It is a morning like no other
when hope is smeared across the skies
Among the mourners I am alone
death cannot bind, when life could not.

A law binds us of old, to kinsmen
and clansmen, and the court
of law can be crooked
where evidence is omniscient.

In the chamber of faith
elevated on the altar
where we light pious incense
is the decorated image
of disbelief - for death
here, is the final word,

and who knows if there was
one in the beginning?

In the heart, the answer
where a wave knocks
of love, daring storms
and disregarding falls,
waiting to wash our feet
and cleanse our lives.

So are we here for a time,
on a sojourn we meet awhile:

Now darkness is overcast
and shadows grow on the walls
Now time is distant
and memories pale
But the miracle of your advent
never fades in my soul.

From ever the time
we can count, this is the lot
of the artist, of the subtle
and unseen, the lover
who sees with the heart:

withdrawal

from the workings of this
insensitive world,
where violence rules, and
vengeance is justified.

A wheel set in motion
of long that has
no end in sight,
of which, no solution
but to

renounce.

The only way, one who feels
may hope to do anything
is by self-transformation.

In the hour of solitude
by a brook or the tide
when the wind turns a page
in the wild, the eternal can
whisper to the soul:

and in this, the deliverance
for one who
sees with the heart.

Twelve are the months of darkness:
twelve the months of perennial winter,
in this world immersed
in the arctic of the Spirit;

Forty are the days of penance,
forty of fasting, yet our torment lasts:
is mortal sin washed?
of the heart, not carne?

Light, here we have, but
Light is what we need, lost our lives
frozen and dark,
in the penumbra of the Spirit.

And grace comes knocking -
but when David rises over darkness
we are with Saul, comes
ben-Joseph, we are with David.

Far ahead, beyond the horizon
is the pillar of shadow that
I set out in search of:
Past waves drenched of gold
and silver nights, I rode on, beyond
islands and signets.
I dreamed of worlds of light
past the winter of faith where
prayers freeze and the days still-born
But at the edge of the world
the shadow is still long
and the light-house I imagined
of shores beyond darkness
remains distant. In the deep
the shivering sky mourns
an ancient loss. What language
does the teardrop speak?
Beyond the horizon, there is a
pillar of shadow that rises
in the firmament of my soul.
Clenching a song in my fist, tonight
I rise, drawing out like filings,
the magician of my world,
conjurer of truths, I am
the magnet for secrets, onward!
I have a shadow to resolve.

I was walking in the desert.
The shadow was long
when the dunes went silent
and I sank to my knees
staring at the skies.

Past an abandoned drum
wailing in the winds,
where a half-buried mask
peeps out of the sand.

When the rain came
it poured out in torrents
and I had no place
to hide my soul.

Forefingers to thumbs,
I strain my eye to look through
the rummage of life.

Or on the tree
in the river island?

But it is like the song
that you know you remember
but can't put words to:
looping in and out,

Where did I leave my heart?

It's hard to tell,
when the love dried up
like the river in the desert.

Long in the night, when darkness is deepest
I find you, faint in the clearing among the trees
playing with the silver hues of new-moon light.
When fog fills the air moist with rains, you
hurry into the pond on a trail of stalks bringing
lotuses to bloom and spreading in ripples.
Every lonely morning, you pour crimson ink
to awaken the drooping leaves and sing in the
tiny voices of a hundred swallows welcoming
the slow winds of dawn: you, Senora, fill all
transitions; Early nights, I see, your smiles light
the room in the faint shadows of the dim lamps

I want to see some old photographs:
older than those on the computer;
Back when moments were precious,
unveil the shrouded busts,
and see the face of my friend
as he was then;

The best of us disappear
into the fields at dusk,
leaving behind memories for us
of colours and of songs.

Tonight, I will
walk by the bund, and onward
to the land beyond the horizon
where they sparkle at night as stars
our friends here, who have
gone to the far beyond.

I am peace. I wave over
every dawn by your shores.
I sing with the grilles and die
unsung like the evening.

I exist. Sometimes
only as a photograph, frozen
in my smile. Sometimes,
smoking my pipe of joy
fiddling by your side; Some
times, I am a memory
enshrined in your heart.