Love of the Earth

My heart is in the meadowlands,
My heart is in the sea,
My heart is in the blowing wind,
My heart is in the wheat.
Like branches borne with thickest fruit,
Or skies split raw with rain,
So is my heart the bough, the root,
The fuel and the flame.
My heart is in the meadowlands,
My heart is in the sea,
And now my heart is in the sands,
On the banks of the Seine and Spree.
Yes, my heart is the world,
And my heart is the sun,
And my heart is the stretching sky,
And when I am old and my life is done,
My heart is in heaven's eye.

Immortality

Immortality: here I lie
Seeking the purity of your tranquil eye,
Drowned in the tendrils of your kiss,
Wistfully pardoned by beauty and bliss.
The fair, emerald hills with their crescents on fire
With summer white wind and stolen desire,
And the memory of God when he came in creation,
Leaving the gnarls of land to the nation.
If I, merely human, found heaven on earth,
I would pass by the pleasures of happiness' hearth,
And wander forever on immortal plains,
Brushed by the amethyst lights of the rains.

I Am

I have a friend on the wide, wide bree
His song is the song that is part of me,
A little wren with a throat of gold
And tales that the trees themselves have told.
I have a friend on the vast, vast sea
His life is the life only known to me,
A broad, blue wave with bright hands of blue
And secrets of foam that the seashell knew.
I have a friend in the soft, soft trees
His words are the words that devolve to me
A sweet, warm beam of the purest sun,
A place and a presence where dark does run.
The leaves still fall softly, but nobody knows
I am part of the summer and part of the snows
A portion of birds and a sliver of sea,
And a whisper of wind passing over the bree.

Listless Season

I retired in the morning,
It was half a day too soon
And the larks called out a warning
By the soft, enshrouded moon.
On the terrace in the garden
I was yet inclined to be
Half a human, half a creature
Of the sweet and silent sea.
In the mist that broke the twilight
Leaves danced out across the lawn,
Amber-chested, golden-threaded,
Smattered with the strokes of dawn.
In the august of the morning,
Should I seek a distant shore,
Frost, like diamonds, are adorning
Every slick and seaward door.
Season, with your signs of coming,
Leave me now a shard of warmth,
And perhaps, when you are older
You will know my listless heart.

Singing Lark

Merry, merry life,
Little singing lark,
Filling spring with life,
"Listen! Whisper! Hark!"
Whisper of the summer,
Budding in the green,
And the hope of winter,
With her crystal sheen.
Autumn, summer, winter,
Life within the spring
Seasons---"Hear the seasons!"
Sung within the green.

Nature's Comfort; Love's Deceit

My heart was loosed in silence,
My hands were bound by time,
The fetters of my ignorance
Seemed stagnant, yet sublime;
I caught them in my breathing
I etched them in the air
And somehow, in the silence
I saw my lovers there.
My innocence became my shame,
They knew my foolish mind,
But I, a creature of the earth
Was part of nature's kind,
A creature one with sky and sod,
Not used to lover's games,
A creature in the hand of God
With only brooks to blame.
Perhaps the wind deceived my heart
With whispers no one knew,
Perhaps it granted freedom's gains,
And dared to speak the truth,
Perhaps the only constant life
Was bright lights on the sea---
But I, made foolish by the world,
Should wise and broken be.

At the End of the Age

Tomorrow, all wonders and glories
Will fade with the dawn of the time;
Today, let us cherish the stories
Of sweetness and sacred sublime.
Consider the roe in the silence,
Consider the cod in the stream...
Perhaps, in the lovely dense twilight
We'll catch in our spirits a dream.

Dreams

My wandering heart kept beating,
I thought I heard the sound
Of places in that choir's note
Which waken and astound.
An isle in the distance,
A shimmering stone in mist,
And brush, and bales of flowers
Lined up on heaven's wrist.
An angel may have warned me
Of things I should not know,
But yearning, yielding, searching,
I breathe scents cherubs blow,
And in the bright tomorrow,
With pictures wet with paint,
I bend, and break, and borrow,
The dreams that heaven sent.

Symbol of Spring's End

A springtime bluebird spoke to me
The other day, the other day:
His coat was flecked with snowflakes cold,
In every way, the other day---
And in his eye was summer's light,
And constellations in the night,
And in his heaving breast he bore
A star born many days before.
The other day, the other day,
He trilled a Purist's song to me,
But on his crooked wing the flakes
Had glued themselves like torrid leaves---
The waves, the sails he'd seen on seas,
And all the forests' golden trees,
They sparkled in his fervid song,
And in his sweetened note belonged.
I left him there upon the bank,
Spring's last hymnal in the heather,
The other day, the other day
Perhaps he's faded to a feather.

Frozen Sea

Blue sea, blue sea, speak to the image of long-gone spring,
Hear all the memories of God's goodbyes
In the coming of winter that hearkens a sigh.
Heave just a little, and life goes away,
Lift both your hands to the saltwater spray,
Clutching its goodness, its paleness, its pain
Feeling the scorn of December's chilled rain.
Here comes the future, with banks ripe with snow,
The thick, floating chunks of the ice that you tow,
And the sense that the summer has left you in shame,
With only your blue baltic beauty to blame.