Begin Blazing

The east aglow with the newest fire

Breathing in the flames I find ignition

Illuminate the paths for cognition

All nights fears set upon final pyres

Their funeral dirges played on lyres

Now begins today a coalition

Of my bright soul and these apparitions

To rise as the sun higher and higher

Every dawn a symphony swelling

The clouds dance slowly, stately with fine grace

A matching light, inside me a welling

Heart pounding, I ready for the great race

To find the darkest evils for felling

A hero's tale, bitter and sweet of taste

©️Sylphide poem 2020, image 2017

1

Summer's Taste

last of the fresh herbs

summer flavor before frost

tasting of the now

©️Sylphide poem/image 2020

Protea

Internet photo

Tones

soft topography

sunlight falls among petals

provoking full bloom

©️Sylphide poem/image 2020

13%er

Can't say I thought the debate went real well

Civil discourse is deader'n hell

Joe was sleepy, Donnie a jerk

Seems we should have some choices that work

It'll have to be done again, I can tell

©️Sylphide poem 2020

Ascendant

How might the mountain

Be hidden in mist

One day fill horizon

The next not exist

Then at midnight

By starlight is kissed

Seeming unmoved

But only rise slow

Above the clouds

Where timber won't grow

Seat of eyries

For eagles and crows

Traverse and climb 

The barren peak

Under waterfalls

Over the creeks

Until you summit

The clarity you seek

Horizons unlimited

©️Sylphide poem 2020

Seeing

     People were going into the meeting room, I was one of the last. I noticed a young man looking intently at our faces as we came through the door. He was doing a thing I thought only I did. When one encounters a person, if your look carefully at their expression as they first see your face, you can tell if they are truly happy to see you in that first millisecond before they get their pleasant face up. I realized how unfair this was, people have complex internal environments shaped by a horribly random world, with levels of coping energy varying wildly. It might have little to do with how much they like you that day, perhaps they are not relating well to anyone. 

     I'd always felt I could read people pretty well. Later as I thought of the young man, I realized it might be a skill some people develop too early, scanning the face of their stressed caregiver, trying to tell what might be coming at them next.