Winter’s Song

The snow fell today, and

and silence lifted throughout the streets;

no whistling winds or chilling air

blowing against the breath of my mind.

Just the stillness. This moment.  Here alone

making footprints on the dusting

over cobbled stone/with poet eyes dreaming the sky.

Walking, through the birth of winter night

I think of this freedom to feel and wonder why we search

to heal the past when the present

has embraced the strength that has grown into

our existence.  I wonder about the life that has already been written

and the life awaiting its journal entry upon the process

of thought and I continue to walk.

It is just me and the night.

I watch the tree branches crackle through the shadows

of moonlight

and listen to cars glide through

a harmony of traffic/barely in sight.  The capture

of the stars gleam down on the façade

where lampposts spotlight glimpses

ice stained curbs.  The temperature is barely literate

but it reads me.  It reads my shiver as a residue

of Malbec aromatizes my scented breath

with just a hint of sobriety.

Sometimes it takes a glass of wine and a long walk

in the brisk air to recognize

this romance with society/ as coldness

brings fourth the warmth of the heart and dampness

dries our minds to believe the process of renewal.

The snow fell today, and time hibernated

Inside a pause of a moment.  This moment.  These minutes

of conversing with life /searching and finding

my reason to belong

right in the embrace of Winter’s song.

© 2011

Tarringo T. Vaughan

flutter in front of my eyes causing my mind to stutter
for just one moment as I gaze into the stillness of time
watching this beautiful artistic creation of metamorphosis
fly freely. A pretty black with traces of gold – wings
the eyes of opportunity as they drift though the skies
of a complicated world. During these times, when I study
the path of a butterfly, I wish I had my own wings
to fly; to become a part of the wind flowing with time
without the worry and complications that plague our thoughts;
without the sadness and heartbreak that beats away at our hearts
like an emotional cancer with no cure except the mental
therapy of survival. I find magic in the possibility of flying.
It is like a revival of freedom when our own motivation
fuels our passion to fly without even leaving the ground. Like
the butterfly, we emerge from human cocoon and through growth
life can become our wings encouraging us to rise even when we fall
and rise again even when we think we’ve lost our all.
It is the spirit of our internal beauty that propels us
to lift ourselves up into a sky where inspiration becomes
our liberty to fly. Butterfly wings flutter around me;
an amazement captured reminding me of the places we can go
when we allow the wings of our dreams to set free.

Fly butterfly,
Fly.

© 2012
Tarringo T. Vaughan

this day has just begun.
© 2012
Tarringo T. Vaughan

as I drive this road. The trees still glisten
in the early mist of mid-summer’s dew
as the slight silence of the sun begins to peek
through into another day anew. I love this feeling –

how the breeze sprays steadily against the waking
of my thoughts. A peaceful energy roams the fussy streets
now busy with the employees of life

who are focused in their travels towards destinations of hesitation.
I am one of them, hypnotized
by this everyday process but yet, aware
of these surroundings I cruise through daily, sometimes barley

paying attention to the elemental beauty
of a small town new to my existence but still listens
to the way I think. Often it is just me, this road and observance
with nothing between us except the same ole’ songs
playing on the radio. The urban ego in me

is not use to this kind of quiet. On each side of the road,
in its eleven minute stretch from South to East Windsor, there are free standing

forms of agriculture mixed with fields of tobacco
and decades of corn fields weaving and bobbing
in the slight wind caused by traffic
and in in my rear view window the many mixtures
of gray are opening up to an elegant shade
of blue.

As the suburban romance fades, I discover…this is that something
that happens daily to make our lives poetic

and on this morning in Windsor I feel the poetry
breathing through me.

© 2012
Tarringo T. Vaughan

of silence. I watch them as they travel
in different directions; each an enigma to be studied
and imagined. A man with schizophrenia walks
past a young girl barely fifteen years of age. She looks scared

but pretends to not notice as he shouts
at traffic. He seems to be threatened by their stares
and shows his anger because he hears the internal
voice of laughter and through his vision no one seems to care.
He throws down a cigarette and smashes it intensely
with his left foot and stomps as he fades around the corner.

The girl seems relieved as she slightly coughs
on the leftover smoke of a mental illness.
In all realness she is glad but yet sad that this man
explores life with empty eyes. She walks past the window
of my observation. As she disappears into the distance
I can see a conversation in her motion;

she is telling me she has some place to be
but she seems lost in a world that has yet to learn
her name. I can still see her footprint
barely as the dust from her worn down sneakers
leaves a mark next to the cigarette butt picked up
by an older gentleman dressed to impressed

and very annoyed by this evidence of pollution. His gray
hair shines brilliantly with the shine of the sun
as each wrinkle in his face describes him
as history. I have seen three people find connection
on these sidewalks; each brought together by different

fates of life; travelers searching unknowingly
to be seen and waiting for the footprints
of their stories to be read.

© 2012
Tarringo T. Vaughan