The butterflies have flown out of sleep,
young as love’s beginning,
soon to turn to tomorrow,
an utterance of praise,
a mirage of swift emotion,
an olive branch shading a verse
of poetry.

Love walks on two silken feet,
lightly on memories, select
in its crystal days.

Let love be unknown
like a night of lilac
where the full moon
fills the sky’s emptiness.

Love forgives the heart
more than one mistake.
In lovers’ bodies,
heaven and earth embrace,
then take them higher
and at last descends
into a marvelous mystery.

THE POND

The sky is a mirror of dizzy hew,
the pond stunned into wakefulness
as the lips of dawn caress the glassy surface
and sun sparks glitter on the water –
an evasive universe of light
eflecting the instant of now.

The silhouetted heron,
sharp, spare and simple,
marks the pond’s hazy edge
and silver fish, tiny sparks
of energy, burst with mild
explosion on the water.

Gray mist lifts, leaving
liquid beautiful and still,
air rarefied as if expecting
a sacred presence.

Day brings the light of time
and earthly energy--
texture, color and shape.
A yellow-billed blackbird
whistles sweet disturbances
across the water.

With evening’s dying light
the sun is in rosy flight
soon to be replaced by
the palid moon’s reflection--
the haunting face of one
we passed along the way.

We finally unwound
After hours in my bed
A thin film of your ego peeled off and clung to my skin
Asymptomatic…I wish
You spread through me like a wildfire
That burns with every breath.

On a distant summer
a girl walked four miles
to sell fruits at the haat
and mowed by the May heat
fell asleep on a patch of concrete.

The noon dusts played around her
sleep little girl rest your feet
the winds will play you a song
refresh you with dreams so sweet
the walk back home won't be long.

The sun had slid the shadows grown
when opened her dream dazed eyes
there she was at the haat all alone
her fruits in the basket had dried.

She had dreamed a round dime
clutched in her palm
colored gold with her wish

she had slept thru the time
and when the winds calmed
held nothing to buy home a fish.

Time has flown those dusts far away
years have grown her wise
yet when the winds blow lonely in May
her tears she cannot disguise.