A Poet's Walk

All the world's aroar and speaks
and means more than I can say.
Every object--flower, cloud, or leaf--
latent in poetic voice,
shouts and snorts and croaks its metaphor.

I walk through no mortal door, but passage into time;
a broken stone, lies beside as life cast down.
Myself and you and hordes before
look back from this Narcissus' lake.

A breeze, not wind, but voice of anxious thought;
Sweet bird in winter tree, are you hope or desolation?
Black bird and crow fetch from carrion the sin-stained heart
as snow falls with its icy purity from above.

Shaking its mane, a neighing archetype gallops free.
Horizon, sky, and day tell of our tomorrow.
Dark clouds, in cliche, portend.
Windows on houses stare or blink or keep a friend apart.

Why have all the leaves now fallen like a lazy simile?
Lapping up muddy water, the hart (with pun as well)
lifts its head, darts away, and dissolves into the wood.
Where does the dark path lead?

Child, youth, bench, grass
all sing a thousand songs
of what is, what was, and Who is to come.

I choose now a "less traveled" road,
as autumn's rosy evening embraces twilight
and hurry home again, ever returning,
before black darkness falls,
and I am left alone at night
with haunting, nocturnal metaphors,
or I lose my way

and sleep the long sleep.