I Reworked this Haiku especially for the Boeing "Material Identifier Recovery Effort"
Chuck Williamson

Test article does not extinguish
but parts have been installed.
No one hears your screams.

Many parts- all are burning.
Career going up in smoke.
Time now to squeeze trigger?

Certification files that large,
might be very useful.
Too bad- that they are missing.

Your test plan is rejected.
Only perfect spellers
Will have plans approved.

Flame caresses part, while
stopwatch ticks away.
Disclosure letter follows.

First fire, then smoke.
This thousand dollar part
burns so beautifully.

With searching comes loss
and the presence of absence:
Test data missing.

The construction that you seek
cannot be located but,
endless others exist.

There is a chasm between
requirement and performance,
the parts cannot bridge

Yesterday it did not burn.
Today it is burning.
Flame tests are like that.

The wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees.
The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas.
The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,
And the highwyman came riding–
Riding–riding–
The highwayman came riding, up to the old inn-door.

He’d a French cocked-hat on his forehead, a bunch of lace at his chin,
A coat of the claret velvet, and breeches of brown doe-skin.
They fitted with never a wrinkle. His boots were up to the thigh.
And he rode with a jewelled twinkle,
His pistol butt a-twinkle,
His rapier hilt a-twinkle, under the jewelled sky.

Over the cobbles he clattered and clashed in the dark inn-yard,
And he tapped with his whip on the shuters, but all was locked and barred.
He whistled a tune to the window, and who should be waiting there
But the landlord’s black-eyed daughter,
Bess, the landlord’s daughter,
Plaiting a dark red love-knot into her long black hair.

And dark in the dark old inn-yard a stable-wicket creaked
Where Tim the ostler listened. His face was white and peaked.
His eyes were hollows of madness, his hair like mouldy hay,
But he loved the landlord’s daughter.
The landlord’s red-lipped daughter.
Dumb as a dog he listened, and he heard the robber say-

"One kiss, my bonny sweetheart, I’m after a prize tonight,
But I shall be back with the yellow gold before the morning light;
Yet, if they press me sharply, and harry me through the day,
Then look for me by moonlight,
Watch for me by moonlight,
I’ll come to thee by moonlight, though hell should bar the way."

He rose upright in the stirrups. He scarce could reach her hand,
But she loosened her hair in the casement. His face burnt like a brand
As the black cascade of perfume came tumbling over his breast;
And he kissed its waves in the moonlight,
(Oh, sweet, black waves in the moonlight!)
Then he tugged at his rein in the moonliglt, and galloped away to the west.

He did not come in the dawning. He did not come at noon;
And out of the tawny sunset, before the rise of the moon,
When the road was a gypsy’s ribbon, looping the purple moor,
A red-coat troop came marching–
Marching–marching–
King George’s men came matching, up to the old inn-door.

They said no word to the landlord. They drank his ale instead.
But they gagged his daughter, and bound her, to the foot of her narrow bed.
Two of them knelt at her casement, with muskets at their side!
There was death at every window;
And hell at one dark window;
For Bess could see, through her casement, the road that he would ride.

They had tied her up to attention, with many a sniggering jest.
They had bound a musket beside her, with the muzzle beneath her breast!
"Now, keep good watch!" and they kissed her. She heard the dead man say–
Look for me by moonlight;
Watch for me by moonlight;
I’ll come to thee by moonlight, though hell should bar the way!

She twisted her hands behind her; but all the knots held good!
She writhed her hands till her fingers were wet with sweat or blood!
They stretched and strained in the darkness, and the hours crawled by like years,
Till, now, on the stroke of midnight,
Cold, on the stroke of midnight,
The tip of one finger touched it! The trigger at least was hers!

The tip of one finger touched it. She strove no more for the rest.
Up, she stood up to attention, with the muzzle beneath her breast,
She would not risk their hearing; she would not strive again;
For the road lay bare in the moonlight;
Blank and bare in the moonlight;
And the blood of her veins, in the moonlight, throbbed to her love’s refrain.

