Rainhues
Autumn drizzles rain in gray,
Dripping
slowly
from
dying
leaves,
Painting windows with dusty stripes,
Drenching the soul with sadness,
Endless, endless drops.
Winter’s rain is brilliant blue.
Icy needles puncture snow.
Freezing fingers caress your neck,
Piercing your rubber armor,
Endless, endless drops.
Spring rains bring a chartreuse glow,
Floating
lightly
on fragrant
blossoms,
Giving the air a clean new scent,
Coaxing sprigs of green,
Endless, endless drops.
Purple cloaks the Summer rain,
Driving,
dancing,
dashing
to earth,
Lit by sparks of Vulcan’s wrath,
Regal in its splendor,
Endless, endless drops.
Written circa 1961, revised 1997 by David L Brungart - © Copyright
Return to top of page
The Frozen Cathedral
Settling softly, the flake of snow Rejoins its mates on the forest floor, Moon-dust twinkling in silvery glow. Umbilical beams from the matral moon Nourish her spawn, while godfather stars Approvingly wink to an unheard tune. Intricate branches, covered in white, Arches and sculptures of infinite grace, Transform the glen, a miraculous sight. Argent light through silent trees Emblazons the scene like a chandelier, As crystal pendants drip and freeze. This icy cathedral, with altar of snow, With stars in the vaults, with ceiling of sky, Though humbling to view, inspires us to grow.
Written circa 1961, extensively revised 1997 by David L Brungart - © Copyright
Return to top of page
The Boundary
Splitting land from azure sea, Stretching listless, distant, glaring, Silent lies the ribbon ochre, Kissing the greenness of the lea. Sun-showers bathe the steaming shore, Splashing back from sandy facets, Spreading softly warmth and light, Languor under the breakers’ roar. Stillness is shattered by the wave-song Swishing, lapping toward the shore, Singing of Man’s eternal desire, “Take Me Along! . . . Take me along!”
Written circa 1961, revised 1997 by David L Brungart - © Copyright
Return to top of page
A Child’s World
A child’s world is a lovely world With calico fields ‘neath blue plaid skies, Where teddy bears dance with little stuffed dogs, And a dishful of mud makes wonderful pies. Peeping through cotton candy clouds, The bright yellow lollypup of the sun Illumines a grove of striped candy trees, Where children and puppies and dolls may have fun. Mountains of ice cream and rivers of syrup Are easily found in the dream-land of youth. Santa brings gifts once a year without fail; Good fairies leave money for baby’s lost tooth. Pumpkins and mice change to carriage and horses; Everything nice may be gained by a wish. Heroes are lauded and villains are punished, But hooky is legal (boys have to fish)! Pause, my child, on the ladder of life; Enjoy while you may the delights of your dreams. Your joys are not found in the world of adults - Fairies to them are “. . . just moonbeams.”
Written circa 1961, revised 1997 by David L Brungart - © Copyright
Return to top of page
An Autumn Afternoon
A flutter in the Autumn wind, A rustling echo in the trees, And dying leaves Shower below Like rainfall in adagio. A soft and soothing pattern of sound Accompanies the leaves as they meet the ground. They crackle and crunch, Loathe to expire, The embers of a dying fire. A single leaf comes fluttering down, Reluctant still to touch the ground. It bounces once, Flips, and lands With a sad and softly crinkling sound. Decaying leaves will feed the worms That in their turn will feed the trees To sprout anew, When Spring returns, The leaves for which the branch now mourns. How lucky to see and to feel and to hear This pageant of nature for one more year. Enjoy it now, Rejoice in today, And face tomorrow with diminished fear.
Written 1997 by David L Brungart - © Copyright
Return to top of page
Lethargy
In autumn’s prime
the forest wraps herself
in regal red and gold.
The late October sun
with garnet fingers parts her leafy hair
and bathes her in his warming rays,
showering her with shimmering gems.
Above our heads the brilliant treetops
brush with orange the sky’s translucent blue,
producing vibrant colors far beyond
the magic palette of Cezanne.
In friendly circlets,
tiny wisps of steam arise
from damp and leafy carpets,
paging never-ending sleep.
Even songs of birds
seem laden with fatigue,
and droning insects
hum a soothing lullaby
to drowsy trees.
As winter’s dormant rest arrives,
the feathery lace of verdant ferns,
waving gently in the breeze,
intone the coda of summer’s song.
Written circa 1962 by David L Brungart - © Copyright, revised extensively in 1997
Return to top of page
The Amulet
I found a magic stone. I could see men’s souls as they really are. I threw the stone away.
