If Only …..

If only…
to lift the heart,
to play the game
of hope again,
to caress the softness
of longing.

If only….
the half-spent moon
would re-appear in full,
gently touching each
dark shadow on the edge
of night.

If only….
time had held still,
billowing into a mound
of motionless pink cloud.

If only ….
the dream of myself,
filled with a thousand
frailties, would brighten
the cold room of my life
with warm, quiet smiles.

If only…..
the dove’s shimmering
coo would break through
the tears of dawn where
the silk-white sky would
swallow me.

Then, at the first unexpected
tinge of brightness, I could
pat, stroke, kneel and kiss
the earth where your upturned
palm meets mine.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

There is an **** of dark hills
veiled in night’s rapture,
an almost seeing past the blackearth.
Blue stars pour from a window
like a wound open wide where
loneliness seeps in.

There is an abyss that follows
the dove’s plaintive cry, the place
where I lock myself in a dream.

As time billows through
the hours, landscapes fade.
Loneliness, cold, brittle, desperate,
that long white season, is gradually
undone and day opens to make me
whole again.

I long…..
for the night’s youngest moon
when light’s palpitations stroke
immagination.

I long…..
for the gigantic, silent sky,
for dusk’s long erasure into
planet ink.

I long….
To have my eyes filled with stars,
to reveal the hidden image of
our essence where soft words
flow like dew…
And the journey to the end
of rhyme with love passing through.

I long…
for the hidden desire
of the dove’s coo, the nights
of lilac when our bodies,
like heaven and earth, embraced.

Thief of the dark, please come gently
to take your shadow’s nakedness.
There is time enough for tomorrow.

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 ?

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.

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.

Fire, ice, air, all in liquid form,
sunken rigs and ancient dwellings,
secret serenity of tides,
oceanic greenhouse equal to all
planets where sunset flares
like Saturn’s rings, coral cathedrals,
rosy as ****** dreams, sun dissolved
in pices, hurrying to the depths
of darkness, mists cold as dawn.

And you, my Merman, god
of the day, skimming the surf,
helmet gleaming, blowing
your horn of departure.
You create the pleats and
furrows, seagulls pulling
in your wake. You catch
the light that kindles
the Atlantic, just as it
sets fire to my heart.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Thirty years passed
like a dark flight of
small birds across
a half-blue moon.

I watched through
a keyhole of grief,
viewpoint diminished
like medicated pain.

I watched lemens
climb skyward,
remembering as
they fell away
into the night’s
silent smile.

With you no longer,
there is no wealth
of consolation. I am
as frail as a rag,
my will a withered
fruit.

How pure a thing is joy
that I no longer know,
my heart espaliered
to a wall of silence
and the sorrows of distance
that never scatter away.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

Like a
            h
            u
            r
            r
            i
            c
            a
            n
            e
At first a haphazard
                                  d
                                   r
                                   i
                                   z
                                   z
                                   l
                                   e
Then a deadly
           d
           o
           w
            n
            p
            o
            u
            r

Of beak-masqued terrorists
                                     i
                                     n
                                     v
                                      i
                                      s
                                      i
                                      b
                                       l
                                       e

Threatens each unguarded
                 m
                 o
                 m
                 e
                 n
                 t

Fear grows everywhere suspicion
                                     l
                                     u
                                     r
                                     k
                                     s

Yesterday’s mosquito makes tomorrow’s
               g
               h
               o
               s
               t

It’s the season’s ungiving
                                      p
                                      a
                                      n
                                      i
                                      c

No remedy : only the sky’s massive closed door and
                  t
                  i
                  m
                   e
                   l
                   e
                   s
                   s
                   n
                   e
                   s
                   s

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.

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.

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.

A book of poems –
a stunning moment’s promise,
a planet of new songs
each scarlet stanza firing
neurons at the back of mind,

a word like «whorl»
violet verses, rhythm
thumping as if with curses

Each image a word explosion
Spilling sparks on the dark,

each metaphor a painting
each simile a saying

Rhymes of psychedelic highs
Music of soft-petalled tongue:

velvet sonnet
silky sestina
vigoruous villanelle –

Perfect lens capturing
each wavelength of light,
splintering time, filling history
with slippery equivocals.

Perfect circle, irridescent
kalidescope, all colors
transposed, admired,
re-interpreted.

To soothe away the pain,
first dip into the glacial glow
of a million galaxies,
full of fire and ice.

Next, catch a moonbeam –
just one – in the palm of your hand
to remind you who you are.

Then carefully collect the wreckage
of the past to celebrate rebirth.
Search for wisdom’s blade of grass
hidden in the crevices of naked stone.

Deeply feel the force of things
but try to find how not to shatter
in the in-betweens of chaos.

Let the half-moon remind you
Of the of the shiny side
of you. Then go out searching
among the prickly weeds,
armed with shears of patience
To give all good things
a chance to bloom.

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.

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. »

This quilt we shared
has become heavy with sadness,
damp with tears since your passing.

Rips and tears, unrepaired,
are now gaping holes
of stark loneliness, each one
a wouund, a near-death
of the soul.

This quilt, once a shelter
from world’s cruelty,
now bleeds grief
into every night.

Where is the magic needle,
To sew up the gaps ?
Where is the thread of kindness,
the stitches that heal the heart ?


I huddle and shiver beneath
this thin reminder of past joy,
a gift of love given, then
suddenly snatched away.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Homage to Wallace Stevens



1. my thoughts are heavy,
    a wet blanket of gray
    like the darkening sky

2. falling leaves dangle
    leopard light mid-air
    over fields of purple mist

3. a wind-child plays
    with shadows faltering
    through black-armed trees

4. silence of shapeless black
    stretches between pin-***** stars
    and a glacial crescent moon

5. clock turned back an hour
    I feel split, confused by
    precocious night and
    early air-blue light

6. shop windows writhe
    with glittery excitement
    while I feel only
    the phantom fingers
    of too many years

7. season of between
    invisible beneath
    your gaudy disguise,
    you softly dialogue
    with death.

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.

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.

Listen to the tipping-down
of branches, after rain, after rain.
Listen to the world-wash,
to the yes of blossom, to the anxious
out-stretching, to the notes
born from a dream.

Listen to the inside silences
and speak them to the sky.
Listen to the stone wish to
be softened, to the earth wish
to be held.

Listen to the bluebird’s warble,
to the looming hum of bees.
Listen to dawn light deepening,
to the flutter of soft-sheathed wings.

Listen as the stream remembers clarity,
Listen to the strange complexity of beauty.
Hear the one design of motion as it sings.

Despair, immeasurable
as shadows perceived
in fading daylight.
Colors of an unseen
rainbow beckoning,
hope just out of reach.

Prayers beyond words –
a bright reflection imagined.
Questions hanging like ghosts
in the atmosphere.

Time without substance,
a moment of breath,
suspence awaiting repetition,
help or comfort.

Speculations about angels’ wings,
darks tunnels, light rivers of love,
and the memory of a story we once believed.
Life, like a stunned bird, held between
invisible hands.

Gone, last year, you’re gone,
as a guilty lover steals away,
No use zipping up the bright
horizon as the day begins again –
your replacement will still barge in.

You’ve grown old, weary, your face
craggy as a mountain, your beard
a wisp of cloud. Time to chase
your end around the world,
your destination everywhere.

Run, old year, to time’s
bartered space, where
the chaos of bewildered atoms
cannot follow. You, who were
only a shadow, a shape of brief
episodes, departed moments,
forgoten yesterdays, a bridge
swept away by momentum’s
transformation.