When will the hoary shackles of
Life’s winter crack and fall?
When will I at last rise above
The muck that grounds us all?
When might the shadows of my thought
Recede as stars at dawn?
So that I’ll be that man I ought
To be, not one more pawn?

It is with wariness I walk
Along this o’ergrown path
E’er watching in the shadows for
Vile biting, shadowed things

To prattle on but little say
Is ‘mong life’s greater sins
To take such sun from any day
Deserves a kick t’the shins

Bright and merry were the days
We spent beside our kin
A light we carried through the haze
Of joy we wandered in
Yet now the bells have ceased to ring
And winter’s chill remains
Oh, how the fell season does sing
Of far too distant rains

I’ve often seen in visions what
Another time could be
On someone else’s life looked, but
That someone else was me

It is a strange and curious thing
To so know something false
As strands of time unpasséd sing
As strongly as your pulse

I walked into a clouded place
Amidst a sunless sky
Away from time, away from space
Flying both low and high

It was a place of in-between
No edges and no floor
A place meant to go e’er unseen
Not so much as a door

Yet still I found myself in there
Parted from earthly bonds
Breathing something I won’t call air
Standing in misted ponds

And soon as I looked ’round, I stepped
Again through my mind’s door
From a place I found as I slept
That made me want for more

In winters long and ever chilled
I long for sunlight’s heat
On some beach sandcastles I’ll build
In sand bury my feet