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.

SPRING AGAIN

Season of crowded joys,
fragrant and blessed with
an excess of light.
Mind floats and dances
amidst voices of the breeze.
The messenger of the east
strikes with the spell of youth,
singing with the bird of morning.

Branches of trees sigh
with festivals of flowers.
The perfume of the lilacs
greets the breath. The day
is a dancing girl decked
in garlands. Notes of
the flute float on the spring
air.

Let the season’s ecstacy
blaze up like divine laughter
and burst upon the day.

A master of brief absence
floats on the drops of night
that leak from the moon,
writing tomorrow on
yesterday’s sheets.

The night traveler speaks
to the absence of sound,
an echo of gentle vagueness,
a longing for what’s far away
on the slopes of dream.

The sleeper moves from
one planet to another,
creating who he’ll
become tomorrow.

He travels to the ends
of earth, softly as a cloud

A master of brief absence
floats on the drops of night
that leak from the moon,
writing tomorrow on
yesterday’s sheets.

The night traveler speaks
to the absence of sound,
an echo of gentle vagueness,
a longing for what’s far away
on the slopes of dream.

The sleeper moves from
one planet to another,
creating who he’ll
become tomorrow.

He travels to the ends
of earth, softly as stars
guide dreamers. Colors
of the night fill the heart
beyond darkness until
it resonates with the return
to wakefulness., before
dawn arises , becoming
a new day.

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 alarming realm of the vertical,
so immence a hue – a blue
of such majesty that wonder
comes over all.

The magical universe of color –
linear filigrees of tone sheened
on unlikely surfaces : clandestine
rose and violet, a shout of crimson,
a whisper of pastel.

Sun-honeyed pine trees,
wind-silver rumpling of fields
falling into manes of lustre,
galleries of varying shades
fading into each other,
mirroring a marriage
of likenesses, mauve
through cerulean.

Tinted pavilions of firmament
overhung with luminescense
where mind is lost in the
amazement of impermance .

Beauty, fierce as desire, is perched
on the limits of longing –
There is an upward soaring
where simple delight turns
to sunlit brilliance.

Beauty is grasped
by a mind that fabricates
the abstract but appreciates
the real.

There is wonder
in the beauty of
the winds, woods
and water that glow
on the edge of earth.

Beauty is portrayed
in the smooth, smiling
contenance of youth,
the delicate alliance
of dark soil and milky sky
and seasons that turn
to golden ages, widening
to wilderness, clear and
unexplored, filling pages
of solitude with poetry.

Beauty is being held
in the arms of dawn,
knowing that dusk’s
splendid sunset is
not far away.

LIFE

What makes life ?
Giving shape to world –
that formidable play of powers
that widens in currents
of ebbing and flowing.

There is the mirrored
immensity of self,
the dark hours of
solitary being.
Then the brevity
of a smile, the light
of a new page when
all that waits within
is shimmering with
gladness.

From the deepest beginnings
what is perceived… the music
of the meadows, the silence
of stone, the softness of evening,
the horizon cloaked in stillness.

Then the coming of day,
ready to break into being
when all creation breathes
with relief and life spreads
out hugely.

Life – the luminous net
spreading through all,
weaving together
the numberless
threads of being.