By Turns of Birds

I have Beethoven's string quartets on in the background. Without ever hearing his music, my life would have suffered - without me even knowing! That is a stunningly tragic thought. I am, though, only human, and subject to mood. Right now, I'm in what I could call a Flamenco mood. No, I don't know what that means, really, but I think it has to do with roses red, black and gold... If you could grow roses of any colour, but only one colour, which one would you pick? It would smell as sweet, of course (if "sweet" is how a rose smells). . .

Above is Great Blue Heron by Eleazar Albin and to the right is Woman With Bird by Bolero

I am melancholy's cloudy trophy,
love's sweetest face is a map
of mellow hills and valleys
leading me to Lethe.

In the highest wisdom I find a flood
of tears, when overthrown by ecstasy
I feel nothing below.

My clearest thoughts
are like birds too easily disturbed
into endless journeys.
(good memory serves
to haunt me the hardest, while real birds fly farther from the familiar....)

Boredom pours its thickened liquor
through my lymph and marrow -
the more I take into my gaze
the more perceptions narrow.

Though I do not strain, darkly, to live,
I do not, either, fall to bed without assurance of some light.
It is the moon that keeps me
in the company of humans

and if the globed glow makes me mad
so be it
---- at least I've seen it.