By Mr. Pausic

Emerging – 2022

The place for a single prayer,

a resolute prayer 

full of joy and suffering–

eyes that look into thousands of suns, 

at nothing at all, 

to try to dream of small things,

something so vast and inescapable.

Inside this total self 

life moves profoundly. 

The bell rings.

Sunset over the Valley – 2023

For Agora

The sun’s fingers play

with the leaves, the grass, our backs and faces.

They flick stones down the valley

and consider the terraces that seek

to wed earth to sky.

Finally here, our hows and whys

wilt and become what they must be.

On the mound an old one sits and sings

the song his children will babble.

A woman carries the branches

and ties her prayer to the wind.

Something is changing

and there cannot be a reason anymore.

The horizon of sun and mountain

shines in greeting.

The bird speaks its praises

and the people in the village square raise

their arms together.

Farther and farther and farther up.

Closer, closer, closer in.

Embraced.

Untitled – 2024

The unleavened, falling into the valley

for all the signs that had sculpted,

the answered, the unanswered, the worshiped,

the ignored. Beneath the moon and its lakes

comes the memory of the crows

who consumed egg and seed. The plasticity

of tonight, today, good morning, goodbye

boils inside.

The unknown

masses of butterflies waiting

at the bottom, coming

like painted shadows for an instant,

the glimmering scales of swimmers

no one noticed until. Further

under the forest of dreams, the wordless

change, a mirror of the leaves floating

downstream, arrives too soon, too late.