Moment’s Passing

There are certain
recollections
reflections of time, past
the way of seeing,
like the congruency of
an orrery, the possibilities
obliged to the fruit
of all my labors
marked in each
moment passing in predation,
like a compendium of ifs
adjacent to the fall
of my heart
unearthed
by the echoes of regret
in decibels of
callous modernity –
this universe of fog and
inquiry causes me
to stop, take pause –
and it is in this second
where re-cognition begins
as the daylight flailing
in a long day’s reckoning

 

 

© K. James Ribble

Snow Moon

You come to me

like the sound of rain in summer
a faint rhythmicity in your chaos

almost circadian

like the way an audience of memory
crosses downstage chiasmatic, full of life

like the snow moon

grown gibbous tonight in time she
didn’t mention all the ways she has me

in her silver haven

where life made leading the course of living
our path reside in a great loop of time

across the campaign of crying

in a matte effect of forgone emotion
recalling all the ways, all the sweet ways

that I love you
tonight

 

© K. James Ribble

The Boneyard of Grieving

mournful light shadows
the intolerance of occlusion

the canyon pinks of an open sky
now calm, soothes the lonely

cloudwaters reflected in the
soft drone of complacence

their subversion to vagrant
standing as piquant yet alone &

trophic, like a sentinel milled
smooth to feel a man fallen

who, forlorn & forgotten,
never asked for forgiveness

yet all my brothers walked at
the boneyard of this grieving

their own lands accepting tears
before the air could receive

their grounding, making time
appear in dilation lost long

in the vapors of sorrow,
like rain pinning the circle

of dreams merged magnificent
inside their waking hours

© K. James Ribble


 

“We have lived upon this land from days beyond history’s records, far past any living memory, deep into the time of legend. The story of my people and the story of this place are one single story. No man can think of us without thinking of this place. We are always joined together.”

—Taos Pueblo (Tuah-Tah) elder / New Mexico History Museum