I was going to war

with accumulating years,

but found peace

on a daily basis,

dressed in long words,

short sentences,

intermittently shaken

by the occasional aphasia

of migraine auras,

spoken from the bottom

of lost semantics

drowning

in inconceivable phonemes

Within a perimeter

of groundbreaking hard words

I sit still

in a sanctuary of silence, birdsong

and imminence,

the nature of which

I cannot determine

Cats come to me,

and last night in a dream,

a big horse approached me

inside a large, lofty hall

I fear old computers

and racing bike tires

that seem not to hold air

The lady is working herself down,

and there is no way

to soften her fierceness

Dylan is 81, McCartney 80
I follow suit,

a few years behind

Things have changed

I meditate

in a circle of harsh words

left out of old conversations

from bygone years

that pulled their coats

up over their months

'round Wild West camp fires

long times ago

Flying machines waste the skies

The moon pulls nocturnal clouds

before its face

Lethal words become bonfires

'round the horizon

Everything is waiting

The long last rumbles

beyond the coniferous belts

Jabbing words become totems

of fierce wisdom

I roar the words of fighter jets

The oceans hold tight

It's a long way to anything

Yesterday on my bike round

I found an old dust pan

by the roadside

on a desolate stretch

through the northern woodlands

It was rusty red

and sharpened by rain and wind and years

I lifted it and listened to its beautiful,

metallic ring

as I hit it against the handlebars

Right then, as I was standing there,

my front wheel down in the ditch,

dust pan in hand,

a rare car passed,

roaring by at high speed, honking,

obviously startled by a racing biker

with a dust pan

I guide my thoughts

down the white staircase,

out over the porch,

into the garden,

down to the pond,

where time and its opponents gather

to hear the ripple

Somewhere is right here;

you know it

I leave these notes here,

for anyone who is looking

In vain

is the way to do anything