Tlot-tlot; tlot-tlot! Had they heard it? The horse-hoofs ringing clear;
Tlot-tlot; tlot-tlot, in the distance? Were they deaf that they did not hear?
Down the ribbon of moonlight, over the brow of the hill,
The highwayman came riding–
Riding–riding–
The red-coats looked to their priming! She stood up, straight and still.

Tlot-tlot, in the frosty silence! Tlot-tlot, in the echoing night!
Nearer he came and nearer. Her face was like a light.
Her eyes grew wide for a moment; she drew one last deep breath,
Then her finger moved in the moonlight,
Her musket shattered the moonlight,
Shattered her breast in the moonlight and warned him-with her death.

He turned. He spurred to the west, he did not know who stood
Bowed, with her head o’er the musket, drenched with her own blood!
Not till the dawn he heard it, and his face grew grey to hear
How Bess, the landlord’s daughter,
The landlord’s black-eyed daughter,
Had watched for her love in the moonlight, and died in the darkness there.

Back, he spurred like a madman, shouting a curse to the sky,
With the white road smoking behind him and his rapier brandished high.
Blood-red were his spurs in the golden noon; wine-red was his velvet coat;
When they shot him down on the highway.
Down like a dog on the highway,
And he lay in his blood on the highway, with the bunch of lace at his throat.

And still of a winter’s night, they say, when the wind is in the trees,
When the moon is a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas,
When the road is a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,
A highway man comes riding–
Riding–riding–
A highwayman comes riding, up to the old inn-door.

Over the cobbles he clatters and clangs in the dark inn-yard.
And he taps with his whip on th shutters, but all is locked and barred.
He whistles a tune to the window, and who should be waiting there
But the landlord’s black-eyed daughter,
Bess, the landlord’s daughter,
Plaiting a dark red love-knot into her long black hair.

I
Once in the winter
Out on a lake
In the heart of the north-land,
Far from the Fort
And far from the hunters,
A Chippewa woman
With her sick baby,
Crouched in the last hours
Of a great storm.
Frozen and hungry,
She fished through the ice
With a line of the twisted
Bark of the cedar,
And a rabbit-bone hook
Polished and barbed;
Fished with the bare hook
All through the wild day,
Fished and caught nothing;
While the young chieftain
Tugged at her breasts,
Or slept in the lacings
Of the warm tikanagan.
All the lake-surface
Streamed with the hissing
Of millions of iceflakes
Hurled by the wind;
Behind her the round
Of a lonely island
Roared like a fire
With the voice of the storm
In the deeps of the cedars.
Valiant, unshaken,
She took of her own flesh,
Baited the fish-hook,
Drew in a gray-trout,
Drew in his fellows,
Heaped them beside her,
Dead in the snow.
Valiant, unshaken,
She faced the long distance,
Wolf-haunted and lonely,
Sure of her goal
And the life of her dear one:
Tramped for two days,
On the third in the morning,
Saw the strong bulk
Of the Fort by the river,
Saw the wood-smoke
Hand soft in the spruces,
Heard the keen yelp
Of the ravenous huskies
Fighting for whitefish:
Then she had rest.

II
Years and years after,
When she was old and withered,
When her son was an old man
And his children filled with vigour,
They came in their northern tour on the verge of winter,
To an island in a lonely lake.
There one night they camped, and on the morrow
Gathered their kettles and birch-bark
Their rabbit-skin robes and their mink-traps,
Launched their canoes and slunk away through the islands,
Left her alone forever,
Without a word of farewell,
Because she was old and useless,
Like a paddle broken and warped,
Or a pole that was splintered.
Then, without a sigh,
Valiant, unshaken,
She smoothed her dark locks under her kerchief,
Composed her shawl in state,
Then folded her hands ridged with sinews and corded with veins,
Folded them across her breasts spent with the nourishment of children,
Gazed at the sky past the tops of the cedars,
Saw two spangled nights arise out of the twilight,
Saw two days go by filled with the tranquil sunshine,
Saw, without pain, or dread, or even a moment of longing:
Then on the third great night there came thronging and thronging
Millions of snowflakes out of a windless cloud;
They covered her close with a beautiful crystal shroud,
Covered her deep and silent.
But in the frost of the dawn,
Up from the life below,
Rose a column of breath
Through a tiny cleft in the snow,
Fragile, delicately drawn,
Wavering with its own weakness,
In the wilderness a sign of the spirit,
Persisting still in the sight of the sun
Till day was done.
Then all light was gathered up by the hand of God and hid in His breast,
Then there was born a silence deeper than silence,
Then she had rest.

