24 HOURS

Read in reverse --
cupped wingspan of a flying cloud
drinking the brightness of an evening sky ;
Blazing cascade of northern lights, shadow
spaces rare, unguessed meaning of all
that pours longing into empty places of the night.

There are nebula perhaps cradling new stars
in heaven’s secret constellations, radiance
tender and consumming --

then, a drop of sun, goss-layered gossamer
over a rippled veil of shade and light,
dawn shifting irridescense into milky
pink rose refreshes the fraility of soul.

Day’s ardent color makes promises
fading gradually into the curve
of softening dark-- the silver curve
of early moon or the pyrotechnics
of a falling star.

24 hours, a presence constantly moving on,
a marriage of day and night when earth,
moon, sun and we align.

Climate change

Early autumn, sun’s reticence, too much rain.
Dying roses fall in clusters as fungus pools
in gardens, wetness levening the green.

Frozen mist tightens the air as earth
exhales upwards into a wet bowl
of pale sky, fluid haze heavy with
elements, molecues of water swept
into the gray.

When did autumn come gently,
casting its shadow on an empty bench ?
When did the coolness of air feel
refreshing after summer’s heat ?

Seasons, now violent as war
have overcome the world
with drastic inondation,
acid rain, toxic mud.

How can we look at sunset’s
volatile sky without fear of
tomorrow ?

Come ! Colorful and wild --
like a summer sky, light
stretching shadows long
as possiilities, mixing tints
that fill the day – sunbeams
on the floor, a mirror’s
sudden flash of gold.

Another dawn, another life,
another maybe to be lived,
the means to find the way
through.

Some effervescence caught
in light, the offspring of
a magic formula to see
the star inside the breast,
a small miracle.

Fragments of time come
and go, remembered or
not, and the present,
offered one minute,
taken away the next
when past and future
crowd in like unwanted
guests.

A fountain of wishes,
hopes and regrets,
the unstoppable flow
of feelings, past unchanged,
future unknown, only
the notes of now : bird song,
the splash of waves, the whisper
of the breeze, to comfort with
their gentle symphony the
weary heart.

HOPE AND DESPAIR

Come ! Colorful and wild --
like a summer sky, light
stretching shadows long
as possiilities, mixing tints
that fill the day – sunbeams
on the floor, a mirror’s
sudden flash of gold.

Another dawn, another life,
another maybe to be lived,
the means to find the way
through.

Some effervescence caught
in light, the offspring of
a magic formula to see
the star inside the breast,
a small miracle.

Fragments of time come
and go, remembered or
not, and the present,
offered one minute,
taken away the next
when past and future
crowd in like unwanted
guests.

A fountain of wishes,
hopes and regrets,
the unstoppable flow
of feelings, past unchanged,
future unknown, only
the notes of now : bird song,
the splash of waves, the whisper
of the breeze, to comfort with
their gentle symphony the
weary heart.

QUSTIONS AND ANSWERS

Questions – like flowers that open
too early before the color deepens.
They enter and leave mysteriously
in a cloud of confusion, hanging
on the fates of life, safe from neither
bliss nor danger.

Anwsers maybe whispers in the wind
or the touch of a warm palm on a cheek,
a timpanic clamor or the sound of
untouched strings, a thought that
ripens slowly like a color that sets,
an unexpcted letter in the mail
or something unknown in the air.

A question is fragile between
good and bad moments, coming
and going, unfinished.

The answer creating hope
or undoing expectation,
a reminder of forgotten
feeling startling the heart
with strange happiness
or sudden fear, or a bell
unstruct, silent as white
moths against a screen.

Perhaps there is a dragon palace somewhere
flowing with emerald scales, where ice-colored
sunlight rings in the wind, where soundless
mountains hide their bare faces in purple shadows.

This world, a transparent garment ,
blushes with the seagull’s shriek,
pales with the dove’s soft coo,
brightens with seasons singing
newness, clouds with the heart’s
sorrows.

The music of colors invades
the senses, scarlet sopranos,
jade’s deep base, distant ringing
of silver planets. rainbow banners
that gossip in the wind.

An arpeggio of colored sounds,
each unique in its own tone,
from the lullaby
of sunset to the ****** of
dawn’s glacier blue.

Seeing, hearing, naming,
assembling, each sensation
to its own order of allure.

I AM….

A sudden breath of sensation,
neither happiness nor sadness
yet carried on the winds of truth.

In the absence of tenderness
there is yearning for certainty,
damp with longing.

Within a film of fog
little points of dew
pinprick the mind
with hope, guiding
each tiny step toward
the vast path of sun.

Sunset hovers briefly
allowing the darkling
tones of evening as I
become a vessel of
unhurried thoughts.

I am the echo of a far
off river, a dream of
open sky, a translation
into love’s own language.

And sometimes, in a flash
of half-dream, I understand
the art of letting go.

Surrounded by a company
of stars, I am solitude.