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.

MOODS

Night mood-- a pond,
obsidian surface sleet-
metal smooth, patterned
by shaded spectres.

A brutal sky, winter’s
cold corpse, mind’s
underwater blackness
reflecting dark hollows
inside or morning mood
dark as coffee sipped
in loneliness.

And yet dawn’s sun-bleached sky,
a wistful mist clearing
to pure daylight. Hope
on the white wings of gulls.

Pearl-drop tears of joy,
the freshness of a summer’s
evening, a glass of wine
shared with gladness,
and mood, ever-changing,
blooms like an exquisite
pale rose.

JOY

Sudden and for no reason,
a smile gentle as a shadow,
a glass full of happy tears.

Sometimes a brilliance
full of wonder, sometmes
a frivolous mirage, sometimes
unbearable passion or an instant
of overwhelming peace.

A beating of soft rhythms
as the heart moves forward,
insatiable pulsations delicate
as wings of a butterfly,
early sun’s quiet delight,
ectasy of a new season’s
fragrance, summer nights
filled with star-years of
wisdom, jade reflection
on clear water’s surface,
clarity that nourishes
and soothes.

Effortless and fragile,
an unexpected touch
on any moment,
a treasure often hidden
but never wholly lost.

REMMBRANCE

There are shapes remebrance takes,
sometimes starlit sharpness, each spark
a scattered bit of self, sometimes the muddy
ground of grief.Remembrance, an imaginary book,
words of a separate world.

Often, there is travel through dark matter
to reach a breeze of willow leaves on water.
Perhaps a day with its own pastel shade
or a gentle night of ringing quietness,
a dove nested in the eaves of wind.

In dark and brightness, both anonymous,
nothing is sure but the narrow path
leading to a new now, guided by
the unseen force of soon.

FIREWORKS


A summer night and fireworks
break dark’s quiet whisper,
drowning fragile moonlight.

First a flickering, then
a blossoming of color--
wild and illicit –and
the air’s askew with booms,
delirious with fiery chaos
as a million man-made stars
tumble across sky.

A veil of smoke creates
a glorious illusion --
the art of pyrotechnics.

A stolen moment’s exaltation
without the wariness of danger.
As fire jewels dwindle to obscurity,
there is a strong spell of reversal.
What seemed like revelation fades.

Universe returns to mystery
and mind to world’s reality.

SEA GULL

Strange and wild
his laughter-silvered cry;
alone he navigates the heavy
silent blue inventing each
new hour, impaled on a ray
of sun.

On the doorstep of invisible,
he shatters nothingness --
a glide, a dive – he’s gone
beyond his presence behind
a dense gray cloud.

Then suddenly a splash,
a rupture of sea’s smooth
smile, then a wheeling
soaring swing and he’s
flung into the shouting
wind.

With easy grace he defies
the sanctity of space, rides
relentless tides, a fearless
spirit ever rising, disappearing
like a dream lost in waking,
like a mood forgotten in
the passing field of time.

SEA GULL

Strange and wild
his laughter-silvered cry;
alone he navigates the heavy
silent blue inventing each
new hour, impaled on a ray
of sun.

On the doorstep of invisible,
he shatters nothingness --
a glide, a dive – he’s gone
beyond his presence behind
a dense gray cloud.

Then suddenly a splash,
a rupture of sea’s smooth
smile, then a wheeling
soaring swing and he’s
flung into the shouting
wind.

With easy grace he defies
the sanctity of space, rides
relentless tides, a fearless
spirit ever rising, disappearing
like a dream lost in waking,
like a mood forgotten in
the passing field of time.

BIRDS OF PARADISE

Flying wings of orange
forever in a take-off pose,
the pilot a tiny dot of blue.
Slender green stems,
their graceful dance
enhanced by every
breath of breeze,
pointed leaves’
aggressive message:
do not pluck, stand back,
admire, roots invisible,
anchoring each plant
to earth, each flight
a phantom, the eye’s
illusion, each bloom
a tiny fire, born on air,
beyond the pain of living,
beyond death’s denial,
their free infinities
expressing all our
hearts’ desires.

Early oracle of harmony
as a swift tide of rays
kisses the world magnolia.
The day is rinsed in purity;
breeze whispers its first song in
the tree’s opalescent sepals
where a colorful blooming
above is glimpsed by the
watchful eye of now.

