Singing with a missing song,
Humming, thrumming deep inside,
Mental engines screech along
Straining and complaining–wrong,

Wrong. Without a route decide
Which words best are heard beside
Others, difficult to build,
Intricate but meaning nil.

Rhyming, stymying my spilled
Thoughts I cannot make belong,
Words unsure they can be song,
Still they sing in what I've willed.

A midnight ambiance arrayed
In cricket chirps and cars,
Machines that hum below the Moon;
A vacuum for the stars.

A power greater than the brush
Consumes the hedgerow's noise;
It sucks the sound into its own,
Becomes the night, the void.

A night erupts when engines sound.
The hushed crescendo, massed
Together: in the fray but not
Aroused, just droning past
And softening the night around.

There's times a man must drive away
Alone without the Sun;
What mission does he undertake
With twilight looking on?

A time I made a night sojourn,
A friend with medicine
Parlayed with me beneath the void
Where once the stars had been.

A highway road alone at night's 
A thrill with just my lamp,
A darkened ruin speeding by
With sparse illumined camps.

The parkway has two garrisons
Or more, but not for me,
Encampments cadred by their lamps
Like holy steelclad trees.

With awe a dim celestial flame
I see recursively
In avatars of a machine
In pairs of pairs of three;

With awe I think mankind more safe,
Designed to find a way
To last if they can make a grove
Of light where nothing stays.

A dark road consecrated by
Its eerie loneliness,
A ritual light quality
For no one, nothing blessed.

I see the asphalt altar pass
Into the night behind
I feel a reverence for speed,
With awe feel light decline.

The fools in glossolalia
Forgo the morphic speech,
But like a fool content to watch,
I spare a smile for each.

The time's a merry river, winds
Its way throughout my hair;
It disappears like puffs of smoke
So carelessly in air.

I've only so much time to stay
Before I go to labor,
But still this precious time I have
With you I'm blessed to savor.

A day in passing sneers at me,
And time slips through my hands.
My longing lingers round my soul
In lonely, choking bands.

Imagine freedom in a kiss,
Deliverance from loss;
Now see it held beyond your reach,
And never meet the cost.

The world in shades of misery
Demands our weeping groans,
As healing works invisibly
Through suffering's odd koans.

My love, to see your tears be shed
Electrifies my soul;
My charge is made: to hold you close
and thrive in love made whole.

The body falls and toils in welts,
Affliction, and in pain,
But how your love applies a salve
That strengthens me again!

There is a building on a road,
A gate to toll the passersthrough,
That's been abandoned for a few
Good years now; all the stiles are closed.

A monolith of stone that's crowned
With blinking lights in dozens sits
Upon its highway lanes, admits
No use of road, since built around.

An express lane became the one
Lane once technology caught up
With speed; it lies inside a cup
Of phantom lanes, of passage done.

The tolls enforced by cameras now
Have obviated booths, and so
The flashing lights that once meant slow
Rebound and now mean speed around.

Upon these expediting lanes
A curve of candles lights the pass,
Illuminating trees and grass
For once along night's shadowed plane.

Fluorescent sentries flank the street,
A glimpse of forest mystery
is visible in whispery
Night. Then once more just road concrete.

The mirrors in their corners glow,
Periphery becomes a lens
Of warming orange light, descends,
Transforms, a singe before it goes.