For Leonard Baskin

To his house the bodiless
Come to barter endlessly
Vision, wisdom, for bodies
Palpable as his, and weighty.

Hands moving move priestlier
Than priest's hands, invoke no vain
Images of light and air
But sure stations in bronze, wood, stone.

Obdurate, in dense-grained wood,
A bald angel blocks and shapes
The flimsy light; arms folded
Watches his cumbrous world eclipse

Inane worlds of wind and cloud.
Bronze dead dominate the floor,
Resistive, ruddy-bodied,
Dwarfing us. Our bodies flicker

Toward extinction in those eyes
Which, without him, were beggared
Of place, time, and their bodies.
Emulous spirits make discord,

Try entry, enter nightmares
Until his chisel bequeaths
Them life livelier than ours,
A solider repose than death's.

The universal path is a windy link
in reflections it bounces in dryness
the wood wounded with unknown
phases tainted with fists that hints

The bareness of the desert lays untold
roasted and unbroken in resistive dunes
torn and un-tuned in the rusty mirage
bareness reformed by the scorning sun

See those hungry eyes digging in hilled sands
the lost hope lusting for a love swayed to last
memories of the crux, the faded in between
the withering leaves burnt to grimy coal

The tidal waves erupts as pure bliss builds
such loneliness buried in ocean depths
kneeling at the mercies of the greenery
pending rejuvenation to harmonious trance

On the edge of the bridge toes tiptoeing
the cord unfurling in, over and within
waters paints in hues of silverly blue
a sacrifice to reign in the depths of the shore

To some the **** is an ugly invader.
To me it is a thing of beauty, determined and single minded,
Tall and proud amongst its colourful, more favoured bedfellows.

Resistive to the attempts of the zealous gardener to destroy it,
Poor relation amongst prize winning blooms.
It's beauty lies not in petals of dazzling rainbow hues,
But in its steadfast determination to fight back, year on year.

The **** is honest and unapologetic for its existence.
It does not await applause from shallow onlookers.
Confident on its journey .

I am the **** , with depths that others cannot see.
I will stand tall when others falter.
Their beauty will fade in time, outer shell that was once their saviour,wilted and dull.
My beauty, like the ****, lies within.

I wish I was a Tower
with a really pointy spire,
rising like the Burj Khalifa,
maybe even higher.

I would be so sharp
that all the burdens on my head
would fall apart, and fall away,
and leave me free of dread.

tall enough to rise above
my silly little fears,
hard enough and closed enough;
immune to shedding tears.

yes, I wish I was a Tower
so my soul would live
in something strong and permanent,
something resistive.

though it saddens me a lot,
sturdy Tower, I am not.

I'm more like something that the wind could carry as it went,
something small, and feeble, something like a Tent.