All poems and picture (c) DC Lessoway except as noted.

Language’s Ordnance
a master poet’s script, a rapier, swift to the bone, cuts leaving the reader shorn, unsure, pondering an indistinct light, illuminating a cloaked dark night of the soul, then comes instinctively, an urge deep for another strike another, another, another exposing buried wounds, as with the pain profound insights into the human condition that we share: ache, grief, joy, love, hate we are fragile and resilient both, that we, above all, within our shades of skin are the same

Love
Ten years, already ups, downs, the gruelling the heartbreaking, the blissful companion, travel mate, friend my intimate confidant through turbulent change smooth waters smiles in her challenges makes me laugh shoos away my gloom in her arms today as the day this was taken the world, the callous, brazen place fades away Photo by Wendy D

Venice
as a tourist Venice her tranquility, alit upon my soul no car nor truck apart from boat motors, church bells gondoliers’ bawdy songs aching feet led many adventure through her stony labyrinth blotted sun, constricting walls lost reaching water found magnificence of her cathedrals humility of rising tides worlds apart, circumventing life for a while

Rise
flittering glints on skin hushed, aside blood’s rush in the ears, munch of gravel echoing bird song reoxygenated, dewy air ambrosial mix of sap, earth enlivening, invigorating weaving, entwining, mingling freeing the mind to meander the unvarying past the rousing moment the differing future in this, reflection, contemplation embrace the undetermined to trounce change’s dread seize, possess, acknowledge who you are, how you look where and how you subsist find kindness in each moment rise to an uncertain future rise to a greater you

Fields of Life
gift of gods and soil worn hands tended by hand and mule, since ages long past recollection germination to fermentation vino’s untold generations soothing ache and joy both

Anticipation
my breath caught time’s strident march seconds or hours, lend no aid to define when again I’ll see those eyes of burnt sienna, smile luminous, inviting, till my love, there, on high