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.

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.

Imagine a spherical shield,
all sensual swirls of body art
and gleaming currents of
silent comings and goings.

Her path is radiant
with skeins of silver slime.
She’s discreetly **** inside her shell,
snuggling in mystical moisture.

A willing captive,
She’s self-sufficient,
timid yet eager to explore,
free to withdraw at any given moment.

Admire the courage of her smallness,
the generosity of her gifts to the beauty
of our skin, our gastronomic delight.
She does not fear mortality’s ultimate crush.
She lives and dies in the joy of giving
her soft, sweet syrup back to the earth.

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.

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 .

Your dream-self came to me
with its familiar night music,
on delicate note at a time.
I listend to imagination’s tongue,
chanting the mantra of being.
Entranced by moon color,
I measured the distance of
meteors between your planet
and mine.

Dawn came reluctant
into the fog of high trees,
into the speckled dark
of mountain peaks.

Suddenly, you were there,
an unforgettable fragrance
of light, like blossoms
blowing through clouds,
a butterfly dream that
would last forever.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I am a spirit electric
begot by the gods of random,
mothered by chaos.

I live viciously,
eat forbidden fruit,
wreak havoc wherever
I go.

I am wild sea
I am dust-storm,
tsunami, volcano,
steel-breasted, fire-armed
on the outside.

I am petal-hearted,
honey-breathed,
cloud-kissed,
gold-showered
on­ the inside.

I weave multi-colored magic
onto mountains, spray deserts
with quivering star-drops.
expect impossibly wonderful
outcomes.

I want to die like
that old Chinese poet –
drunk, drowned in a pond,
trying to embrace the full moon.

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.

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. »

Katydid lover, your ******* form
slips nightly into my bed,
rubbing my limbs with a love song.
A waterlily corolla my pillow,
and you, the charm of a colibris,
drinking from my *******.
You lift my gown of gauzy film,
my wings emerging from
webbed sleeves, spider legs
from mist-net stockings.
Then, suddenly, we’re together,
held in this sticky, perfumed cloud,
hoping the rain will never wash us apart.

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.

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.

Daybreak: a sleeve of wind’s voice,
Gentle ululations, then a smear of gold

There’s a shuddering of sequined water
Reflecting ice-veined crags still frozen
In distress.

A living lens snaps the moment
All the way to its vanishing point.
Then, long, slow sepals, slippery
As syllables of a foreign language,
Transmute to a giant bloom,
A silk-red reflection falling upward,
Tumbling over pink-sheep clouds
Interrupting the stillness
Of this blue-grey universe.

Ever since that afternoon, artichokes,
To me, are creatures of the sea.
They’re a chosen species, daylily stars
With softened points, salt-lipped,
Afloat in olive oil, something
So Mediterranean about them,
Aqua-spirals, flat wings of green-white light,
As if their closed leaves could tie up
Landlocked clouds. Egg-shaped, heart-shaped,
Protective layers overlapping, they speak
In wet kisses, gently caressing the tongue
With a blizzard of soft flavours.
They embrace all wines, distract all meats,
Flirt with bread, politely invite dessert –
Sweetheart vegetables willing to be dressed
In bikinis or burkas, soft-centred lovables,
The most delicate of palettes seduced
By their siren song.

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.

On earth, in air, on water,
light is its own essence--
an enchanted dance,
a harmony of rhyme
in quick pearling as on
the surface of a pool ;
Or, it’s slow, expanding
as if some obstacle is in
the way.

Beyond sight’s reach,
light glides, swan-like
or blinks, star-like or
dapples uncertain between
sun and shadow.

A match darts it’s first
white flame, then flickers.
Splashing sparks may
tumble over pebbles or
moon repeat itself
a thousand times.
A translucent cascade
of bright snow illuminates
a winter field ; the gentle
glow of a candle flame
warms the heart.

Even what seems
forever dark as
midnight’s blackest
mood is not immune
to opening to the glory
of light.

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 .

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 ?

Mistakes are miracle gifts,
An opening of spirit wings
Teaching what might be
Painted on the sky in
Numerous serpentine solutions,
A letting loose of reins.

Just listen to the whisper
Of the mind’s darkest corners
Impossible words joined,
Somehow making sense
Of this life’s chaos.

Let them drift through dreams
Into puddle-muddle messages
In some esoteric language,
Translated from the frenzied scrawl
Of love-letters written to a thankless world.
All poems are exquisite mistakes.

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.

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.

Inspired by E.E. Cummings

This universe –
Timelessly alive
Strictly innumerable
Life’s path laid out
With careful intention.
Then suddenly a blunder
Called death unkindly persuades
Every word echoed in the sky
That it may unspring a poem,
Pitching each metaphor
To senselessness.
Still, it’s the beauty of eachness
That heals immeasurable night,
Restores the silent truth of earth
Where no particle is irrelevant,
Awakens the first sleeping wonders
Of spring’s green gratitude
And transforms dream miracles
Beyond reason into the eagerness
Of possibility.

