Our lives are as the raindrop to the river —
We falter, and we tumble; We are lost
And in the tumult cling to one another —

Enslaved by riverbanks, the river roiling
Is rain-lashed in a torrent — We are tossed
And buffeted amidst the turmoiled boiling —

Atop the foaming surface, battles rage
As brother battles brother for the sun —
Relenting, flowing, falling to a cage

In murky depths, with blissful recollection
Of cloudless skies afore the rivers run,
We cling to hope to someday rejoin Heaven.

Poor Spider!  Engineered her nets
To cast among the eaves –
And now her silk supports the nests
Of enterprising thieves!

A Roguish Bird with yellow smock
And beak like crooked spear
Crept up upon the wing and took
His pick of all her gear –

Poor Spider! Crawling home to scour
Her bastion torn to shreds –
She sets to task , and in the hour,
Hangs dew-kissed curtained webs!

LOVE is intangible, it has no taste,
You cannot touch it, hold it, let it go —
It does not spoil, nor ever go to waste —
It does not float, nor sink, nor ebb and flow —

Love cannot be sleight conjured from the air —
It is not sold in bottles, nor in jars —
Love has no weight the bearer has to bear
And cannot be constrained in any vase —

Yet all who loved have bent beneath Love's weight —
Know well its touch and taste, and bear its scar —
And know Love cannot die, but dissipate
As light escapes the clutches of a star —

LOVE is intangible, a force unseen —
As wild as wind, as lucid as a dream.

LOVE swings upon a pendulum
And reaps hearts to and fro —
The ‘Bold’ fear her momentum
And the ‘Sturdy’ feel her blow

And back and forth her scything blade
Will cut and shape and trim —
Till all true lovers’ souls are flayed
In deference to her whim

If love was meant to be,
What fool would carry flowers?
Or moonlit stroll beside the sea,
To pine away their hours?

If love was in the stars,
A birthright freely given,
What Venus would be wooed by Mars
To forge a path to Heaven?

I knelt in the sepulcher of a man;
His broken coffer wrought of rough-hewed stone
Stood sentinel betwixt a polished span
Of granite, laid bereft and all alone,
And of his name no dint nor breach began,
No epitaph, no garments and no bone,
So that I gazed upon that ancient plan
In askance if he ever called it home?
Above, the twilight stars he might have seen
Look down upon the miracle he made,
And of the earth and sky and all between
No rival kingly stone has yet been laid
To match the beauty of his desert queen,
Wherein still still may rest his mortal shade.