Monday, December 3, 2012

Blossom in the Snow

Through the leaves and roads I wander,
Under stars I take my cover,
Lost in silence, pushed by thunder,
Ever walking, ever cold.
Winter weather sends December,
Bright and sharp with frosted lovers
Matching snowflakes sort and sever;
Ever walking, ever cold.
Memories I had while sleeping
Seem to haunt me in the morning;
Both my feet are torn and bleeding:
Ever walking, ever cold.
In the white, I pluck a flower,
Like a final springtime warning:
God alone perceived this hour
Ever walking, ever cold. 

Monday, November 19, 2012

Leaves of Lights

In the glade, I met my lover:
The willow tree, fierce and strong,
With branches soft and warm for cover,
And roots that spread out wide and long.
Soon the winter will come in shrieking,
Windy and full of its cruel black nights,
But deep in my dreams I'll be secretly seeking,
My willow tree with its leaves of lights.

Friday, November 9, 2012

9th of August

I remember you in the turn of the leaves,
When the branches shed their silent leaves,
And the moon is bright as a golden plate---
Your birthday, I think, came two months too late.
I remember you when the winter is falling,
Shrouded in snow, while the ravens are calling,
No longer larks from some August refrain,
But black like the dimness you felt in the rain.
I remember you in the blossoms, yet burning,
Soft red things dropping petals at morning,
Scarlet, and full, with five roots in the sod,
Like the small, happy roots you offered back to God.
I remember you most when the warmth is coming,
When the sun is high and the wind is humming,
On the 9th of August, I can only remember
What made that summer as cold as December.

Sunday, October 21, 2012

When the Leaves Come Calling

Only when the world is young, do the leaves come calling.
Soft, and warm, and white with the light as they drift through morning.
In the depths of a valley of mist and silence,
Where the corn shifts on at the blackbird's warning.
Dark men of the west in their coats of feathers,
With the paths of autumns, gone-by Septembers;
Things left forgotten in the wild, dim evening,
Brooks overgrown no footstep remembers.
Gray windows and doorways are sinking, dismembered
Like so many plows when they came to be rusted;
Human habitable places have crumbled,
Shot with the filtered brown sun, softly dusted.
"Cooper", "Smith" graves, no faces, no birthdates,
Only the worn stones that move through the falling
Of twilight and wind that blows frost in their grasses
When the world is young, and the leaves come calling.

Thursday, October 18, 2012

Stars in the Sky Speak

If the stars were to speak, I would know what they'd say,
That since their creation, the world's gone away.
It has drifted and faded in sorrow and fire
And left behind slivers of ancient desire.
If the stars were to speak, I would know what they'd say:
That love has been gone since the dawn of their day,
And wisdom has stayed in the peace of the brooks
With neither a notch nor a stroke in men's books.
If the stars were to speak, I would know what they'd say;
The world once knew light, but they wandered away.

Wednesday, October 17, 2012

When Autumn Comes Calling

If only I could go away and never return;
When the leaves begin to spin from autumn trees,
I think I shall come away from this, this that never was my own,
And see a freedom that my current self must not see.
I would hold the golden fragrance of the sun within my hand,
I would keep it, and never let it go,
Cemented things that broke my heart I would soon forget,
When I walked down paths soaked silently in climbing growth.
On that wide wall, his look would not be there,
On that white shore, her madness would be gone,
I would walk alone with neither step nor stair
To climb, or any vice or virtue to condone.

Monday, October 15, 2012

Shall I

Away, away, shall I sail away?
To the open sea, and its open shore,
And the waves and the sun beating on, evermore.
Away, away, shall I fly away?
To the stretching sky, and its vast blue dome,
And the silent black midst where the comets roam.
Away, away, shall I roam away?
To the golden hill, and its crest of wheat
And the valley which knows neither face nor feet.
Away, away, shall I go away?
To the diamond cloud, and its glimmering gate
And the Prince who commands every spirit's fate.