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.

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.

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.

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.

A blink, a squint, a here-gone glimpse,
Sun-freckled, shadow-delicate.
Sudden breeze-breath prints a stream,
Ideograms unknown, passwords undetected
In time’s invisible unravelling, lifespan’s
Capricious memories.
Each freeze-frame re-invents itself
In past, present and future.
And age, a long, orange, tongue-licked sky,
The anteroom to winter solstice,
Guessing an elusive afterlife or
An untouchable emptiness.
Let us, instead, remember summer’s
Endless days, the hours’ extension
When water mirrors sunset,
When, like cool evening, mercy,
The afterthought of passion,
May whisper a prayer and summon
An angel.

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.

There’s this crazy house but
Where? No one really knows.
And it’s full of poems, not a line of prose.
And even though the sky’s the roof
all the doors are closed.
She keeps the whole place clean
and neat so anyone can see
that what she’s really after is Possibility.

For this is the Dickinson rag, yea, yea,
this is the Dickinson rag.

There was that carriage, sweet and slow -
Sunday driver – stop and go.
He picked her up along the way -
It seems it was the end of day,
and they drove to some strange mound -
damp and musty, underground.
Was her gossamer gown a bit transparent?
Cause the guy’s intentions weren’t apparent.
I guess she really liked the ******
Cause she wrote him poems in great number.

For this is the Dickinson rag, yea, yea,
This is the Dickinson rag.

Her characters are really weird -
Those roses “out of town?”
Wish I’d gone along with them –
but I got no scarlet gown.
Yea, Emily, your verses rock,
but I know I’m not alone
In not quite understanding
what means “zero to the bone”.

And that’s the Dickinson rag, yea yea,
that’s the Dickinson rag.

Glittering brilliance, these crystal panels
dressed in their thick, gold frames,
cupping and shaping the light,
pooling images the second they appear,
then, unlike the camera, they let go,
swallowing the world whole,
preparing for the next procession
of time-bond creatures.
They respect transience,
creating their own temporary ripples,
their own instantaneous installations.
They are mime artists of illusion,
disappearing as the earth darkens.
Patiently, for they wait for the return
of light, never doubting it will come.

There’s a decisive moment
Between light and dark,
An intermission of clear sight
When movement becomes illusion.

For light does not hold still
But converges to a hundred shapes,
Fields, haystacks, cathedral portals,
A dizzy dervish, constant change,
Finally softened by slithering shadows
Of dusk.

A tempered darkliness folding
Into moon-glow pillow clouds,
Creating their own impressions.

I’ve heard the muezzin’s call at dawn,
Church bells at noon, the gentle twang
Of singing bowls in temples,
The hushed chanting of mantras,
Meditation’s heavy silence.
I’ve heard the waves slapping the beach
Again and again, gull’s protesting.
I’ve heard the earth’s tectonic rumble,
Thunder’s base grumble, thick rain
Falling like window blinds, the wind’s
Subtle ghost whipping through helpless leaves.
I’ve heard magpie’s jabber and crows’ ***** discourse,
The dove’s soft evening prayer.  I’ve heard locusts’
Rhythmic rubbing of skinny stick legs, lizards
Scuttle in dusky corners, unseen things flap
Their wings in the dark. Even the soundless wings
Of butterflies, they say, can change the world.
I’ve heard mountain streams giggling, lazy rivers
Yawning, bubbles of love floating on wet kisses.
There’s no rivalry, no conflict, no violence here
Because all sounds have harmony in common.

Thick, invisible threads, the spider holds the heart,
The butterfly attending to her flowers,
The bite of the bee – harsh gesture of tenderness,
Bat’s sensitive hearing gear pitched high,
Lizard’s tongue testing for vanilla air,
A love lark singing to a star.

But this is monkey love, dexterity
Of opposable thumbs, naughtiness
Of stolen kisses, sharp claws
Cutting the heart’s cords,
Hungry munching of the skin’s
Softest zones, push and pull
Of sentiments, sometimes upwards
Towards cotton clouds, sometimes
Downwards towards the earth’s
Rocky surface.

And always chattering nonsense,
Understood only by the two of us.

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.

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.

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.

Sick of too much bright?
Dissolve into the velvet night.
Shake out the dust of stars,
Quench the fire, blow in the wind.
Maintain the subtle balance
That silence will allow.
Reflect attack and reimburse
With kindness.
Don’t fight the fading flesh
Nor quarrel with the unexpected present.
Admire the simple, ignore the shame.
Explore that train of light
And with one single backward glance
Consume all the grief that one life
Can contain.

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.