FREEDOM

Freedom

I see no further murders

on the horizon

so shall we now proceed cautiously

with our blithe happiness

If these days are so seldom

we must try to invent

an inviolable freedom

to avoid both misery and joy

I may learn of the limited

but not of the unlimited

I may question the answer

but not answer the question

Further Distillations of Reality

To linger at the end of day

silence in the valley welling

racing the night to light the way

with the brilliant dreams so telling

So much for haunts of romance now

so much for sleep that won’t reveal

the single thought to show us how

to keep our selves from what is real

The seasons are for closure now

infinity abandons us

unwanted changes of the hour

to make a soul consider thus

As less and less convinced we are

of paths to our finality

the boundary is never far

thus we accept reality

To linger at the end of night

so in the sun extinguish sleep

it is enough to have the sight

and nothing else that we can keep.

Italics

I am too passive

ever to love the earth

in absentia or

as a theme or symbol

Ever to have oxygen

in my lungs

stop the movement

and somehow not perish

Ever to light the direction

for others to get home

to rejoin the nocturnals

of a shiny darkness

Ever to strip myself

of these italics

confound the presence

of my pretences

Ever to be absent

shipped far to the flung contours

rise from the dawns and

drop from dusk

Ever to receive defeat

or to give up

to find you ever

in these buried travels.

You Have To Get The Weather

Too difficult to explain

where I am or

pointless to describe

except that

I have collected

precipitation and poetry

from the rugged sweep

of this place

and carved my eyes

into the shapes

of wind and words

I watched a place

that does not change

as so many changes take place

outside and within.

Raised By Wolves

One summer year I lived

with three women among the

beaches and sprawling houses

that mingled my innocence with reality

Each played the music of each

each drank the wines of the other

each tended me carelessly and

observed me like a secret

I beheld these three

with unreserved felicity

but even so inexperienced I knew

when they only pretended to smile

We danced and I looked upon

their strangeness as my own story

taking them at their word recomposing

every song I loved just for them

I applied their philosophy

to my youthful distraction

while they practiced making

belles-lettres of me

I know they loved me

I think I can say honestly

that they I loved as well though

I often chuckled when they talked

of passion empathy wisdom

and also of that other thing

so elusive to those who insist

on searching for it

A thing they lived for

as if it really existed

because they invited it

from something called the universe

I implored them to give up

until I began to understand

they were learning by teaching me

what I already knew

All of this blue time wore on

in waves that spoke ever

further to the indiscreet nature

of what were fallen of angels

until a sparkling day in Autumn

I left them at a train station

in all the colours of that season

and they thought they had let me go.

Dean Baltesson is a poet and musician living in Deep Cove BC Canada. He is the author of a volume of poetry entitled “There Must be Words To Describe This”. His poetry and music can be found in a number of online and print literary journals and Apple Music."

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