Written circa 1962 by David L Brungart - © Copyright
Return to top of page
Wisdom in a Nutshell
The older I grow, the more I see; A paradox still puzzles me: The more I see, the less I know; The less I know, the wiser I grow.
Written Nov 1997 by David L Brungart - © Copyright
Return to top of page
Night
Twilight drains the light from day, Fading brilliant hues to gray. Night arrives as twilight leaves, Night is for lovers; night is for thieves. Shadows hide a hunter’s trail. Bringing home a brace of quail, Tired and lost, he stops to rest, Dropping his head upon his chest. The town nearby is wrapped in mist. Two young lovers plan a tryst. Defying their parents, they plan to steal Away from home, their love to seal. Lost in the trees, the hunter slept. In the sleeping town, each lover crept Down parents’ stairs and out the door, Meeting on the forest floor. In forest dark they quietly stepped, Stopping where the hunter slept; Lying down near an old oak tree, The lovers embraced, wild and free. Dreaming of bears, the hunter wakes, Hearing a noise, his rifle takes And shoots a blast that finds its mark, Splattering blood on the oak tree’s bark. Day returns, the village wakes. Empty beds, panic breaks. Everyone looks, but no one sees. A search begins among the trees. Bodies are found, the villagers weep. Lovers embraced in eternal sleep - Lives stolen, village grieves. Night is for lovers, night is for thieves.
Written Nov 1997 by David L Brungart - © Copyright
Return to top of page
Death
Though death for some comes quickly in the night, As mice are seized by owls in swooping flight, For others, death is silent, long, and slow; The flames of life are gone, yet embers glow. With food and breath delivered by machine And life’s sole sign a pulsing, lighted screen, The dying lie in swaddling sheets and wait For patient death to end their hopeless state. Some poets rage against the coming night, Will not go gently, die without a fight; But death claims all, and fighters always lose. When death comes calling, no one can refuse. When facing death, remember this great truth Which you’ll deny until you’ve lost your youth: When hope is gone and life is near the end, The dying recognize that Death’s a friend.
Written Nov 1997 by David L Brungart - © Copyright
Return to top of page
Coquette
Her beauty needs no frame to gild her raw allure; her glamour and her fame reflect her essence pure. But what she hides she flaunts; She waves her scarlet flag in silent, mocking taunts - inflaming every stag. Her fiendish, flirting schemes just hint at what’s in store to spur our bullish dreams and make us wish for more.
Written Dec 1997 by David L Brungart - © Copyright
Return to top of page
Scary Merry
Crowded mall, festive lights, Faces worried, Paces hurried, Christmas here in two more nights.
Written Dec 1997 by David L Brungart - © Copyright
Return to top of page
Precipitation in Blue
Beneath its roof of slate the city weeps. The drips from melting buildings fill the drains That carry endless tears to waiting seas. Impatient rubber tires and rushing feet Send sprays of saltless tears, splashing here A naiad clad in shiny latex cape, And soaking there a homeless little waif. With demon force the never-ending drops, Like stinging hypodermics, drive their black, Depressing thoughts through cloth and human flesh, Injecting toxic grief, destroying joy. The lonely girl in her lonely flat can wait For sun no more. In her tub she sits and slits Her wrists. She watches the slowly reddening flow That joins the rain and fills the weeping drain.
Written circa 1961 and revised extensively in 1997 by David L Brungart - © Copyright
Return to top of page
Faith
Oh! How men tremble and fear to be wrong. Selecting their priests from a clamoring throng, They slaughter their neighbors with unending zeal To prove that their prophets’ pronouncements are real.
Written Dec 1997 by David L Brungart - © Copyright
Return to top of page
Aftermath
In darkened forest halls where bird-songs long had slept, Where insect drones will mar the silence nevermore, The hermit lay beneath a dying elm and wept, And knew that Man had played the final game of war. In endless silent cities he had walked alone, And heard the eerie echoes of his hollow calls Rebound in mocking laughs from crumbling cliffs of stone, Then fade to let deep silence cloak the granite walls. The gold he could not spend and food he could not eat Lay piled in pyre-like heaps in picture-windowed vaults, While useless precious gems were ground beneath his feet In sad contempt for things which only Man exalts. With fleeting hope he'd searched the barren countryside Past ugly fields of tainted corn and fallow soil. His shouts had reached his ears alone, then slowly died. No more would Earth be moist from sweat of human toil. And now he wept beneath the elm's decaying mast; Wept not for joy at nearing Death's delayed release, But wept because he knew his death would be the last - That life on Earth would, with his final weepings, cease.