Friday, October 12, 2012

Pictures Only Tell So Much

A picture paints a memory,
A tree can paint a word,
When autumn leaves are glimmering
Across the flowing ford.
A shutter takes a memory,
But fields can make a name
Blow on in spirits shimmering
When lost is lens and lane.

Tuesday, October 9, 2012

A Glance Towards Hope

The darkness drove me to a corner of the world;
No woe was there, no hopelessness, no hate:
It pressed its softest touch against my face
And made it pure with love and grace.
There it held the race of men who had died in vain,
The cruel wars, the suicide which brought us tears;
There it flowed with peaceful tides across a plain
All veiled in beauty past the troubled years.
I tore a page of verses from its heart
And printed in my cursive mind its lights,
Soft-swaying, hung with fruits as ripe as dreams,
Which never knew the winter's waxen blights.
I cherished it with such a passion, in a breath
So full of hope where hope had never been;
And when the soldiers of despair retire,
I see salvation in the place where once was sin.

Sunday, October 7, 2012

Final Summer Acorn

The summer sun has passed away,
Long since the wind went by the bay
And drew its arms across the sky
In some embrace---we wonder why.
Why does this life, with all its joy
Its budding green the leaves employ
Have to die now, when we were set
On dreams that now are cold and wet?
This funeral home of browning trees,
This hibernation of blooms and bees---
It is the murder of life and hope
That gave us once the calm to cope.
Autumn has changed the blowing weed,
Burnt black the fallen, wheaten seed,
And now there is thinness in the air
Where beauty once laid recumbent there.
If only we could take the final nut
And seal it, before the winter cut
We could see the sun in its shimmering skin
And know that summer will come again.

Thursday, September 20, 2012

Crumbling Edifice

The sea casts a look from its head to its shoulder
To the silent, dark face of the trembling boulder
Which hangs on a precipice, deep in the wind
Shivering, waiting to rollick and rend.
The sea presses onward---no need to recover
From a single black rock on the edge of a boulder;
Save that it holds, in the storm and its sorrow
A lighthouse which certainly tumbles tomorrow.
Oh, how many souls have been guided and gilded
By rays that the bulb from that lighthouse had weilded?
Shall futures of sailors be struck from their living
Since simply one cold, blackened boulder is giving?
The sea must be heartless, the skies must be granite
The Devil below must take pains just to plan it,
And what of the mothers, and sisters, and wives
Who knit on the coast while the lightning still drives?
Oh, God in your mercy, and justice, and grace
Be kind to the ships as they pass through this place
And grant a dear angel---the strongest you own--
To hold up the rock where your winds have been blown.
As the lighthouse stands straighter, and rains soon pass over
And the sheep on the moors run no longer for cover
The blessings of men both on land and on sea
Will come to your ears, as they'll echo in me;
For I am the one who when midnight came calling
Wept for the beacon of hope that was falling
And cried out, "Oh Guardian, grant us one for my lover!"
For my pleas were all selfish, as you would discover.
But what use is the dawn of a day like this coming
With the freshness of rain and the meadowlarks humming,
Unless in the hope borne from dire despair
It is shared by a man with salt spray in his hair.

Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Thin White Wind

There is a thin wind blowing over the sea;
Its heartache reminds one of something that's free.
You cannot catch it, you cannot find
The unsearchable portions within its mind.
It is neither the sky, bound by traveling stars
Nor the dust breaking over a hot East bazaar.
It is unknown---what makes it the sea
Is the thin white wind blowing wild and free.

