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.

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.

Chattering birds, not colourful
But friendly in their own grey way.
They make a lot of noise,
Not really saying much
But making a big effort
To be understood.
So willing to help
But not to commit,
Each proposal embraced
By a disclaimer; they mean well,
Of course, they do.
Their motivation can’t be faulted,
But there’s need for a psychic, a mind-reader,
For everything’s insinuated, nothing discussed.
So many points pronounced, declared,
Underlined, exclamated but not communicated,
Feeling no empathy, we all put on our coats
Against the cold draft of confusion.
.

They may have grown in a wood
or a garden, wholly in bloom.
They now rise from the vase
in a sovereign floating of joy :
crysanthemums in bud, narcissus,
full-blown peonies and tulips,
fulfilling themselves, they ripple
and throb with passion. They speak
to each other.

One bloom has fallen, an arabesque
of salmon pink. The empty shells
and one small insect add a spiritual
dimension, mortality’s immediency,
a yearning for the unattainble.
Those delicate blossoms hang
against the blue sky, nostalgic
for eternity.

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.

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.

There are always waiting spectors
as morning’s penumbra ripples
where chants of the mind play
to an audience of one.

They shape the mist as dawn
expands and connects each breath.
The weight of darkness lifts to
the edges of ether, emptying
the private hole of self.

Slowly, the hours
open to the hovering light,
the soft burn of the sun.
Like an instant between
seasons, the clot of darkness
dissolves.

There on the edges of wakefulness,
unexpected color breaks open silence,
dispersing the night’s assembly of ghosts.

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.

Maybe the bed lies about the garden,
Seeing it from a one-eyed supine pose.
The garden, ***** by winter, stands naked
Outside the window, looking in.
The bed is comfortable, complacent;
It doesn’t much care about ragged orphans
Or abused women.
Perhaps it should remember it’s made of wood,
Same as the trees, though it’s covered with
A springy mattress, happy sheets, cottony quilts.
The garden has known spring abundance
And will know it again. The bed has known
Nightmares, sickness and may even learn
About death. In summer the bed will be stripped,
The garden dressed in luscious fragments
Of leaf and petal, hung in perfect equilibrium.
The bed and the garden, like body and soul,
Each needs to remember their debt to the other.

There’s a ghost tree in the garden,
Spindly spine, non-branches,
Beginning as last year’s memory,
A stillness becoming a trembling
Of light, of movement,
Still frail but rallying
In its swaying aloneness.

The wind, nostalgic, strikes and dies
Upon the scant reflection of body
In the sky. What looks like leaving
Is an ongoingness of song,
A still-flowering of hope,
An unbreakable pattern
Of the art of renewal.

Invisible non-bodies –
collective elctrodynamics,
fast and furious nano-flares
of hovering incandescence.

They need no permission
to cross borders, leap checkpoints,
falsify fingerprints, scramble eye-scans.

They converse in a code
of wrangling fury, one alias
to another, true identity
unknowable.

These migrants can’t be detained
or deported, They assemble
out of nowhere, instigators
of disruption, provacators
of destruction.

There’s no stopping their attraction
or repulsion. They represent our
deepest fears, for their clandestine
agenda is not at all what it appears.

The world is made of mystery
as wild as the dunes
where secret spirits gather
and grasses whisper psalms.
My guesses cannot run as fast
nor can ideas fly
to catch all that amazement
floating upwards toward the sky.

This universe enormous,
its distances unknown.
Its stars and moons and planets
live in their spacious home,
but all that can belong to us
is life and death alone.

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.

Against a fire bridge of sunrise,
Blue smoke still under the pines,
A humming bird clings to a sheet of sky,
Light-sensitive paper wings fragile
As spring ice. The eye, messenger
Of flash and shatter, stumbles on
This sudden angle photo.
The inexplicable takes form,
Arranging itself like a watercolour dawn
Opening in slow motion.
The conspirators of dark and cold
Are given short shrift in the moment
The world’s heart stops, touched
By the quick wing beat of April flight.