There is, I deem, a deeply strange,
And pitiless beauty beneath it all,
Supporting existence against
The nothingness of eternity.

At times, my thoughts in darkness
embrace reality’s slippery edges- its
Ones and zeros, darting out and in,
Shifting form and moving on.

Out of this random dissonance,
An emergent melody unfolds,
With notes both faint and seductive-
A cadence of chance and oblivion.

Enchanted, I follow the music ever
Deeper, into a labyrinth of reflection.
Alone, tired, lost and stumbling,
My mindfalls echo in the shadows.

Logic and reason- my ball of twine,
Unwinds into the sunlit world behind me.
When I tire or falter or stop in fear,
I give the ball a tug… and its thin
lifeline of reason leads me home.

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire
But if it had to perish twice
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is great
And would suffice.

Some men are born to gather women’s tears,
To give a harbor to their timorous fears,
To take them as the dry earth takes the rain,
As the dark wood the warm wind from the plain;
Yet their own tears remain unshed,
Their own tumultuous fears unsaid,
And, seeming steadfast as the forest and the earth,
Shaken are they with pain.
They cry for voice as earth might cry for the sea
Or the wood for consuming fire;
Unanswered they remain
Subject to the sorrows of women utterly —
Heart and mind,
Subject as the dry earth to the rain
Or the dark wood to the wind.

What if the hokey pokey
Is all that it’s about?
Living for the fun of it
And then just checking out.
Reasoning in such a way,
Makes one wonder why,
Living life completely,
Beats deciding not to try.
So as the night draws closer-
Last time to twist and shout.
Best do the hokey pokey
Before the lights go out.

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village, though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

You will be walking some night in the comfortable dark of your yard
and suddenly a great light will shine round about you,
and behind you will be a wall you never saw before.

It will be clear to you suddenly that you were about to escape, and that you are guilty:`
You misread the complex instructions, you are not a member, you lost your card or never had one.
And you will know that they have been there all along,
and there eyes are on your letters and books (blogs), and their hands in your pockets,
their ears wired to your bed. Though you have done nothing shameful, they will want you to be ashamed.

They will want you to kneel and weep and say you should have been like them.
And once you say you are ashamed, reading the pages they hold out to you,

then such light you have made in your history will leave you. They will no longer need to pursue you.
You will pursue them, begging forgiveness. They will not forgive you. There is no power against them.

It is only candor that is aloof from them, only an inward clarity, unashamed, that they cannot reach. Be ready.

When their light has picked you out and their questions are asked, say to them:`

"I am not ashamed."

A sure horizon will come around you.
The heron will begin his evening flight from the hilltop.

NASA’s workshop at Mandalay
The conference- near a beach.
For lightweight spacecraft, that will one day
Bring the stars within our reach.

Here, time and space are spanned with thought,
Minds alone must voyage- until.
But bathroom intervals are surely not
And in my case never will.

Evening drinks, talk of interstellar flight,
Cobweb entangled thoughts and mirth,
Then- as I walk alone at night,
My mind returns again to Earth.

Two rocks I spot, out on the beach,
Waiting patiently in the sand
‘Till I bend down and pick one each
Glinting starlight, guides my hand.

Surely Earth and tide have rocks to spare.
Space and time will have to wait,
The stones I choose, go home by air
To a better- desktop fate.