God's Design

Time and tribulations test the soul

And earth experience is temporal,

Eternity's far-off illusive goal

Appeals to few and fewer hear its call.

I have packed a dozen lifetimes into one,

Experience upon experience

And yet, a neophyte, the work undone

For which I took this birth, a reticence

To probe assiduously the depths unknown.

Have I loved too well this earth my soul ensnared,

Has Nature been too bountiful and sown

Too generously her gifts, too freely shared?

And yet her timeless blooms can outlast time!

The lotus bud that opens in my heart

Is the self-same flower that pushes through mud and slime

And it but a copy of Heaven's fairer art.

Then silently there comes the change within,

Things deemed impossible just fall away

And slowly is revealed the origin

Of God's design with man as player and play.