These little pretzel nuggets don’t taste very good
Dry and salty on the outside and on the inside
No tootsie roll surprise no reason to keep eating
Five, six, seven… there’s no reason to keep eating
No payoff no reward no satisfaction no acclaim
Just salty lips and a dry mouth and a few minutes
Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen… what’s on next?
-T. Weeks
(A response to “Wandering at Morn”)
My children lay
Silent in their beds
Sure of their world
Sure of me
Along their own path
They have started
And must travel alone
But maybe
For these few steps
I can walk beside them
Presenting the joys
Of a flower and a bird
A breeze and hardy company
Warmth and wisdom
My only gift
From the cold
-T. Weeks
(A response to “An Old Man’s Thought of School”)
Somewhere in the dark and cold
Moves a ship silent and blind
Gliding ghostily beyond the Ort
Dormant sensor stand useless
Tokens of purpose ever at attention
Among these defunct appendages
A golden disc carries a message
Pictures of atoms and stars
Memories of its creators long dead
A message in a bottle
Tossed into the sea infinite
It’s only message, “We were”
T. Weeks
(A response to “The Ox-Tamer”)
Expectations rise
Clustering in constellations
Guides for an aimless walk
Some fade into the firmament
Others supernova
Even the dark hole they leave
Was created by them
Sometimes I forget
It’s all sky
-T. Weeks
(A response to “O Star of France [1870-71]”)
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”)
Life Immense 