Tuesday, September 18, 2012

Searching for Love

How little I have noticed the true notes of Love.
It is not merely romance's motion of a pretty passageway through the rain,
Wreathed in roses or made white with sun.
It is the rushing blue light moving through a winter grain,
The tearful look, after death has run
And left her sad and dismal lips against a withered cheek.
It is the hand upon a crying child
When all desertion seems to fill the starving ribs,
The coinage added to the measly pile
Where some old man in rag-clothes lives.
It is the coat offered to a shivering stranger,
And the lips kissed in a darkening night,
As if every cold disaster's danger
Has turned into a crucifix of delight.
Sweet Savior forbid me if I kneel at eve to pray
With a woe in my heart that the world has bent to hell;
If ever I was to search for heaven's way,
I would find it in the love of humans still.

Saturday, September 15, 2012

A Free Thing

How can you bind me? I am free
As the wind washes over a new-blown sea,
As the light of a cloud on a single eye,
Or reflections that rove in a pool's dye.
I am the summer, I am the spring,
A wild, unsearchable, wandering thing,
Sweet as a petal born in dusk,
Soft as the warmth of a rose's musk.
How can you bind me? Cuffed or chained
I am the length of a pouring rain,
The autumn of doubt or the lands of pain
Can never grow weeds on my budding plain.

Sunday, July 22, 2012

Seething Sea

Can you feel the rhythm
In the speaking sea?
Flowing through the fairway
Rolling on the bree.
Sweet like lips of sunrise,
Calm like dreams of time,
Peridot of passion
Photograph sublime.
Lost---untethered madness
Lost---a breathing thing
Shining in its gladness
Burning when it sings.

Saturday, July 21, 2012

The Abandoned Barn

The sun caught its rays on the rafter,
It glistened in gold on the hay,
And a bird, with its voice full of laughter
Danced in glee on the mud and clay.
The buckwheat had dried on the stairway,
And the straw had grown old in the stall,
But in Summer the flowers grew brighter
To prepare for the stillness of Fall.
There were herbs in the pan by the doorway,
And a rabbit who lived in its shade;
And buckets of water from stormclouds
Which had formerly dripped on the glade.
The grain smelled like sugar and honey
And the harness still laid on a board;
In an place overgrown, soft and sunny
There sits beauty, in wilderness stored.

Wednesday, July 18, 2012

The Dim Day

I have touched the edge of a sweet refrain;
The lark's ascent in the chilling rain,
The sweetened song on his gentle tongue,
Shot with the lightning the heavens rung.
His wing like gold in the dark of night,
An angel of beauty, as dawn's delight;
No one believes me I saw him fly
Straight to the glory of God's great eye.
The gates swung wide, he touched their tip
He hovered on the edge of the shining lip;
It was there he hung: then he shot away;
Not a soul has beheld him since that dim day.

Wednesday, July 11, 2012

Knowing the Almighty

Oh, for a heart that's pure as light,
And a soul that can live through the darkest night,
For a dream to survive in the raging sea,
And a love to endure, whether chained or free.
Oh, for a hope that will not fade,
For a joy that's as bright as the brightest jade,
For a peace that will pass every road or rule,
For a wisdom that knows neither fame nor fool.
Oh, for a spirit so sweet and true,
For a kindness that shines as the deepest blue,
For a goodness that shudders at whip or rod:
Oh, this we would know, if we just knew God.

Tuesday, May 15, 2012

Someday Heaven

Someday, the seasons will pass away,
In the blink of an eye, in the sound of a sigh,
And when that day comes you and I
Will be the dream of a song on the quiet bay.
The moon will rise, a haloed thing of wings,
The birds their golden hymnals rise;
What a day it will be when you and I
Fling aside our raiment for the cloth of the skies.
Callous hearts we are today;
We live, we breathe, we die;
The coffers shall pass away,
Someday, in a blink or a sigh.

