O solitude of emptiness
of grief
a hole through your heart
that love makes
when it is betrayed by the loss of Eden
the sudden absence of what should be
as familiar as life
and the glare against your eyes
against your heart
of what should not
and what is making you
cracking
breaking you

I think life is a new, strange, different, deeper thing...since the last time I wrote anything for you. I've lived a lot, these last few months; in some ways, it feels like I've lived more since the end of last year than since the beginning of my life.

“Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.” (Robert Frost, Nothing Gold Can Stay)

They tore down the trees today. I stood in the muddy street and stared in horror at the carnage before me. The pine trees lay in a disgraced heap, stripped of their bark and their dignity. Young saplings had been uprooted and tossed aside casually. The ground now held nothing more than a sea of torn clay. A trickle of water ran from the ditch down the road, carrying bits of leaves and debris along with it. My mother suggested that a water pipe had accidentally been opened. I rather think that the land was crying.

Today,
the tree watches sadly,
a hundred years
of what we might have become.
Every day he sighs,
while roots struggle
through cracks in the pavement.
Each day is a torment
that nobody hears,
lost in sirens and
unearthly noise.
Each day they all smile,
trapped behind bars
in a fortress of stone
and of fear.
The city teems every night
in unholy light
and traffic throbs
in the veins of progress.
One day,
the volcano may erupt,

November 20, 2004

Look to the west,
And hear my voice
Upon the crashing waves.
I promise you
I have found peace.
By your grace I have been saved.
Please understand
How hard it was
To leave you on the shore,
And for letting me
Set sail that day
I love you all the more.

No mortal fear
Can harm me here,
No darkness lives behind my eyes.
Free at last
From injury past,
Out of despair and doubt, I rise.