I put my arms around you, your heart melts into mine;
the borders of your anguish I can easily define.
There is no need for language explaining agony,
I perceive a griever’s heartache in black telepathy.
Your landscape is familiar, I know one similar
in the trackless barren places, in the lonely city spaces
where people neither know nor care.
I gleaned shriveled fruit from withered vines,
crushed, distilled, and drank the acrid wine.
I climbed the treeless summit, trekked the tundra of despair,
heard the mountain winds dark harmony
to a mourning mother’s keening prayer.
I know because my heart has heard
within its depths your soundless words.
Copyright, July 11, 2026
The exposed Sierran batholith
bares itself in all directions.
Treeless, lifeless, it recalls
a primordial earth
and time before meaning.
I hike upon its surface
to find purpose –
a midlife reckoning.
The granite is smooth
and direction difficult.
Cairns appear occasionally,
though many dissolve
into exfoliating granite.
Most find trees and rivers
to be a warmer womb
and source for solace.
But the clutter
of Nature obscures.
Not its presence but
its absence is where
I find myself.
Absence is the granite
that creates presence,
and casts the shadows
shielding us from
the scorching Sierran sun.
Howling Wilderness
windswept
bleak treeless plain
white blanketed mountains
permafrost hardened ground, I am
alone
On the frozen side of the sun lies Svalbard.
A barren, treeless stretch of land
Buried beneath snow and stillness.
Here, the cold doesn’t just bite;
It consumes.
The whirlwind air scrapes skin with surgical precision.
For months each year, the sun abandons the sky.
Svalbard drifts beneath a vaulted night.
Darkness bleeds through permafrost,
Settling in the earth’s frozen marrow.
But beneath this ice-scarred wilderness,
Where avalanche and ash calcify,
A vault lies hidden deep in the mountain’s underbelly.
It cradles the future;
A womb of waiting seeds,
Asleep in rows of glass and steel.
Hope, suspended in time.
In this tomb of preservation,
Life isn’t gone.
Just waiting with a promise of rebirth.
And when the sun returns,
Brushing marigold hues across glistening glaciers
Like a kiss upon Snow-White's lips,
Those seeds will stir with life.
They will remember the sun.
They will rise.
Sandgrouse pretty bird
Love a treeless countryside
A beautiful sound
There’s an odd thief in our neighborhood
Who steals stuff that he must think is good
Beginning with my small bushes and trees
Which at the start, made no sense to me
Then parts of my fence suddenly disappeared
And a pile of firewood was totally cleared
Yet when most of my porch pickets were gone
It was time to dispense some fighting brawn
By taking some sort of drastic action
For our family needed some satisfaction
Yet the next day he stole lawn sport’s equipment
And a stack of pallets fresh from a shipment
The following day when I got home from work
My front door was ajar; from that crooked jerk
Who oddly took walking sticks and umbrellas
Which confirmed this thief was a strange fella
Since I was so ticked, I left to ponder the scam
Then I saw on a side road a new beaver dam
Amidst the prairie sits this cobbled-up dome
Built with those good things smuggled from our home
Our prairie was treeless, devoid of beaver
Until this thieving one, which was a great weaver
And to top it off, I was totally floored
Coz its lodge was crowned with our head board!
I was not born to the moors; my roots are planted
by wild running seas,
even so, a rolling heath is a green tide heaped
into wind-sculptured waves,
low breakers that may tug you deeper,
or crash upon any too certain a mind.
March is a good time
to be a thin branch in a treeless landscape.
You can catch hold of a wind-serpent
in your upheld hands,
a sea-creature born to be the innards of the sky.
When a high rain surfs mountainous air,
you can be pitched pell-mell onto thrashing shores
shorn of any footholds.
I was not begot to be native to these moors
yet they deliver me into that wild ocean
counterpoised between land and sky,
and there, you may also wave-walk
or be born again.
March is a good time
to be a thin branch
in a treeless landscape.
You can catch hold of a wind-serpent
in your upheld hands,
a sea-creature born to be
the innards of the sky.
When high rains surf
a flat-faced landscape
mountains of air,
can pitch you pell-mell
onto darkly crashing shores,
margins you once mistook
for yourself.
i'm
connected to
a brittle
branch
disconnected
from a
tree of
life
i
i am
i am writing
i am running
out of time
i write in a place
out of time
i write in a time
out of place
it's go time
it's gone
time has gone
time is wasted
i'm going
nowhere
where
anything goes
into a wasted
land
out of time
for
i am
writing
out of time
for
time is wasting
words
for
words
create timeless
despair
despair
breaks
a brittle
branch
inside my
treeless life
inside a timeless
tomb
i
i am
i am building
i build a
bridge to
no land
i
i write
i am writing
these poems
these poems
write me
these poems
erase me
time
erases
me
Sandgrouse pretty bird
Love a treeless countryside
A beautiful sound
Would the world be a better place if Parents were drowned at childbirth
The night rain had shorn
my neighboring trees
standing so stalwart
in their convivial circle four.
The wistful dawning
be shining on skeletal shapes
Hung with but scarce few
yellowed-brown-sienna leaves
to drape their skinny heights.
For the force of Wind and Fall
had stripped
their grace of arms
quite bare.
Yet
within those skeletal swaying branches,
untouched
by rain or snow or wind,
Flows their elixir pure
but awaiting the hand of Spring
to fashion dress
with fresh new-green attire
my neighboring family four.
Would such certainty
had I
Seeing fallen
upon my treeless
ground of zero
pieces that once were me.
Only a ‘perhaps’ have I
that I and me
again might see
the comfort of a greening Spring,
Might feel anew
warmth eternal,
that in a winter moment
does seem
so spectral faint
to be.
The hot savannah in late September
Too far back to quite remember
Born in plains surrounded by the sands
An oasis of the treeless woodlands
To be uniquely chic I always tried
Yet it never showed on my solid hide
One day hiding from cheetahs in tall grass
With my stubborn cousin, (he’s an ass)
I noticed our complete lack of camouflage
And sparked an idea fleeing their barrage
We zig-zagged an escape from jaws and paws
And set to work on my mono-color flaws
Happily braying proud a-ha’s from my pipes
I trotted around showing off new painted stripes
Blending in reeds better than a horse
Looking suave and stylish too, of course
Jealous mammals barely keep control
When I strut my stuff at the watering hole
Drooling and licking lips in envy
Carnivores can’t keep their eyes off me
So to boring old coats, hasta la vista
Now I’m a savvy equine fashionista
Savannah’s newly striped and charming Libra
Hey lion’s and hyena’s, you can call me Zebra
*Wink*
*Sassy mane toss*
…..*RUUUN!
Lipstick red
a wet rose opens
A treeless leaf
turns in the heavy air
as if
seeking where
Questions exist
with no answers
In my quest for origins and ends
I see others like me, sociable
open to beauty, struggling
to know divinity- Yet in
all my quiet contemplation
I cannot screen out war
or incomprehensible cruelty
The ranks in uniform, the tanks
the weapons of destruction
The history which never
wipes out thought of
new aggressions
Boundary fences, treeless camps
ugly emotions, shouting, fists
the build-up to destruction
The sudden hurt, the
grinding discomfort
The tears, the flowers,
the prayers with hope
and reverence
Our pity for the suffering
We blame God
not seeing his mercy
yet only he above all
sees everything
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