After the Dinner Party

After the Dinner Party
By Robert Penn Warren

You two sit at the table late, each, now and then,
Twirling a near-empty wine glass to watch the last red
Liquid climb up the crystalline spin to the last moment when
Centrifugality fails: with nothing now said.

What is left to say when the last logs sag and wink?
The dark outside is streaked with the casual snowflake
Of winter's demise, all guests long gone home, and you think
Of others who never again can come to partake

Of food, wine, laughter, and philosophy --
Though tonight one guest has quoted a killing phrase we owe
To a lost one whose grin, in eternal atrophy,
Now in dark celebrates some last unworded jest none can know.

Now a chair scrapes, sudden, on tiles, and one of you
Moves soundless, as in hypnotic certainty,
The length of table. Stands there a moment or two,
Then sits, reaches out a hand, open and empty.

How long it seems till a hand finds that hand there laid,
While ash, still glowing, crumbles, and silence is such
That the crumbling of ash is audible. Now naught's left unsaid
Of the old heart-concerns, the last, tonight, which

Had been of the absent children, whose bright gaze
Over-arches the future's horizon, in the mist of your prayers.
The last log is black, while ash beneath displays
No last glow. You snuff candles. Soon the old stairs

Will creak with your grave and synchronized tread as each mounts
To a briefness of light, then true weight of darkness, and then
That heart-dimness in which neither joy nor sorrow counts.
Even so, one hand gropes out for another, again.

Meet Peregrine a 2017 Giant Escape City

Meet Peregrine a 2017 Giant Escape City, my new bike.

Named after St. Peregrine the Martyr who refused to worship the emperor. (Today's Trump)

Named after St. Peregrine of Auxerre due to his Champagne color.

Named after the Peregrine Falcon due to his speed, agility, color, and black markings. And because it was my highschool mascot.

Named after the Peregrine Class Courier Ship appropriated by the Maquis in Star Trek because at his heart he's at once both a courier and a pirate.

Named after the Celtic Peregrinatio Pro Christo because he's a wanderer.

I'm looking forward to getting to know him!

Summer Solstice

Twenty-seven years ago today I completed my third degree initiation in Wicca and took permanent vows, celebrating The Great Rite during a Summer Solstice circle with a dear friend of mine by the name of Jamie.

After the four quarters had been dismissed and the circle was opened, though never broken, we feasted on fresh fruit drizzled with honey and drank sweet red wine until the wee hours of the morning when the dew started to fall.

I was what one would call an eclectic wiccan, or a shaman, as I prefer. My craft name was Byron Moonshadow and my first totem animal was a rabbit, though the bear came to me eventually as well.

It is a path I hold dear and one I still follow in many, many ways. Once a witch, always a witch I suppose. It was through Wicca that I discovered the Divine and came face to face with that which is Love. It was through Wicca that I could finally believe in something other, if that makes any sense at all.

Since those days my perspective perhaps has changed over the years and my understanding of grace, salvation, and love has led me down a different path in the garden of life but in many ways I’m still a barefoot shaman dancing under the moonlight in a circle ringed with flowers and the breath of the summer solstice on the night breeze.