Here mind is free to invent
its own ballet, a host of
feelings rising like a flock
of birds with each passing
sensation.

Here are depths of time
suspended in the stillness
of palm fronds as moist heat
lays its lazy blanket over
beach and sea.

This season is peopled by
idea ghosts haunting the
corridors of thought left
idle for too long, the ever-
moving tide of change
soon turning.

Oh, to be invisible as wind,
simple as air yet constant
as an orchestra of waves
rising, plunging, withdrawing
and returning again and again.

The year is old and ready
for re-birth. Spirit moves
on dawn-gray wing.
Wind is shaken in and out
of darkness.

Thoughts brim up from clouds,
rising among shadows, casting
starry beams on cold pastures
of the mind. Frozen grasses
tremble under the breath’s flow
like fingers reaching for the heights
of air enclosed in silent gloves
of prayer.

Across the distance and through
time, sacred song echoes at
the forest’s edge, a precocious
sign of what’s becoming.

MORNING

Pink convolutions of sky
blow faint breath on silver air-
Morning, a blank page,
a pale world stepping out
of the empire of night.

The first quick showers
of light shake sleeping
spirits awake as gentle
waves of motion wash
away final dreams.

Gray-coated fog mingles
with bright air as blue sings
in the eyes of early hours,
readying the world for
the first brushstrokes
of wonder.

Mist creeps low and
milky-white over fields.
Cliffs stretch white fingers
toward the heavens as tailors
of time begin to measure
the hours.

Earth’s heart pulses with
new energy, but morning
is a stranger in a foreign
land traveling alone.

SECRETS

They begin with phantom emotions,
perhaps of past moments dreamed
or a future not yet revealed.
They whisper soft winter music
in the pines, making shadow sounds
on the voice of air.

They are faint pencil lines
on a transparent screen,
a glimpse into the little sky
of mind.

They are sometimes sung
among the clouds or dropped
in silver words upon a soundless sea.
They are a moment breaking open,
a sip of understanding, an arrow
piercing the heart with a surprise
of unknown light.

IMAGINATION

Mind is blank before a white page
and imagination a new way of seeing.
It follows a pattern , coloring thought,
forming question marks like ripples
in still water awakening with a quiver
of heart, a soft and tender energy.

It lifts the momentary strain
of memories, the worries
of uncertainty. It lets us live
outside the darkness of our
inner world; it leads us to
the edge of earth beyond
nothingness, where was
and not yet hang in the air,
to a sensual moment where
self creates its own perfect
present.

EMOTIONAL TSUNAMI

It strikes without warning
savage and primeval --
the menacing obscurity,
the turbulent obsession,
the rubble of confusion
leaving bays of impasse
in the aftermath of fallen trees.

It overwhelms, it devastates,
rising in a crescendo of moods.
It scatters broken dreams,
lost in the search for belonging.

Is there a way out of darkness?
The cadence of the soul seeks
a surface of calm renewal,
freed from captivity.

It sweeps away the broken pieces,
clearing the sky of clouds,
expanding the colors
of returning peace.

CITY OF THE SOUL

Dawn, take my sorrows.
I tired of being a passenger
of the dark.
Make me awash with sensation.
Let me forget despair.
Let me feel the city’s vibration.

I want to be a carefree wanderer
upon wide open boulevards,
piercing the veil of shadows’
oblivion, following a series
of endless crossroads
towards some conflagration
of urban lights, captured
by the conjurer of thoughts
agility.

I reach into all the hidden spaces
searching for the essence of myself.
Only there in the vastness of starless
unconsciousness can I perceive
that celestial expanse of light.

It’s the essence of sensation,
the elastic feel in the body,
spiritual flame in the heart,
the wild movement that
lights up earth and sky.

It’s the centrifigal force
that radiates mood’s sunshine,
the moment of unexpected torque,
infinitely complicated yet simple
in its sublime resonance.

Each step is gifted,
each step an idea,
a word unspoken,
a poem in the making.

For dance is flux and motion,
a viseral trance, a carefree discipline
of endlessness promising bright
tomorrows until the final release
beyond earth-bound dimensions.

