Tiny booted feet trod happily their shape,
          Perfect symmetry soon displaced.
Rubber feet of porcine plows, implanting ruthless tread.
Jostling aside seraphic purity
               Against the frigid concrete lip
Created of man's convenience

It becomes a solid coal of ice . . . and mud,
         To be looked upon with distaste
                    And alienated revolt . . . and wished away.
So once again can be seen, the gray obscurity of asphalt,
Adorned in dross and litter waste of lives.

A camel butt tossed mindlessly from a passing auto
       into the mucky slush of the perfect snowflake.

THE POET©  By Sharon Angleman

I follow a shadow through a forest
   hosting trees of gray bones and brittle life,
      and movement of only dust.
My nostrils cry in protest
   to the oil smell of long-trodden, sullen earth
       and still I follow
A forgotten bead from a strand broken of age.

Though no other creature stir,
   I hear spirit-laden, evening voices
Promising that one perfect thing.

Soon the shadow slows in tarry
   and lefts a feathered, inky finger
       to a sky thick and heavy from air
   breathed through too many lungs.
My eyes follow the infinite, milky thread.
   Past fleeing winds over broken fields,
To see a translucent, golden sphere levitating and illuminating
   words
       I have touched. And breathed. And quilled response
To allusiveness engraved on moist and thirsty eyes.

As I know with senses all save one
The rhythm of their song lulls
   my weary weight to rest.
The inky finger touches slowly my lids,
   closing dilated, seeking eyes.
I dream.

In and of a forest lush with shame and glory.

In a sense of place seeping truth from abreast,
   I lay on webs of softly rotting, dewy leaves
Suckling tranquil pulp of laborious seed,
   none to be ever lonely more.
I groan with spirit-laden, evening voice
   promises of that one perfect thing,
       and look away to the birthing East
But feel a soul’s lusty mate in inky West skies.

Tell me Bryan, how much you know
of secrets things from long ago
of talisman and things that fly
of promises from days gone by.

Speak of that thing which once we knew
spun webs of gold and etched diamonds blue,
what gave human beings their breath of life,
mated shaman on high with his one faithful wife.

Talk of the one thing that we know to be,
that sovereign element we flawfully see,
the one that temps fervent selling of soul
lest you know Hypnos’ bed in lone doltish woe.

So tell me sire Bryan, from hence you once came
Are there reams of stale wishes and desirous shame?
And of that one thing would you give it all
or succumb instead to the breathless fall?

alone and down
    among the mortals
        the shopping malls
            and sororities
and ribald institutions

To know my face would reveal nothing true.
We search them all before we are through.
Breath deep we embrace to espy that one thing
that gives to our words the song that they sing.

what fills your lungs
if it is not me?