile cut roughly from this mural
Missing
A ragged hole where you should be
In my life
Perhaps you were a
Phantom
All along
Puk-puk-puk
No ripples on this frozen pond
Not enough pebbles remain
To last until springtime thaw
One ripple is all I ask
One ripple to finally reach you
I’ll save a pebble
Just in case
“The Apple Tree”
© 2013 by Michael L. Utley
The apple tree
Behind the house
Has long ago
Stopped bearing fruit
It stands alone
In sickness bold
Half its branches
Dead or dying
Leaves the hue
Of summers past
Defy the sun
The pouring rain
Bound there in
White-knuckled grip
On mournful twigs
On listless boughs
As autumn fades
The leaves succumb
Each one a
Small gold suicide
Each gilded drop
A dying spark
A universe now
Mute in death
No one knows
This apple tree
Behind the house
A secret world
Where eons pass
And ages fade
Unknown to all
Except to me
And chilly sun
And hurried cloud
And thoughtless bird
And bitter breeze
The pristine snow
Has covered all
A silent shroud
Has fallen here
An icy dirge
A funeral pall
As winter metes
A healing balm
In sanguine hope
That springtime sun
Will summon forth
The apple tree
But even so
It saddens me
This futile thing
This apple tree
That cannot see
It matters not
If life abounds
When living hurts
To live alone
Infirm and weak
While bony fingers
Seek the sky
And wretched leaves
In breezes weep
And shattered dreams
Litter the ground
In autumn piles
Of yellow dross
That go unseen
And fade away
Silent Pariah 