Beauty in the hollow places
wise and weary
timeworn faces

Echoing with voices cast
lovelorn souls with
questions vast

Pillars we from turning round
looking back on
blackened ground

Beauty in the toughest races
beaten paths and
fruitless chases

Tripping, stumbling, ever last
still we rise and
stagger past

Sometimes lost but always found
in the fury
in the sound

Beauty in the gaping spaces
lunatics and
hopeless cases

Grains of sand all falling fast
heaps of crystals
all amassed

Treasures and debris abound
with the mixture
we are crowned

Beauty in what time erases
finding peace
in endless graces

Lying down no more harassed
by musts and shoulds
demanded, asked

Soul-ship finally run aground
resigned, refined,
at last unbound.

My brother
is like a green tree I know
upon an open
rolling
Oklahoma hill

nothing near but
prairie grass and wind
a cerulean cloche
stretching overhead

no cottonwood, this
no straggling, bent redbud
or fruitless pear

but straight and sturdy
umbrella of shade
promise of shelter
from the remorseless sun

and when I traverse
that unrelenting sameness
from Bartlesville to Tulsa

I watch for it
every time
encouraged

by its stalwart grace
heroism
tenacity
generosity
and singular beauty

I am grateful for it
it reminds me of him
an oasis in my life
where I never fail
to find peace
and rest.

Sometimes
the razor-sharp edge of grief
caresses my pericardium
tracing that fragile membrane
like a whisper
every touch electric
raising goosebumps
along my flesh
and I ask

is this love?

exciting and dangerous
titillating and violent
embracing and manipulative

are they two sides of the same coin or
some alien currency whose exchange rate
I have never grasped?

why do I love these torn, bloody places?

who am I without these various wounds?
who am I without the pain, the fear, the
unfettered
savage

fury?

without them there is nothing but wind and foam and
hollow spaces

a shell
carved of flesh
full of echoes.