Written circa 1962 by David L Brungart - © Copyright
Return to top of page
The Time is Near
The time is near when night will fall, the sun to rise no more. The banshee’s scream will fill the air, and vampire bats will soar. Ghouls will creep through graveyards dark and flood the streets with gore. Warlocks and witches will dance the Black Mass and cackle with fiendish cheer. Monsters and ogres of hideous mien through darkened windows will peer. The stalking cat will rule the night, and Man will hide in fear. Prepare yourself for the horror of doom. Remember, the time is near!
Return to top of page
Shades of Darkness
Darkness comes in many shades, Shade the lightest dark of all. Shadows’ hues in forest glades Mimic moss on which they fall. Darkness robs a moonlit night, Steals the rainbow hues of day. Colors muted, strangely bright, Only blues and purples stay. Darkness fills a cloudy night Muted now by distant glow - Cloud-reflected city lights, Hiding heaven’s star-filled show. Darkness when the moon is gone - Shapes and shadows, shades of gray, Can’t reflect the alien dawn - Pinpoint stars, so far away. Darkness in the depths of space Sharply shifts from white to black, Gray shades banished from this place, Twilight gone, not coming back. Darkness shrouds the deepest caves. Only where the glow-worms creep, Light seeps in and barely saves Blackened depths from endless sleep. Darkness deepens depths of seas Slowly squeezing light from blues, Leaving only black, where these Eyeless fish view lifeless crews. Darkness in the soul is worse. Life is filled with endless sighs; Cruel, unforgiving curse - Tortures till its victim dies.
Return to top of page
Newton's Disciple
While Stephen Hawking’s brilliant mind lies trapped within his body’s frail and useless shell by that same faulty DNA that wrapped its vice-like grip ‘round Gehrig’s living hell, his mind is free to soar among the stars. His unstilled fingers serve as Stephen’s tongue, selecting words from letters on a screen. His artificial voice spreads wit among his friends, who only envy what he’s seen in soaring solo flight among the stars. To see him follow Newton’s hallowed path along some storied Cambridge college hall in slowly rolling chair - at first brings wrath against the fates, then questions - why? - then awe that he still freely soars among the stars. His mind, while contemplating deaths of suns, unlocks the secrets of the universe - the first big bang, its many mirrored sons, mysterious black holes - titanic hearse that carries off the remnants of the stars. His body fettered, his soaring mind unbound, this new Prometheus bravely wrestled fate and won, and with his wisdom he has found the courage to rise above his earthbound state and carry us along among the stars.
Return to top of page
A Walk in the Fall
Silently I sing,
my hymn the autumn splendor of the trees,
my music crackling leaves beneath my feet.
In brilliant counterpoint
the breeze plays rippling riffs among the fluttering leaves
that gleam like golden organ pipes against blue satin sky.
Among the golden ashes,
sugar maples rival stained glass windows,
blending shades in seamless tapestries of living flames.
This towering nave of trees
at first inspires a soaring anthem filled with ecstasy,
then leads to somber thoughts of death.
A glorious requiem, yes,
but all that sparkling color will fade to brown,
and soon bare trees will mourn their fallen crown.
The fugue of scents
from newly-fallen leaves and distant fires
will mingle soon with musty smells of decaying loam.
The worms, the beetles,
the germs will work unseen to transform death
and generate anew the stuff of life for the coming spring.
This pageant of death and life,
this yearly rebirth, follows the spinning, tilting earth,
as it rushes in ever-repeating circles around the sun.
And suddenly I become aware
of that awful motion, that spinning through endless space;
and the earth beneath my feet seems no longer stable.
I feel the earth revolve around the sun,
the solar system ‘round the galaxy, the galaxies
fleeing headlong from that big primordial bang.
I see the distant future -
those falling leaves and verdant buds in spring
will not repeat forever.
Those glorious seasons are but a short interlude
between the molten land and boiling seas of newborn earth
and the all-consuming flames of the sun in throes of death.
And still the universe expands,
creating new stars and life from fragments of exploding suns,
beginning new cycles of life and death to replace those lost.
Whole galaxies collide,
are ripped apart and reassembled in conflagrations
that light the heavens.
And then the stars will die; darkness will come,
and entropy's relentless force will level all
to cold and lifeless wastelands, remnants of glories past.
The final act begins;
gravity's unyielding grip grasps those frozen particles
and slowly starts to gather home the wayward flock of quarks.
Expansion becomes contraction,
time and entropy reverse,
the long rewinding has begun.
E pluribus unum -
the disparate laws of physics reunite in the growing mass,
four great horsemen of the Apocalypse melded into mighty unity.
And again, and again...
the resurrected universe explodes, as it has and will for evermore,
creating and destroying in fiery forges that never end.
Reincarnation? Resurrection?
Or just a cold, dead, universe of mass and energy,
cycling and recycling throughout eternity?