Could it be that a rose should follow
A tree inside his own haven,
For love, for protection?
I think of myself as a rose
But need to explain who I really am:
Softness, wetness held in a pellicle,
The moisture of my kiss enough
For both of us: my tree and me.

The quiet wilderness my heart
Might be violated, for I’m only
A small plant, holding all
My stillness within. I imagine
The warmth of being held
By those strong branches,
Shadowed in that leafy cool,
My petals protected, wood bark
Softening against my cheek.

Yes, you and I could grow together,
Each giving the other room
To be exactly who we are.

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.
,

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Sometimes, the jade air
Sometimes, the forest’s verdant breath
Sometimes, the moss pond
and the frog’s plonked exclamation.
Sometimes, the confused helix
of crossed branches, the sun’s
enduring eye, blinded here and there
by the cliff’s stern countenance.

Each of these can manifest
as the soul’s reflection,
For how else could it know
its own existence?

Only chance can help
the soul to find its way
through heaven’s web of lumens
and planets’ eternal orbits,
an endless procession
of hollow moments to be filled
by a sudden eclipse of expectation,
a quick downpour of regret,
a shadow of fear, a memory exhumed.

Yet the final rush
of enlightened immersion
is only a license to begin again.

Sudden air full of winged seeds
Blowing froth on the dawn.
Season of simple joy
Wizarding light from the east.
Yellowing grass yawning
In the last of days of dry,
Zippy insect life slowing
To a tumble buzz, heavy
As sleep, just before sepia dreams
Begin to comfort the earth,
Fruit pungency replacing heady miasmas.
It’s like leaving a bright clearing for a forest
Sanctuary, light dimmed by cool shadows,
The gentle change of one life-state
For another.


,

If art is a March pigeon,
Spring is a terrace buttressed by hope.
If art is a green brigade,
Winter has finally surrendered.
If art is a spider’s web,
Nature’s an expert designer.
Art must be somewhere between sea salt and sky breath,
Splitting the clouds like feathered arrows.
Art is the magic of abstract,
A question of connecting the dots.
Art is a surreal awakening
From a living dream.
Art is stargazing astonishment, unashamed pleasure,
A reach for the extraordinary.
Art is a rose garden singing celebration.
Art is a religion of invented prayer.
If art is almost grasping the essential,
Leaving the end in suspense,
Then all humans must be artists.

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 wasn’t sacrifice, no,
It was meant to be invention.
How many times have I climbed
That crumbling edge of cliff,
Confident, fearless of the wide sky,
I stepped into a place where
There was only air.
A hot rush of melting wings
And I felt what it meant to fall…
A broken doll, all twisted limbs,
Bruised flesh, bashed pride.
I had been warned of the sublime
Beyond a mortal’s reach…
A human body is not meant to fly.
I’ve paid dearly for my careless hope
Yet continue to believe there’s a lucky star
Somewhere in my horoscope.

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.

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.

Childhood address remembered
all these years. Used now as
a password, a code, a credit card number:

the place itself a mist
of memories, light palpable
in the smoked filled air

Lawn springing downhill,
steeply impossible to mow,
steps winding up to a green door
as if in a dream.

garage below where is used to hide
among small dark thoughts
hanging from their webs
barely discerned in the dust
of time.

That’s where it all began
the endless internal battle,
the wasps’ nest of emotions,
the constant buzzing of the mind’s
heavy present that always
“seems to fail this bubble of a heart.”

A small hole widening the giant picture,
One dominant trait diminished,
One altered gene, one missing link.
Iron tree leafless, perfect wing damaged,
Bumble bee caught in the chemistry of death,
Coocoo’s song silenced to a memory,
Acid bath dissolves in soil, lakes opaque
With filament.
Lives that touched and changed each day
Now pushed to the edges of void,
A fatal pause where “is” becomes “was”
And it’s suddenly too late to negotiate.