FLYING

Step through the door of sky
full of curiosity, seeking
something precious beyond earth,
an ephemeral world of amazement.

The wind’s voice shouts a warning--
you’re absent from reality,
for world is a mix of weight
and lightness for wings
useless in one atmosphere
are alive in another.

Take the humming bird,
nature’s helicopter,
or the crane, fragile
on the gound yet
infallible energy
in the air, or the
butterfly filling earth
and sky with colored gloss.

When the great, joyful recklessness
of flying returns to celebration
of the world, something of the wild,
perfect air remains, if just for one
moment.

TIME

Time is a mere idea turning
in mysterious circles
in deep and nameless
fields of mind.

Seconds, minutes, hours
floating on the dark edges
of life, fragile and unprouvable
once faded into memory.

And what of the present moment,
that spiritual cliché, rapid,fleeting,
yet when discovered, becoming
a celebration.

And what of eternity,
a possibility held within
imagination, a state of mind
floating upward on the soft
wings of hope.

But mostly time drifts on
like a dark angel, unnoticed
until it is too late.

STORM


Morning and the world recreated
from the ashes of the night.
Listen to the earth speak
with the arguments of energy.
What will the day hold ?

A sky of unforgiving frowns,
the upheaval of change –
thunder wanders among
the hills, trees broken
by the wind. Threads of
lightening fall over the rocks
in flash floods of light.

Dark buds of dreams open
like fleeing ghosts, their eyes
dazed with catastrophe.
I walk in shock with loss
of balance, trudging
the long road through
the madness.

A storm is a whirlwind
of sensation in the on-
going humdrum of
nature’s design.

Then suddenly the sun
rises like a spot of blood.
The sky begins to bloom
again, painted with islands
of pink clouds, each a wish
heard and granted.

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.

Forest paths of pebbles and scree,
long desert roads stretching to forever,
dry river beds awakened by
a sudden surprise of rain –

Passages from night to day,
from city to country,
through time and shifting
shadows hanging in
the heavy branches of world.

Passages through thundering
tunnels of chilling fear or
gentle summer gardens
of soothing fragrance.

Passages of joy –the embrace
of a lover, the smile of a child,
or sadness, loss, the dove’s
mournful song.

Passages of comfort and
nourishment or infinite pain
where each step seems in vain.
Passages through ****** of wind
or a cosmic network of clouds.

Passages – traveling toward
unknown destinations
in a constant changing
of landscape, no beginning,
no end.

Listen, my love, to the moon at daybreak
and speak in soft light clouds.

Wind is a golden loop that sings
to the leaf-green heart of summer,
foaming up from meadows.

Passion grows flowery,
as a daisy asks for love,
and roses answer with
perfumed kisses.

Let your smile awaken a garden
of dreams, lay a bed of love
between spring and summer,
write love letters to each morning,
granting me admittance to your thoughts.

Let your dreams hold all the radience
of your desires. Let wonder penetrate
your every hour. Hurl your heart high
among the bright globes of sky,
as the swallow draws his image
on the gates of heaven.

Immensity of spring –
Threshold of summer –
A silver wing flutter
Among the olive branches,
Speechless aviary chittery,
Deep, soft pang of honeysuckle
Under a downpour of silk-white light,
Quick, disturbing visions in and out
Of sight, darning the break of day.
Ideas, feverish as bees, ripen
To the summer warmth.
Urged to their fullness,
They burst into a heavy flow
Of words, sweet as aged wine.
This is bounty of the season—
No more winter stretching
Bare arms out to catch late snow,
But a riot of roses whispering a satin “yes”
In a frenzy of letting go,
Of living regretless in the now.
,

It begins with light
slanting through the seasons
and an azur sky
filled with emptiness,
a crane floating softly
among the clouds,
drifting shadows on the earth.

There are days I live,
frantic with life,
others where I float
inside a bubble,
breath moving quietly.
I hear the music of
the ancient pines,
filled with poems.

Something touches me
from that other place,
thoughts I don’t think
to say, reaching through
the high, still air –
silence washes away
the past as I breathe
quiet mystery into myself
« with a mind that’s forgotten
mind. »

Time slips imperceptibly away,
hours in shambles beyond belief.
I grasp at spring green,
the hardest hue to hold.
I am intimate with blossoms
burst from stems in a garden
of all moods.

