Late in November, King Autumn arrived, and began tapping the trees with his magic wand. I snatched a few photos as the colors exploded here and there, in the parking lot at my place of employment, Responsive Ed, in Flower Mound, Texas. Behold!

                                         Always Be You
                                        (Valentine's Day 2016)

                           When morning skies brighten with a luminous blue,
                           It pales to grey-tones when the morning sees you.
                           When evening stars glitter against deepening hues,
                           The evening bows in reverence when the stars look at you.
                           As the seasons roll forward and Spring greens all things new,
                           The seasons hush their colors and weave a queen's crown for you.
                           As I press pen to paper to speak fresh words anew,
                           I symphonize the old familiar song, "It will always be you."
                           My valentine, my heart-song, my sweet lady, it's true,
                           Now and forevermore, "It will always be you."

From December 19, 1955 to December 19, 2015, and for the happy miles ahead, I've given my marching uniform a new name-tag:

                                                     THE WIZARD OF HA’S

                                            It’s my 60^th birthday, it’s the great big TA-DAH,

                                            So I trumpet my new title: The Wizard of Ha!

                                            Schooled by the brightest: one Ollie, one Stan,

                                            I emerge at this milestone: a fairly funny man.

                                            Chaplin and Keaton and Groucho agree,

                                            Tossing me their top’t title, Mr. T Hee.

                                            So crowned, I march forward, into the new mile,

                                            Reflecting the laugh-lines of the Master’s glad smile.

                                            And what a grand calling, such a noble employ,

                                            Painting the world for a child’s bright joy.

                                            From Ringo to Bongo, to Captain, then McBly,

                                            To the song of the sunrise, to a waltz in the sky,

                                            To the final performance in the One King’s applause,

                                            Until then, at your service, I'm the Wizard of Ha's!                     

                                            

                                One day, this day, any day, every day
                                A stroll along the unspectacular landscape,
                                Or
                                does the everyday paper-bag wrapping
                                Conceal the most spectacular display?

Blocks of pavement squares

enshadowed, un-enlightened,

slope-hammered down

to allow sprinklers' overflow to

river a painter's stroke, a stream,

a kiss like rushing goodness

over desert-dry,

shoe-trampled

stone.

                           Festive flag: vibrant/vivid green,

                               fluttering, rippling, chortling in summer's breeze

                               Aloft the castle's pointed turret spear--

                               From nowhere, the darkly thrumbling hedge of doom

                               slams down with boulder-tonnage, threatening

                               to crush castle, turret, ramparts, throne and king, and--

                              A crash of wicked thunder, a crack of bone-finger lightning strikes!

                              Roar-rumbling with hideous 

                              laughter, exploding to shake the valley into echoing dust---

                              Until the king, quite content, lifts a finger

                              which lifts a standard

                              which lifts an indestructible wall

                              hewn of marble mined from eternal depths and--

                             A bird sings in the suddenly open sky.

                             The flag begins to move, and--

                             All is well. 

                               How many raindrops fell from rain clouds
                                      in the month of Rainy April?

                                I know You know the number,
                                                                  the formations formed in flight,
                                                                   the impact of the splatters
                                                                    in the morning, in the night,
                                                                     You know the ripples over water,
                                                                       the measured backsplash from the rocks.

                                   You know that if the downpour
                                   were not dropletized, but released as falling oceans,
                                   a full-force dam-burst torrent, miles high,
                                   The crushing crash would decimate the earth.
                                           So, You send the rain in no-weight water-diamonds,
                                           a splitter-splatter music on the roof.

                                           How is it that You know the size, the weight
                                           the shifting shape of every rocket-drop
                                           shot with blurring speed from silken clouds?

                                   I only ask because I want to know.

                                   How many, then, how many droplets, let's say:
                                   in a space somehow extracted,
                                   (a frozen slice of time)
                                   in a space one cubic meter's span?
                                   If you captured this cube of raindrops,
                                   Calculating as You, and only You can?
                                   The total, with precision, You could say.

                                            Or what about the dripletidal pattern on my windshield,
                                            as it forms in down-a-drizzle drifts
                                            before the swipe of wiping wipers wipes it clean?
                                            That pattern, how different it must be,
                                            from every other pattern ever formed?
                                   And never a true repetition, though it looks the same to me.

                                                      I only ask because I do not need to know
                                                      and because I know You know. You always know.
                                                      And that's all I need to know.

                                      

                                          This, Then,
                                          My Hope:
                                          the acorn.

                                          Plunged into soil, planted
                                          in everyday dirt.

                                          Clouds, rain, sun, dark, ice, moon, morning,
                                          and underground, a

                                          Thin green feeler,
                                          breaks shell,
                                          probes toward sunlight...

                                          This, the acorn, and then
                                          the feeler, the sapling, sprig, stem, baby-trunk, and

                                          My hope:
                                          the shade cast
                                          from giant leafy branches,
                                          thick-bark arms,
                                          probing toward sunlight,
                                          and

                                          Like whispers or giggles,
                                          sprouting fruit
                                          to wiggle in wind
                                          ripening with sunshine
                                          to snap from twig, 
                                          and fall to ground
                                          and turn, then
                                          to smile upon

                                          The acorn.

                     

                                                   Leaps to Fly

                                              I am so deeply in love
                                              with the sky.
                                              How she shocks my small circle eye!
                                              Words shrink, shrivel, and pale,
                                              to great Sky's splendiferous scale.
                                              Launch-lifted, my heart leaps to fly
                                              into colors and swishpers and sighs,
                                              Soaring vistas, mist-vapors, and snow,
                                              into mountains and thunders I go!
                                              Through sculptures of sugar-cream fluff,
                                              through the heavens' sweet cottony stuff.
                                              A landscape, a skyscape, impossibly wide!
                                              The sky-song is calling. I'm going outside...

                                              Good morning, my dark sky, blackened in tar,
                                              God's simple signature: one twinkling star.

Magic Laughter

Bubbling, fizzling,

Like sparkling water-foam, dancing

on beach sand.

Like bird-giggles,

Like the voices of children,

Cresting waves, in deep-surge or splashing delight.

Thank you for turns and tricks

and tickle-toons, this

Carbonated magic: laughter.

                                          In the Clouds
                                          (to Meet the Lord)

                                  Ah HA!
                                  This is why I love the clouds...
                                       (stop laughing and crying long enough
                                       to breathe and say)
                                  Lord, this is why I love the clouds:
                                    Because:
                                    In cloud-crinkle pages
                                    I am called to remember...
                                    When the cloud-trumpet calls
                                    We will rise and
                                    meet You in the air,
                                    In the fleecy-golden white.
                                    Forever.

"And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And thus shall we always be with the Lord."   I Thessalonians 4:17

Holy Spirit

Roaring Whisper

Earthquake flutter

a Feather's breeze, hurling mountains to the sea!

Now, now,

pierce my pleasures

with your Translucent Destiny.