Silence: the whispered voice of grace,
its careful slowness and this planet,
in time’s enormous hurry passed charm,
left behind in a dream, spring field’s
openness, now crowded with the goings-on
of business, each body,
each speechless phenomenon crying
to be heard above of roar of the collective:
chatter
twitter
buzz
shriek
thunder…

Headlines blaring their soundless alarms,
unlanguageable media: the execution of privacy,
and the Oneself, ignored yet fascinating
in its own becoming.

Watch it grow, mute, change, strive
for its own fragile path, each journey unique,
each arrival a new beginning.

Moving an enormous past,
so many years of things,
each once having had
it own significance,
now become a burden.

That lacquered box
of coasters, gift from
a dear friend,
that hand-crafted elephant
from a long-forgotten holiday.
Books are the worst, still speaking
in loud voices of hours of pleasure
spent together.

Life cut into small pieces,
boxed, stored, given away.
Heartbreak is what remains
in the tiny space allotted.

Abundance now resonates
with regret, yet it’s all about
letting go. Time transformed
to some wonderful winged creature,
recognizing no difference
between before and after.

PARKINSON’S

One slow step follows another
Limbs still bound to earth by
The golden cords of love.
At night, my dream self,
Startled awake, I watch
From my window as one star
Tips the dipper,

My strength has gone
To well-water, frozen  
In winter, convinced
That spring must arrive
By dawn, but hope has
Blown away like the petals
Of late summer roses,

As I watch that silly moth
Circling the candle flame,
Longing to become Buddha,
I wait for the cure, a guest
That may arrive too late.

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.

Between the butterfly and time
there is a space for bumblebees
to cultivate the clockwise rhythm
of the sky, applying prose that
might provoke a quantum leap
to patches of baroque.

Between chateaus in Spain,
there’s room to contemplate
debris that might design
a whole new attitude toward
storyline.

Carefree, a poet might create
a category quite apart,
a gratifying rhyme
to warm the heart.
Which culinary genius can combine
the bittersweet of artichoke with wine?

When shall the force of fireflies
unite with world to advertise the value
of an enterprise producing wholesale peace
available for sale or for lease?

Endless she blows
Through tough rhizomes of marram grass,
Moving sand, making dunes,
Bringing storm clouds or sun,
She’s mistress of the skies.

Sometimes a temperamental adolescent,
She rattles windows, slams doors.
Sometimes an agile animal, she spins
Invisible nose over tail.
In her world she speaks her own language,
Rolling sounds, inventing strange songs.

No one really knows her
Yet she’s a stranger to no household,
Lifting awnings, skirts and parasols,
Rippling pools and swelling sails.

The Greeks called her Zephyrus
But surely she’s a woman –
Capricious, compassionate, creative,
Cleansing, sometimes invasive,
She’s the artist of dawn and dusk,
In her sweetest mood, soft of touch,
Gentle of spirit, mysterious forever.

unless the Presence
reflects the world’s delight,
glad to surprise,
to take revenge on winter
in Sin’s disguise prepared
with monster green
and beauty to surprise
Me, the crocus, when
I choose to rise, and
me, the lark, joined
in every note by any word,
describe a skyfull of
neglected sheep and
of that slimy, frogful pond.
The season’s sound and fury
will not wait to slap
the perfect sting on
Planet Earth.

Silence spirited with teal
and an hour when nothing need happen,
Time gone beyond unanswering light,
hurling unheard echoes, slipping away
on the wind.

Notice the decomposing day,
the baffled bee meandering
among the season’s blossoms.

Follow the moon’s blood-red beams
and the goddess gone to fire.
She’s left cryptic messages
on the clouds for those who
care to read.

It’s useless to expect a bath or
of rainbows, a rush of angel wings.
Instead, treasure each small drought
of tenderness, pronouns love’s name
softly, and be forgiveness of the butterfly.

Night poet moves the wand of winter moon
Across puddles of angry sky.
Day poet soaks up the dark
With white dregs of frosty grass.
Season’s poet is the cold of now,
And warm’s imagined past,
The rustle of wind in leaves,
Telling secrets of other worlds.
The poet of land masters gravity
Of earth and air.
The poet of sea tests colours and textures,
A seamstress of liquid cloth.
The poet of moods fills hours
With inconstancy like a crow pecking holes
In a discarded b-flat mattress or
A lark perched on a bright cloud,
Overflowing with allegro.
The poet of dreams holds
All the world spellbound
In a theatre of slow motion.
The poet of real things
Makes magic out of socks and onions.
The poet of beauty speaks of what is.
The poet of love speaks of what might be.

