After Winter

Dreams drip through the frozen seams
Of a dozen crystallizing streams---
'Tis easier to find a dream
In Spring, before Fall bears her wing.
The seed that from its birthday pushes
Reminder of the heady rushes
That comes when one hopes for a thought
To bring a light where there was not.
In winter, snow blankets what is new:
Letting nothing break the frosted dew---
Spring is where the sparrow builds her home
And every bough climbs through soft heaven's dome
And every dream, with every curling frond
Lets loose its chains, and rusts its stifling bonds.

Somewhere Sea

The gentle arm of a distant shore----
Stretches---a million miles or more
Away from this memory's thought of mine
Splashing with fragrant saltwater brine.
Heaven's door must remain somewhere beyond
Past this wide ocean, over the pond
Lungs breathing carefully cries of the gull
Each little crest like a trickling hill.
Grasped under thumbs of the rustic brown ports
Enclosed by the gates of our human courts...
No...Mortal today, heaven tomorrow
Across the undulating foaming furrow.

Rain Regainer

Clouds remove the sparkling sun
Tear; a loaded cobalt gun
Bleeding with the sight of rain
Tears that make one feel insane.
Silently, uplifted hands
Dare to touch the stormy air
Dare to feel the crushing storm
Dripped in autumn's hazy warmth.
Think not that rain heralds hate
Or the sun has come too late
These dark clouds are neither tears
But life---replenishing the years.

Flower Field

Pass daily through the flowered field,
As if the loss of such a place
Would cause the beating of your heart
To cease, appalled to lose its grace.
The buds will soon fade with the light
The crickets drag their emerald wings
The stream that borders in between
Be passed with snowflakes' ivory rings.
Smell yet the poppy's fragrant throat
The wind that passes through the weeds
And fingers feet of butterflies
As they flit through the riffling leaves.
Walk daily through the flowered field,
Or autumn, with her fallen face
Will paint the wild roses brown
And turn to winter, in its haste.

His Beauty

Pale white woods in hazy rains
Snow that tears the woodland lanes
Herring iced with frosty foam:
This is what I dream of, when alone.
Thick green trees laced thin with sun
Roes with sides of heaving dun
Skies, eternal, splashed with blue
This is what I dream of, when with You.

Daily Posts

I just wanted to mention quickly that I'm planning on posting daily (except perhaps on Sundays) to, hopefully, increase my followers.

Please feel free to list me on your own blog rolls. I'd really like to have a few more followers, since 3 of my own mysteriously disappeared recently.

Many thanks,

August

Silent Night

The silence of the moonlight
Slips through the empty sill
A quiet that is telling
Of loads of time to kill.
The warm, eternal hour
Beats wind against the pane
And floods the lawn with power
Of heads of rushing grain.
A mockingbird sings softly
A tune that no one knows
And buds burst into blossoms
Beneath the starlit glow.
It seems all drooping silence
As if no creature stirred
But slowness is the novel
Of evening worm and bird.

Approach of Autumn

Free, let loose to smell the sod
To see the lightning's falling rod
To hear the cataract in foam
To feel the passing gray of gloam.
Free, unshackled in the light
To see the beauty of the night
The curving scimitar of moon
The deep intake of breathing noon.
Free, and thus, in freedom found
The warm brown touch of hallowed ground--
The one small scrap of heaven's earth
Present here in autumn's birth.

The Isle of Avalon

Avalon, you remain
In everything I see
Every spreading autumn sky
Every winging bee
Avalon, dear Avalon,
Isle of my dreams
Arthur claimed that you once reigned
Past the flooding seas---
No, I think not, Avalon
Here your truth is seen
Blue in streams that twinkle on
Through the verdant scene
Dancing with the hooves of goats
Wild in the rills
Flying through the jutting rocks
And the weedy hills.
Avalon, dear Avalon,
Pure and heaven-blest
Each and every golden star
Still recalls your rest
Every daffodil that blows
In the summer breeze
Seems to bend its darling head
Like your shining leaves.
Avalon, dear Avalon,
Stay, and keep me close
Every dream I've ever dreamed
Listens for your notes
Every field of swaying grass
Every cobalt night
Whispers out your harmony
Echoes of your light.

Changed

Careless was I of the tempered wind
Of the light that the autumn seas had sent
Of the tender sod, and the flooding brook
And the growing chick in his hidden nook.
Careless was I of the bending reed
Of the creeping lynx and the cracking seed
Of the fallow deer with his hoof of bronze
And the splintered moon on the wild lawn.
Heedless to see in the splitting skies
With their lightning strikes of the cobalt eyes
And the frightened fall of the shimmering trunk
Through the streamlets dark, and the rivers drunk.
Careless was I---and I felt no peace
From the cry of wolves at the flight of geese
At the change of scent in the summer breeze
Or the flow of ferns on their amber knees.
No, I never knew, nor in knowing, cared
That the feast of snow had arrived prepared
And the season laughed at the cost of cold
From the dripping rain to the crumbling mold.