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.