Saturday, April 21, 2012

Vastness

Could I, with the littleness of a heart dare to know
All the vastness of a world which hides its pearly beauties safe,
The treasures of the winding amber stream
Or stems of blossoms by the spring so soon vouchsafed.
I would be a fool to believe I could;
As the dreams that lovers make for things which cannot be;
So would my vain apostasy of life
Be lost amongst the largeness of the sea.
Those humble souls which were God's granted few
Have in their lack of mortal greed been shown
The rushing storm, the copper-plated dawn
Whenever God perceived their purest vows.
Yet I am neither saint nor angel of a higher realm,
I seek the callous tokens of a brief and passing time--
Yet in the broadest places of my chest
The loveliness of summer dwells sublime.
The empress raven, and her tinted wing,
The silent ermine in the cutting snow;
The misty webs the spiders fling
In gardens by the twilight glow.
How lofty would I be to smell the rain,
Or tread the road of buck and bear,
To see the veins of autumn's flashing leaves
Go spinning through some golden air...
If ever I could touch the breeze,
Or hide the dawn within a cup,
I'd fear the universe would fail
And every lily pause to open up.
Such is the reason God granted littleness within,
We slaves of regions yet unbound,
We servants of our smaller rooms
While awed with vastness all around.

Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Signage of a Bluebird

Sign in to my breath, little bluebird of mine,
For the friendly song of yours meets the sky;
And we, as companions of the ocean's brine,
And the carts in the market full of rye
Shall walk through the spring with our heads held high.

Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Dawn

At the end of night when the stars are falling,
An oak white as diamonds burns brightly forever;
The tranquil blue kiss of the stream is enthralling
With its merging and melting to join with the river.

Blessed beauty whose symphony blends with the heavens...
Lovely sharp stars from their slumbering riven...
Oh, that the day had a dream for the lawn
To always be bathed with the rays of the dawn.

Friday, March 16, 2012

Treasured River

Many a treasure is found by the river,
The gems of a sunray which gleams on forever,
The warble of birds in the play of the breeze
And the amber of ants in the heart of tree.
Clover and cane fill the bank with their heads,
And spiders build palaces made out of webs;
The dew is the diadem borne by a cloud;
The honey of bees, a king's burial shroud.
Collanades shine in the twistings of oaks,
The woodpecker's beat is what men's minstrels wrote,
And the crown of a queen is the violets which fray
The edge of the bank in the heat of the day.
The noble brown buck and the maidenly stork,
The rush of the fray where the streams swiftly fork,
The bugle to duty from late August storms;
Such is the river in all of its forms.

Tuesday, March 13, 2012

A Willow Wept

A willow tree wept in the wind;
No one but my heart heard it,
No one but the meadowlark bowing in the bend
Of the limb, unspoken, unworded.
The light passed like hands through the clock of time
On its leaves and in its branches,
And the greenery danced in May's waiting rhyme
Full of summer's second chances.
A willow tree wept in the wind,
Whispering cream and emerald:
Cream of the light which the heavens sent,
Rimmed with the gems past dim worlds.
Open my heart, willow tree, and shake it
Like the buds which burst in yearning,
Lest June in her haste shall come and take it
Before May's final turning.

Friday, March 9, 2012

When Summer Returns


Dare my heart speak when the summer shines
Through cotton curtains, through shifting blinds,
Dare my heart say a word, or sing
Of things so temporal---forgotten things?
Dare my heart whisper, dare my heart sleep
When winter has passed through the violet vales deep
And the spring is pressing her lips to the wind...
Dare my heart slumber---lest daring, offends.

Monday, March 5, 2012

Fake Spring

Winter had left us...the stars turned to gray,
The grass was the color of sun in the day,
The mist smelled like fragrance of soft-turning skies,
And Spring brought her raindrops of light-colored dyes.
Winter had left us...we thought, long before
But the cold in one night turned the docks to its hoar,
And hours have passed when we're yet prone to sing
With a shell in our hands that still sounds like the Spring.

Sunday, March 4, 2012

Trees of May

Light which found itself in darkness,
Summer found its place in snow;
So my heart was once in lovely
Lovely places long ago.
Innocent You'll always make me,
Kinder, sweeter, softer, gay
Like the skies which shake the blossoms
Blossoms from the trees of May.