Written January 1998 by David L Brungart - © Copyright
Return to top of page
The Wall
The wall still stands. The farm is gone, the people gone. Scrub and weeds now stand where corn rows grew. To clear his field of rocks that broke his plows, a long-dead farmer dug and pried the stones from ancient graves to face anew the sun and wind and weather. Dragging them on horse-drawn sledge to borders of his fields, he set them one upon the other, nestled in just so, to grow in rising rows for many years. He died before he finished - left his sons to pile their stones on top of his, and generations followed. Work begun to rid a man of nuisance wrought at last a thing of beauty. Gravity and friction made this fence outlast its makers. Families scattered, names forgotten, their monument remains. Twining vines find purchase in the many cracks and spaces - frame mosaic grays with softer green. Mosses grow in shady spots, and lichens, mottled red and brown. Resting in its shade, children in the past would snack on fallen apples. Field mice built their nests beneath its shelter. Black snakes warmed themselves on sunny stones. In darker days, men’s rifles peered above its capstones, crackling instant death knells all along its line. Wounded soldiers leaned against the rocks and stained their gray with vivid red. But now the stones are silent. They, too, will crumble to the ground in time, that time that lost the farmer and his sons and changed the tiny creatures of the sea to stones in this abandoned wall.
Written Apr 1998 by David L Brungart - © Copyright
Return to top of page
The Crib
The corn crib stands alone. Flakes of red reflect past glory - newly painted, like the barn beyond, Fortune’s boastful sign to passersby. Now the barn is gone, and gray decay replaces red. The sway-backed roof but slows the snow or dripping rain. Shriveled cobs adorn the floor, reminders of that cornucopia, fattened yellow kernels feeding hens and hogs. Rats that stole those cobs and vexed the helpless farmer now assume the role of landlords, free of raiding barnyard cats. In its prime, this modest hut suspended time, extended food beyond its season, sustained dependent life with bounties stored. Picturesque in present, reminding of the past, and warning of the future, this corn crib straddles time.
Written May 1998 by David L Brungart - © Copyright
Return to top of page
Eden
A little piece of Eden lies outside my window sill -- between the bars that guard my window and the fire escape’s barred rails, a little potted plant, a splash of green against the terra cotta tub that echoes colors from the alley’s solid wall of bricks which mark the limits of my world. When days are free of rain and fog, I watch the line of sunlight creeping slowly down the bricks to touch the plant and bathe its emerald leaves in brilliance, if only for an hour, before retreating up the wall and leaving shadows in its trail. On rainy days, the splash of drops on shiny leaves relieves the gloom that shrouds my world in gray monotony. The water drips from leaf to leaf, bringing rich black soil its life, oasis in an urban desert. Stranger in a strange land, this sturdy plant survives, and brings me hope that I may do the same.
Written Apr 1998 by David L Brungart - © Copyright
Return to top of page
Alone
All my life I’ve been alone. In crowds I stood apart, despised. Cast out by unknown parents, jetsam washed ashore in foster homes devoid of love, in sterile institutions, schools where only hate was taught. Ralph had brought me love. A look of pleasure eating what I cooked, a brush of whiskers, tender touches. Two of us alone against the world, sharing glances of contentment, needing no one else. Then another -- stealing love that Ralph had owed to me. I watched in secret all his furtive touches, licking, rubbing, riding wildly on her back, entwined in knots that locked me out again. The anguish made it easy - soporific drugs to dull his mind and lull his sleeping muscles - only useless twitching as I held him in the tub and watched the rising water still his struggles. All my life I’ve been alone.
Written Apr 1998 by David L Brungart - © Copyright
Return to top of page
Fall Downfall
Not this year! No brilliant hues – no harvest fest of flaming color; no bright, vivid celebration. Summer's wake is filled with dolor – dingy scenes of devastation; drought and heat all life subdues. Gone the splendid tree-lined nave; gone that glorious stained-glass glow (eulogies for vibrant life too soon to die in swirling snow) replaced by signs of autumn’s strife, a dirge to honor summer’s grave. Somber shades predominate; russet, rust, mahogany, sepia (snapshots of the dead) now paint the thinning canopy, few leaves remaining overhead – nothing here to celebrate. No ballets now, no symphony. Swirling leaves that danced before fall en masse, muddy raindrops, straight from life to death; no more that final blaze of glory stops our breath and starts epiphany. Flamboyant? No. Serene? Yes. More like Rembrandt, less like Klee – as aging varnish limits range, earthy shades of sand and clay merge into a melange strange, soothing tones for life’s distress. © David L Brungart - October 16, 1998
Written Oct 1998 by David L Brungart - © Copyright
