Today was cloudy and rainy where I am
Outside I went to look up at the sky
There in a leafless tree was a tiny bird
Cold and lonely as the storm rolled on by

It was as small as a wren or a very young sparrow
It was so very alone and seemed to be lost
Birds of a feather were today not together
In the morning cold on the grass there was frost

The air was so chilling it cut right to the bone
And little bird sat quiet and it sang no song
It was a still as a statue there on its perch
I thought it was frozen it had been there so long

The little bird sat there on the branch so bare
It sat there so still, but I thought it would flee
I whistled and called in hopes it would fly
The cold little bird in the leafless tree.

Raven

What are we, if not the end result of our choices?
Are we what we are when we tell of ourselves to others
Do they see what we really are when hearing our voices
Are we what is said of us by our sisters and our brothers

Or are we an existence that has no real meaning
Have we spent our lives in selfishness without giving
Or is our true existence found in our moral leaning
Or are we just a piece of a larger mass of living

Is it true when we are told that we are what we eat
Or could it be that we are the synergy of our make up
Or are we what we are when we are languishing in defeat
Or are we simply part and parcel of the work we take up

I think not, the whole of life is more than all its' parts
It is all we've done and all we've suffered and all we gain
It is all our choices in our life and what is in our hearts
For all the joys of life we give and all our personal pain

For what we chose to do or what we chose not to do forms us
The friends we make and the enemies too shape our life
But all in all it is the good we do that forever warms us
From those choices good and bad we have our peace or strife

Raven

Of many things I hear and see in the world in which I live
So many things that make our lives what they have to be
Of tradgedy and of happiness that our trials tend to give
Of how we look at life itself and reflections that we see

How life is more than our birth right, more that how we're made
More than all the parts and pieces of what we call our selves
And more than what others say from memories that surely fade
Of all the many things we are, and where our existence delves

And all and all of what we are, we're not so simple to explain
We creatures of our parentage, mirrors of our mixed up past
Like all the rest of natures work, like rainbows in the rain
We compare ourselves to natures other works and see at last

The real self that lives, inside the surface of our outer shell
Is hard to show through the skin the inner beauty of what we are
So, some live in such a narrow view of self they cannot tell
That others see their inner beauty and who they really are

Raven

A picture of a lane in Three Rivers California where we took a picnic and a bottle of grape juice.

There are many things we can think about

when nature’s obsidian turns our world to dark. 

To think of what lies before us in the night

when blackness fills our meager life’s spark

What may become of us and of our souls if we

should never again see the light or dark of future days

Of that which Khiam said … with these pieces that He plays

 … and one by one back in the closet lays

Against the obsidian black of night that shows,

the sparkling lights – that we can call the stars

Of heavenly bodies that rise in the sky, 

 close enough to see  like Venus or like Mars

Some thoughts of youth and of dreams we might have had

 when we never dreamt of any ends

Or thoughts about the outcome of our youthful games

that we played with all our many friends

Just random thoughts that make our mind

hunt through our existence and at last

Like an obsidian mirror that reflects to us

the good and evil from our past