Midnight Writing

I lay once again

on the altar of my

writing desk the sacrificial

labor of my hands.

I give these stolen

moments of clarity

expressed in brevity

incredibly inspired

They flow like so much

water or notes that

babble over stones

like keys in a gloss black case

For no more grace

than the hope that

someone will read

do I concede these thoughts attest

The inner workings

of my mind’s eye

that flies ever inward to

contest the shadows

So that knowing I have

yawped my words into

the night I might find

some peaceful sleep of mind

While She Sleeps

The house exhales in hush-toned sighs,

floorboards easing under moonlight’s weight.

She sleeps, curled in the hush of quilts,

while I sit with the day's unspoken freight.

Words gather like dew on the rim of thought,

too tender for daylight, too restless to wait.

I write to clear the backlog of breath,

to drain the ache before it calcifies to fate.

The river outside murmurs in Choctaw tones,

ancestral rhythms in the Mississippi’s bend.

It knows the burden of carrying memory—

how silence can be both wound and mend.

My boots are by the door, still laced with dust,

but tonight, I march only through lines.

Each stanza a step, each verse a release,

each pause a place where sorrow unwinds.

She dreams in peace I once fought to protect,

and I, in this vigil, find my own kind of rest.

Not in sleep, but in the letting go—

of what I couldn’t say, though I tried my best.

So I write, not for glory, not for praise,

but to keep the soul from rusting through.

To honor the quiet, the cost, the grace—

and to meet the dawn with something true.