Saturday, March 3, 2012

Thunder

God strikes the earth with lightning,
And lifts the shade of dawn
With bolts so full and frightening
The wolf weeps on the lawn.

How errant in the morning,
How thoughtless in the eve,
With whipporwillow's warning
Across the blowing sea.

I say,

Speak now: my heart is hearing,
Speak now: my eyes will see
The pale and pallid clearing
The soft yet savage tree;

Its outline burns forever,
Its part, its thread, of me
Speak now, or we shall never
Know thunder's careless dream.

Thursday, February 16, 2012

Wedding of the Leaves

I am wed to the trees with their waving arms,
And the bright bridal dance of the lilies at dawn;
I am the bride, the sun is my groom,
And the stars are my maids and ushers.
I thought, long ago, I loved man on earth,
I lived for his life and I thanked for his birth,
And I gloried in youth's untiring bloom,
When we both rushed through love with her mercies.
But now, I have found that the trees are more kind,
And the birds sweeter now than my love which was blind,
And the pastoral fold of my vows in the leaves,
Has given me comfort for the past that I grieve.

Saturday, January 28, 2012

Old and New Heart

The old earth lies with longing,
The new earth bursts with bloom,
And banks where waves were thronging
Are still and safe from gloom.
The ship rests in the harbor,
So far from pain and cold,
The sails, and wheels, and timber,
In oceans' gentle folds.
So is the heart when sleeping,
A soft thing, warm with peace,
Awakened by the weeping
Of old things out of place;
And fresh with new tomorrows,
Yet sweet and sharp with love,
Unused to yester's sorrows
But bright with hope Above.

Monday, January 23, 2012

Second Chances


Winter, summer, springtime flowers
Ring the skies and bind the hours
Stars on fire, always burning
Like her heart is always yearning.
August, August, brief tomorrow
Transient things are joy and sorrow,
But their love will last forever
In the memories of the weather.
Moontime songs, and suntime wonders
Rains thick-set with colored thunders,
Mills in meadows, wheels broken
Like the soul's soft, melted token.
He's the forest, she's the willow
Long ago in autumn's pillow
Left to fade when he discovers
Other lands with other lovers.
God, eternal, God, unchanging,
All the blossoms still arranging,
And the dove upon the branches,
Dreaming dreams of second chances.

Thursday, January 19, 2012

Nothing Compares to God's Earth

I thought you were comparable,
A thing of shining worth;
But you are small compared to skies
Which turn around the earth,
And you are mean, and savage, too,
Compared to spring and blooms,
And crueller than the dreams I knew
Or meadow-bearing rooms.
God grants me peace, you grant me hurt,
And so I shall remain
In love through light and summer storms
And leaves laden with rain.
I'll leave you now to winter's past
While I'm alive and well,
And wander through the amber grass
And oceans' swirling swells.

Monday, January 16, 2012

Hope Past Darkness

I forget that I lie in a world without hope,
In a world laced with darkness, a night's fire stoked,
Where the stars seem to tremble when thunder comes near,
And my innocence rests in the eyes of a deer.
Yet the meadow still calls to me, speaks: I'm afraid
Of the moon which seems threaded in scimitar's blades,
But the silence is soothing, and blackness will pass
As the music of Good soothes the slumbering grass.
Though the hallways are smeared with the handprints of men,
And the anger of ages yet triumphs again,
There is purity, still, in the tongue of the wind,
And the colors of years that the seasons will blend.

Tuesday, January 10, 2012

The Sheen

I know when the dark moon sets on the world
Is bright with a thin white sheen of pearl,
As if the remainder of life could be felt
In the silence of stars on the earth's soft quilt.
When the sun says farewell to the storm and the rain
And shines through the thin, heady reeds on the plain
I know that my spirit has fled from the earth
And dwelt in the Place where it first had worth.