I gaze at wheeling in the sky
on eagles’ silent wings
as shadows trouble the sunset.
The breeze rests in stillness.
The pond mirrors the clouds.

I exist on air –
only the evening knows my thoughts,
fragrant nights falling lonely away,
missing you in the cold clarity of moon.

Time is caught in a loop ;
summer’s green trance
beguiles my spirits with
chains of leaves and cascades
of yellow flowers . Doves,
like paper lanterns bob
among the blossoms.

How far have you entered
my life ? Swallow me
into your heart with a kiss,
soft, secret and unseen.
Let love’s fragility work
against the world.

For love pulls the heart
into its own refuge where
nothing is lost in translation.
I want to listen and hear
only love spoken back.

Circle, you are the power of wholeness
open to earth and sky. All things generate
from your center : the earth in its roundness,
the celestial cycles, the expansion of time.

There are circles of wisdom with roots,
branches and memory, circles of sacred
song and dance, the  mystic circle of the
perfect full moon.

You are the vast flight of the eagle,
the many- petalled rose. You are
the egg and the nest, the expression
of completeness and protection.
You are the whole psyche, enclosing
passion, courage and love. You are zero,
the perfect number.

You are revolution, eternity and
new beginnings. You are the voice
that I hear in single moments and
know there is more than myself.

Each day is a goddess,
throwing open her arms,
spreading colors – dawn sky
flecked pink, cotton mist
rising from meadows,
flooding, ebbing, running
through the hours, stretching
to the horizon, full of infinite
change.

I want to awaken to the beauty
of quietude, something very gentle,
invisible, pulling like a net of threads,
a stirring of wonder. Wingtips rustling,
the melody of birdsong, the unseen
power that causes the eagle to soar.

Day, put your soft arms around me.
Let your sun rays caress me. Let me
be astonished by a rainbow, so perfect,
so ethereal, so divine, something
sacred that swoops from the universe.

Sometimes, when stillness of the heart
is not enough, mind extends to landscape
unbounded and floats like a helium balloon
in the depth of sky.

It begins with streaks of light, the naming
of trees, ponds open like black blossoms,
misted lakes, the sea placing its many fingers
on the endless revels of gold bays.

The road may be mossy and slippery
as old stones ; rows of summer
swallows may rise from random wires.
As mountain strider or keeper of forests,
let love lead me south to warm nights
where stars burn through clouds.

Let the voyage end in tender words,
perhaps a clasp or a kiss. Let the faithful
ebb and flow of time join the fragments
of me in exile from myself.

Sweet, loud frog, harsh voice rising
like a climbing vine in a green world
of ponds and leaves thin as filaments.
The sad frog has never acquired
grace or flight, yet multiplies
geography of night.

You may want to be a fish
or a bird, yet there is a steady
wholeness about you, a settled
resignation of lowness –
no particular ambition.

You are a being both firm
and subtle ; with your webbed
feet you cling solidly to the
wet earth. With your perfect
camouflage, you enhance
the beauty of your verdant
surroundings.

Emperor of the archipelago
of lily pads, you astound
observers with your acrobatic
leaps. Nocturnal creature, you
are a visual enigma.

So, hold your head high
and with your rough harmony,
sing me a star-lit serenade.

Almost like a conversation,
trees come into leaf.
Last year gone, time to move on.
Time to tumble soft flower explosions
into imperatives driven by the wind
that approximates a song.
Let light fall in thick drops,
entering through perfumed windows
and silken doors, fragrant with love.
Let there be a daily siesta of green
solitudes, a sigh light as a feather,
stillness reovered. Let this season’s
world become a dream, a ceaseless
burgeoning of seraphic joy,
an elevation of oneness .

The open air is dense and blue,
grass suspended in green.
This is how wings work
in the mystery of the wind :
looping, swooping, exuding
colored energy.

Flashing black and orange
in grand expanding, then landing--
feather light to pollinate the latest
blossom, when all that is seen
is quivering and shivering.

The magic superlative –
streaming, beaming jubilation.
Mistress of the meadows, symphony
of flight, your presence a drop
of heavenly fire, your disappearance,
a brilliant treasure buried forever.

