Mellow moon glow washes against the heavy pine canopy
And retreats
Leaving the trail below in a lonely slumber
Pre-dawn blackness folds thick around me
Muffling the thrumming frogs in the unseen creek
Returning soft and wild shuffles from my own footfalls
My unseeing eyes want to panic
Painting danger on the void
But cool even breaths of morning air carry the pace
And I wind like the wind in the dark
-T. Weeks
(A response to “The Torch”)
Off into the sunken sea
The good ship departs
Smiles wide
Fear pouring off the decks
Shouts for courage billowing the sails
Fables hint at a distant shore
But no assurances rise beyond the line
Of an expressionless horizon
Never tipping it’s hand
On the dock we dream
Of frontiers and prosperity
Secretly hoping for signs of a shipwreck
To prove wisdom lies on shore
But everyday the sands are clean
Another ship departs
Which one will I finally board
-T. Weeks
(A response to “Tests”)
Immortal and dense
This stone sits heavy in my palm
In your eternal travels
How many eons have you seen
How many species have you heard
How many oceans have you smelled
The stone turns over and over
Revealing its secrets to me
Sightless sentry sleeping
Unaware and tumbled smooth
Is immortality such a gift
If there is nothing to count it by
Writ between the grains of sediment
A cosmic bargain presents itself
How many years would you give up
To see would you give up a million
To smell and hear another billion
What would you give for 100 years of awareness
The stone and I are the same
I put it in my pocket happy with my 100
-T. Weeks
(A response to “Who Learns My Lesson Complete?”)
Praise to the gray sky lording
Praise to the sidewalk sparkling
Praise to the breeze surprising
Praise to the aged pines watching
Praise to the Pacific Northwest
-T. Weeks
(A response to “Others May Praise What They Like”)
What do we call it
The Universe
That’s not a name
It’s a title
Cosmos doesn’t fit
Feels like a hand-me-down
These are both words
From a thing
Beginning to realize
Its self
What is its name
We may not know
Until we see it
From the outside
-T. Weeks
(A response to “Kosmos”)
What do I do with this?
This surreal collage of letters
Meaningless in solitude
Together an impressionist’s stroke
Five characters locked in a scene
Conjuring phantoms of me
A different face for each reader
Unique to a time and place
There is a soul in these letters
Reborn with every reading
Immortal as the page
-T. Weeks
(A response to “What Am I After All”)
Watching little legs chase a patchwork ball
I wish I had remembered a chair
Crispy grass pokes the back of my legs
Kicking laughing clumping crying
The small group tumbles around the field
Nearly finding a goal with almost every pass
I recognize this madness
But are they just like us or us like them
-T. Weeks
(A response to “Unfolded out of the Folds”)
Just before evening two riders mount tired horses
After a scant feast and less chatter
One riding west and anxious to move on
The other riding east and leery of the clouds
Dry air drinking up their thin prose
Just a few sighing words about how it all felt wrong
Crow-footed gazes spreading to the horizon
The way things are is not how they ought to be
Swinging up onto old leather, cracked and shiny
One rider croaks out his dusty dirge
In another time when the paint was fresh
Colors and intentions were pure
Ah, says the other, that must have been nice
I heard them walls was always faded and flaking
You ever wonder from where the color came
Who painted the town in the first place
They rode on
-T. Weeks
(A response to “To a Pupil”)
I’m free to move
To fly like a spark from the wheel
Flashing in any direction
To my own applause
To the curiosity of the passerby
-T. Weeks
(A response to “Sparkles from the Wheel”)
Moving and not seeing
Acting but not finding
Pissing in the hall
Tripping on a chair
Ghosting to the door
Waking and oblivious
Longing for a trophy
Nodding for the dream
King of nothing but a mess
-T. Weeks
(A response to “Thought”)
Life Immense 