Vondenbash Hollow

Things seem less important down here
in Vondenbash Hollow.
The ear-piercing scream of
white-knuckle sirens
don't wake you from your sleep
en route to a seventy-year-old
dying man.
Instead, frost breaks the weakest
branches of an old sycamore
that lurches tiredly over
a spring, sending that part noiselessly into
watery solitude.
In Vondenbash Hollow there are no
thunder-like exclamations that
signal the end
of a seventeen-year-old life
because of a back alley scuffle.
There are, instead, the snowfalls.
Cold; indifferent to the outside
awning,
which whines under the
weight and cracks, landing
safely into the numbing cold
below.
In Vondenbash Hollow we
mourn the insignificant.

Long Day is Gone

This day is long. It winds
and winds, cold
in its deliberate attempt to abase
those who are imprudent
enough to face it.
Its brief victories
against me are
suffocating in enormity,
but when the long day is gone
there is you.