SNOWFIELD

If I told you this snowfield’s a blank page

and my lithe boots are old typewriter keys

etching a sonnet for you of an age

when we’d lie as one beside Christmas trees,

holding each other till dawn—even through

sleep and dreams as Mathis and choirs echo

carols of joy—how would you respond? You

really can’t know what my blazed senses know:

how no flashing tree light or candle flame

can match your glow: eyes destined to dissolve

mountain ranges or distant planets, fame

of your loving gaze firing my resolve

to inflame your passion even more, yearn

to shine like Bethlehem’s star as we burn.

Roger Armbrust

December 17, 2012

TWENTY-FIFTH SYMPHONY

Mozart, unhappy in Salzburg despite

Lucia Silla’s nod in Milan, turns

to Sturm und Drang—his blending desperate

strings in searching awe, as if psyche yearns

to rush back to 9 Getreidegasse, both dash

and dance past his old neighborhood’s columns

of shops with wrought-iron guild signs, flowered cache

of courtyards and passageways. How solemn

his sudden pause and reflection, then swell

of fearful wonder somehow transcending

to gentle cadence, as if calmed to tell

Constanze (who he’s yet to meet) heart sings

when he sees her. How October wind spins

leaves around them, captured through violins.

Roger Armbrust

December 12, 2012

“FEAR NOT”

Those two words almost always calmed their hearts,

it seemed, their storm-sea eyes glaring at first,

then easing to wary focus. They’d start

to trust him when he’d say “savior,” their thirst

for safety briefly quenched. The young virgin,

her soft hair a flowing ocean, had stared,

nodded and whispered. Startled shepherds, when

told of Bethlehem, had simply walked there.

Those three silk-robed men he’d watched for decades

gathered gold, myrrh, mounted camels and rode

west. Humans were easy, really, once stayed

of fright. He felt the desert wind, how cold

it could grow at night, turned and studied those

far stars. Then he spread his vast wings and rose.

Roger Armbrust

December 10, 2012

LIGHTNING LASHES

from distant cloud bank, sizzling arteries

gashing ebony night through fiery white

bones caped in glowing azure, and carries

its jagged flashing like alien rites

of passage across vast farm fields so far

off its thunder muffles as if a child

was crumpling cellophane. Outside our car,

we lean on each other like willows, wild

sweeping deluge soaking our love-linked frames,

yet we refuse to flinch, though that massive

warrior’s saber surely will slash our names

on some ancient stone, crackle how we live

in danger of mad storms melting our clay

carcasses, clap how we like it that way.

Roger Armbrust

December 8, 2012

RED SHIFT

When you expand from me past vast rock forms

and iron temples—monuments of past lives—

and stretch from sight in distant light, this corm

of root-heat senses our tension revive

earth’s simmered surface. This blaze quivering

crimson across horizons, they tell me,

reveals sun’s majestic power: fire rings

dancing in waves, remains of Ptolemy’s

ancient Almagest observations. Yet

we know it’s our grasping wavelength burning

cosmic bright as space unfolds. We forget

sometimes, don’t we, our essence? How yearning

grows through time and separation. Or why

passion flares infrared to human eyes.

Roger Armbrust

December 7, 2012