I go for long walks at night

when the darkness falls like dead butterflies

when the shadows dance like dark tumbleweeds

when the silence runs deep like a chasm

between the cliffs hiding in a sunken soul

Last night, I walked to a playground

beneath the hidden full moon

as it slept behind clouds,

emitting a lazy white light,

and I sat on a swing and swung

my legs up into the warm night sky

and I was a child alone in the darkness,

flying and lonely

as the spring peepers sang their own lonely songs

duetting with my whispering mind

Typewriter poem day 2:

Pictures of Silence

There’s no silence like snowfall

When you can hear branches cracking

Beneath the weight of ice

When animals hide from the cold

And the white blanket is untouched

Trees frosted with frigid purity

The streets are silent when darkness falls

Hard like a crushing dead blow hammer

And the human world is locked

Behind closed doors of suburbia

Retired to their beds

Where some are locked in embrace

While others are lonely

Waiting through the unrelenting night

For what little relief the morning brings

My living room is silent in the darkness

As the children sleep upstairs

Dreaming of toys and candy

And the colorful things of childhood

My mind is silent

As I put my heartaches and struggles behind me

Give myself to sleep

And wait to see what the dawn brings

Typewriter poem #3

Phantom Pains

Something is missing

And in the gaping emptiness left behind

It feels like sinking

I can feel the wind blow through

The icy fingers of some lost love

Or maybe a dead parent, an ancient ancestor

A Scottish spirit or a dead French poet

Some love I never knew

Finding a home in my vast emptiness

Taking up residence and adding furniture

Rooms full of baggage

Covered with dust and cobwebs

and the emptiness gets comfortable

Kicks up its feet and leans back

On a sofa of shadows

And I suffer

And try to figure out what was lost

So I can know what I need to mourn