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.

The sea – calm, immense as space
and shining – one instant in time
with breath rushing in before me,
flagstone path turned silver
in the moonlight –

Your hair in the wind -
gently picking up the sand.
It’s hard filling the days
without you.

But the nights fill themselves
the velvet peace that is yours
and soon will slip into me.

Pale shadows of early spring –
a sense of unfolding into fragile hours,
not ours to keep.
White winter days of danger past
and still, that on-going uncertainty.
A word in every drop of crystal breath,
Caught and held a nano-second
and hope running back to a beginning
never found.
A glossy serpent bites its tail
in an endless game repeating itself.
This circle, this oval orb
Empty yet containing all.

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.

As twilight deepens, angst begins.
In a tender light of lavender
your image may appear,
in fields or woodlands,
among tall tombs where
tension hides in silence.

Wings of angels seem to glide
on ice across the sky, and in
a drone of babble, some strange
arcane language, is this how the dead speak?

We live in these erratic times,
searching for depth through
the opposite of being. How can
we say that life will find a way?

Perhaps through these black holes,
there are other luminous worlds.

Whether…

death’s dark moons of tidal sadness

or
ferocious heaves and sighs of birth

Whether…

yellow warmth of day’s last kiss

or
dappled shadowed semi- tones of earth

Whether…

storm’s thunder in heaven’s raging brain

or
the cautious rhythm of a summer rain

Whether…

a night of passions’ lucious moans

or
morning’s taste of sweetened honey tones

Whether…

a dream’s dissembling reflexion

or  
a second’s truth of camera inflexion

No momentay frame of flesh,
No precarious green shoot,
No wink of precious inspiration
Without those secret wavelengths
of vibration.

What medicine have you given me, Doctor,
that makes those thoughts hop about my mind
like an invisible sparrow, leaving only
a trembling branch behind?

What is this new blue breeze
rippling through me, this vibration
of airy fluidity playing with me
like a child with a kite?

Is this natural, this floating life,
this joyous rambling, countless
curiosities popping up along the path,
this soft mist inking life’s stony edges?

If Moon is the essence of mind’s
ever-changing illusion, then clinging
to world is hopeless. Yes, Doctor,
I’ll take your medicine, if it let’s me
dream forever.

Being grows in earth
and the water of the womb
where heaven pools
its special nourishment.

Body, once born,
is a lone, flying crane
resisting with an energy
of singular intention.

But mind must live
in the world’s garden
among a few bright blooms
of insight, many thorns
of righteousness,
gnarled roots of rage.

The body’s path is straight,
narrow, its promise certain.
But mind must choose
at each which path to take.

Through night’s body, day breaks –
a wheelbarrow of dreams transformed
to a pile of thoughts.

I want dawn’s gray curtains hung
upon high floods of air,
the pizzicato voice of tiny
brown birds replaced by
the shameless, noisy gull.

I want to wallow in the clumsy
freedom of steamy clouds
caressing waves, as you
touched me, so elegantly,
like the wings of the moth.

I want to paint away sorrow
with the green furze of spring.
I want the fresh wind but
also its still, breathless
moments.

I want to take part in
the year’s re-birth and
create you all over again.

BECOMING

There is always resistance to change,
the pursuit of perpetual growth,
becoming being like the moon’s
relentless phases as night gently
prints itself on world.

Soft rain falls like new thoughts
on fields dancing with spring.
What was there before and gone
is becoming once again.

Clouds drop flushed notes
on the vapor of the air,
bubbles over river pebbles
form, break, and form again.

Becoming is a song not yet heard,
melodies promising wishes  of
unknowingness.

Becoming lies just under that
thin layer of life, those infinitely
precious seconds before what is
to be.