Humming asphalt yields to a growling trail
Daisies and tall grass crowding the narrow way
Convalescent pines lean to peak in the windows
Of our small truck bouncing and banking
We look out, miles into the thickness of the woods,
Recording light and sounds with eyes only
Services long fallen silent, checked at the door,
Tallying likes with each smile we share
-T. Weeks
(“Over the Carnage Rose Prophetic a Voice”)
Still riding in my painted coffin
Trundling along an unseen rode
Focused on walls painted bright
Clean lines and right angles
Directions for happiness guaranteed
Meanwhile I roll
Feeling the bumps and hearing the wind
Something big lives outside this box
It’s not like the pictures inside
Outside is unsure and mysterious
I’m curious but dare not peek
No lock keeps me here
Only the familiar comfort
Painted on the inside of this coffin
As I move safely towards my grave
-T. Weeks
(A response to “Dirge for Two Veterans”)
To where will the momentum go
As this city rusts and slows
And native ferns reclaim sacred ground
Displacing traces of vanished tenants
Will it flow down the Willamette
To the Colombia and out to sea
Or grind it’s way to the heart of Hood
Or sink below silt and pines
Napping before its next millennia
-T. Weeks
(A response to “Give Me the Splendid Silent Sun”)
No terror lies in a darker shadow
Than the paranoia of the bored masses
Painting the world however we like
Too comfortable to challenge our creation
-T. Weeks
(A response to “Long, Too Long America”)
I read about the wound-dresser,
Counting limbs lost, holes in chests,
Heads crushed, summoning death merciful
Without reference I cannot comprehend
So I must invent a scene worthy of pity
Blood and gore and grime and darkness
Draw revulsion but trigger no compassion
Then I see, behind the verse,
Tears of families divided by death too soon
And I choke on the air around words too heavy
T. Weeks
(A response to “The Wound-Dresser”)
Indifferent towards the gloom of honest night
Blissful June rise, amber salutation,
Elbows its way around the blinds
Pursuing empathic shadows as they find refuge
Deep within the furniture and door jams
-T. Weeks
(A response to “Year That Trembled and Reel’d Beneath Me”)
Not reason have I to fear the falling
Unending tumble from no where at all
Headlong plummet with no floor to end it
Yet still I climb my imaginary perch
T. Weeks
(A response to “Not the Pilot”)
Ancient smooth log
Cut deep cross grain
Mile marker in time
1962, 1987, 2002,
Now
Friends and lovers
Lone travelers
Parties in motion
Scratching proof
They were here
Wandering the woods
Just as I
-T. Weeks
(A response to “As Toilsome I Wander’d Virginia’s Woods”)
A cake called Love
We made it tonight
Delicate surprising
For every occasion
-T. Weeks
(A response to “A Sight in Camp in the Daybreak Gray and Dim”)
The only lesson I ever learn
Is that the road is never known
Over and over and over again
-T. Weeks
(A response to “A March in the Ranks Hard-Prest, and the Road Unknown”)
Life Immense 