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.

WORDS

Words – Pandora’s box of emotion,
sounds shaken loose, music
summoning the listener, the magic
of a voice freed.

Words, soft or violent, escape--
loved, hated invented or real,
power of unmuzzled thought
with tensions that threaten
to undo.

Shouts or whispers, secrets
or prayers, rising to a sky
of rosy quartz, kissed by
a passing breeze or slapped
by a storm.

Feeling the rhythm of mood,
surfing on a sea unchained,
communing with the universe.
A soul’s burst of light illuminating
instants of life’s mysteries and
the mist filling the space between
them.

VOICES

To hear ancient music in the pines
or the bright moon speaking on
a cold, wild night.
Voices flow with song and speed,
loud as a busy highway, soft
as transparent air.

Vine leaves speak in whispers,
palm fronds shout their struggles
with the wind.I eavesdrop on
the gossip of the waves as
the blue hush of dawn fills
the morning sky and gulls
recite their own mournful hymns.

So many voices translate
mintues into hours, hours
into days. So many messages
passed on in time’s quiet
mystery, and the language
of heart whispers its own
gentle secrets.

Small boat, tiny port, an island
sleeping under hazy sun.
Mystical moist air, threads
of rose clouds decorate the sky.

On an empty day, the heart
wants for nothing. Radiance
pours abundance into each
instant of being, light's high
testimony chasing ghosts
of memory, sea's great chasm
surrendering to shore's sandy
welcome and the naked dance
of wind in wild palms.

An island alone accepts the risk
of solitude as evening illuminates its own blue glow
and the perfect silence of the stars fills the dark
with its own sweet comfort.