EIGHT MONTH ROMANCE

Nothing remains where once grew plenty,
Grey is this season alone in my thoughts,
Of all I had cherished, nurtured and lost,
Reaping my cold winters crop of disdain.

No more late summer of haunting memory,
When you shined through me like the sun above,
Lighting my soul with your warming love,
A long sought promise that grew out of spring.

Did I not share with you my everything,
In passion my secrets, my weakness and more,
To grow love I carefully and recklessly swore,
Pooring out for you what for myself I had stored.

Back when you ran through the grass by the river,
Wild flowers laced through hair behind an ear,
A smile full of laughter and a teasing eye,
You took away my fear beneath the clear blue sky.

Now I look back over the seasons passed,
The summers full swell into falls brief last,
To this early winter blowing through my door,
Where you left it open, long gone, never more.

GO FIGURE

The numbers rule and the rules are numbered,
All of nature and the universe defined,
We measure our advances by formulas and signs,
Reduced to equations to more perfectly bind.

Counting off numbers we while away time,
Spending our portions in misguided primes,
Adding up tallies and substracting the losses,
Adjusting the ledger on what lifes very cost is.

Four noble truths hold the eight fold path,
Three is most holy to every Christian last,
Two mingled natures swirl the yin and yang,
One god said Mohammed, and to tell you I came.

Four, Three, Two, One, so the music starts,
The soulful beat massages the heart,
Tapping and clapping to our different rhythmes,
It takes no theory to predict our schismes.

Zero is most positive - despite some negative claims,
Perfectly joined without ending, or breaks,
Everything passes either through, or around it,
Zen would be zero, if Zen could be counted.


by Ian Brandt