The Forest of Red Leaves

Alone
Alone in the dark
She dances her own dance
She sketches her own drawings
etched in the silver colors of the moonlight
She writes her own stories
Peopled by the only people she knows
She's oceans away from everyone
Yet the roses boom so sweetly for her
And the wind whispers secrets into her ear
She plays her own music for herself to hear
She walks the sands alone at night
She makes the colored cloth come to life
She makes everything so beautiful
Yet there is no one else to see it
She is all alone.

A Strange Palace.
Dancing in the wind
A twirl of flowers and of leaves
A ballet performed in a ballroom
Designed of magic on a strange loom
Music's airy song swells louder
As night's atmosphere darkens
Into a world of heightened dreams
And of endless possibilities in eternal realms

Oak trees gird themselves into pillars
Temple columns that stand forever
Stardust stream over fountain waters
That trickle down the steps of marble
They lead to towers of ivory splendor
In which ancient tomes dwell together
The smell of roses drift through the windows
Where their thorny vines stand guard by the hour

And while these towers climb skyward
Their roots lay deep below the earth
They stretch below to caves majestic
Where crystals gleam amidst black terrains
The smell of salt enshrines these caverns
And twists toward the statuary so serene
Whose eyes are fixed upon the distance
Pitch-black rocks of caves shrouded in darkness

Evening to Night to Dawn
Sunlight playing with the shadows
The curtain draws shut in my room
Against the city lights
We don't need the moonlight
My candles are flickering in the darkness
Snow falls across the park on lonely benches
Skating down the pond under the snowflakes
I was asking you why we laughed so much
But we were laughing so hard we couldn't remember
Noise filters 'cross our backyard
But we're looking down on Chinese lanterns
Dawn is rising across the hills
The night is over before it started.

Pattern of Life
I used to wish I had a different pattern
But mine is where I wanted it to be
My pattern twirls, swirls, it leaps off the cloth
I couldn't ask more until the scissors of gold takes it back.

Your Life.
I saw you lying by the side of the road
Your white face illuminated by the car's headlights
You were so still I wasn't sure
If you were alive
And I wasn't sure
If there were one or two of you
In a lover's embrace
And in that one moment
I thought I could feel everything you felt
Your pain, your sadness, your anguish
Your joy, your hope, your anger,
Your love, the life you've lost,
Or the life you've forgotten,
And in that single moment life and death met,
And nothing else seemed more important,
In the darkness
Life has never seemed more alive
With you lying there
And I was wondering if you could speak
I was wondering if you could tell me your tale
I was wondering what you were doing in the darkness
And I wondered if you lived your life in darkness
And I wondered if you lived your life in sunshine
And I wonder what drove you to this madness
Its cold out there
And you can't seem to tell me more then what I already know
Have you pierced life's greater mysterious?
Or are you just amidst its grayer shadows?
And I wonder what tales you would have to tell me
Would you have tales of the stars to tell me?
Are you looking up at the stars?
Or are you already lost in the velvet black darkness?
How cold are you now?
Are you cold inside out?
Your pain, your sadness, your anguish,
Your joy, your hope, your sorrow,
Your anger, your heart, your love,
Your life.