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.

Softly sings
the southern rain,
a silver sheen,
On ivy gleams,
Painted vines,
on a painted wall.
Whispered voices,
crisp with color,
A crimson dusk,
dark curtains fall.

Night parts before me,
my moon of envy,
Along the shores,
Were night birds call.
Shadows laugh,
Just made of mist,
As evening’s breath,
Drifts slowly past,
My window ledge,
I sleep at last.

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.

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.

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.

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.