Verdant evening sky slowly
gives way to the breath of dawn,
night vanquished as revealed

through my eyes of distance
in forty years, like a sounding,
like the depths of an ocean

fathoms measured in days,
–my thoughts as echoes–
that time now in singularity

astray in a story that began
as I have begun in witness
absolved in ferly days since

when my journey began,
where now there is a view,
a silent periphery forming,

rock-strewn and tree-fallen,
along lands of a gentle wind
as every moment of every

day becomes a counting in
the make and measure of my life,
soundless like falling stars
fading aside the morning sun

© K. James Ribble