My sense of taste has turned liquid
and melted away like soft butter.
I need it to savor the summer days
of my inner orchard. I need it to
open like a pomegrante blossom.
I need a bite of the powered sugar moon.
I want to savor amber pears falling
from laden boughs, the plasy juice
of ripe peaches.

I crave the smooth velvet richness
of a mouthful of langage,
heaping spoonfuls of words
sweetened by liquid light,
the flavor of mellow memories.
I need poetry full of pastry –
« sugar pyramids of confectionery . »

Taste, where have you gone ? Have you
fled from the wineglass weary of holding wine ?
Must I create a feast of literary edibles
to get you back ?

Nature has her own poets:
They do not wander among dactyls
and anapests or widen caesuras.

They dazzle with the quiet frangrance
of blossoms. They create diaphanous
webs, taut and quivering wordlessly.
They paint the backwash of evening
in shades of repose. They translate
the secret langage of butterflies.
The echo the silence of stones, mumble
the soft nothingness of currents of air, shine
rare, silky light through evergreens,
dance, noiseless, among mobile clouds.

How can we compete, with no adequate
expression for love or beauty ? Nature’s
bards bring us, with each dawn and dusk,
the gentle touch of the otherwordly.

It’s still early in the season
but longing lives in me
for the warmth of sun-touched days
for the songs of greening fields
for a tangle of butterflies
for a rainbow slanted up to the sky.

I long to lie with my nose to the earth
to smell the grass rising
to feel the freshness of dewdrops
to listen to the hum of life awakening.

Let April’s elevator
return birds to their places in the trees
increase the barble of growth
polish the heavens with soft white clouds .

Let the basket of winter sorrows flow past in the river,
Let the days lengthen and explode into growing light,
Let renewal sink into the earth deeply like gentle rain,
Let us come out of the darkness into the newness of spring.

News bursts from the media like
a ****** of crows smelling blood :
war, homelessness, racial tension,
we drown in a hurricane of bad news –
a thick growth of ugly impressions
like warts on the bark of an old tree.

Whoever invented this code
of exsitence, please don’t block
the light forever or let us become
estranged from tenderness,
made victims of virtual violence.

Give us back the season
we long for,caressed by
strokes of sunlight,
the precise and unexpected
beauty of a flower growing
among stones. From time
to time, give us a rainbow.

Listen for the syntax of time,
invisible hands winding
the striking clock, awakening
the sleeper as each hour
reveals its cove of secrets.

Daytime rolls in like
an avalanche, illuminating
the by-roads of consciousness.

Listen for the scent of present,
the sound of non-occurrence,
the sixty small silences of
each minute.

Time blusters through the hours
like the wind through naked branches,
yet the present may happen at any
moment, the chilling loneliness
of your absent self replaced by
a sense of now and the sweet
epiphany of peace.

Flashes of yesterday’s garden,
deep green under a gray sky--
I step into the canvas, moving
slowly, regretful and watchful,
with the weight of past light.

So many colored years,
some bright, some somber,
and you, the voice that ripened
youth, the accented syllables
opening the hours between
cliffs and sky, your presnce
re-appearing in soft explosions
of living, so painful to let go.

I pray for change, impermanence,
for last year’s dust to settle to
acceptance, to turn over the pages
of the past and to forgive everything.

BELL

Sound spreads like a cold splash
trembling with high connections.
The exuberant voice of the bell
shatters the hush of air.

Great clouds seem to echo,
startling dreamers, breaking
the deep tone of somber thoughts.

There is a wondering at sound,
ringing out the morning mist
or the last remains of day.

There is a coloring of time,
bulging outwards like a
courier with urgent news.

Why, bell, do you remind us
of the passing hours when
mind, listening to a long-lost
song, only wishes to travel
backwards.

Hours have their own being,
creating a natural order of things.
They may flutter like flags in the wind
or spin down through the light.
They draw long shadows on
the evening air, as they begin to
leave off, always followed by another.
They may be warm as a candle flame
or bright and dry as the moon.
At the time of coldest emptiness,
they may extinguish the stars.
Sometimes, the hours come
in a dream like a longed-for
lover, folding their arms
around me, as if each may
be the last.