The Golden Way The garden of our sorrows built In the soil of everlasting spring Where the flowers of our dreams all wilt, Is only a false and fleeting thing For where love is our nature blooms And sadness lives unwatered long, There are a million starlit rooms And singing faith's eternal song The soul outlasts the body's brief But fragrant years in its house of clay. No longer have we time for grief And hardly time enough to pray For pressing on the earth a force Intolerant of time's delay Follows its unerring course Hewing for man the golden way.

The Nameless Ray To the precipice and back We walk our measured blinded way Looking neither left nor right Or upwards to receive the day. The world is filled with violence And we impotent turn away Or in the hour faith demands Kneel and of the moment, pray. Are we then marionettes on strings Puppets pulled to our dismay Flirting with evil or fleeting good Acting out an unscripted play? All is an arcane mystery, There seems no truth that we can say With certainty, 'This is the truth'; Desire and greed lead us astray And the sameness of unending hours. Our lives, our dreams are but Time's prey Unless we turn to

Beyond the Studied Paths of Time There is still too much in us that would resist The swift descent of the transforming grace Old established things reluctant prove To vacate their ensconced familiar space. The ingenious machinations of the mind, The vital self in love with its desires, Even the body's unwillingness to change Weigh heavily on the spirit that aspires For calm and peace, surrender to the Light, The radiant godhead whom we feel we know Within, above, perhaps our very soul Encouraging our feet to swiftly go To the mounting hills that towards the heavens climb And leap beyond the studied paths of time.

The Spirit of Youth I lived in a private world of green and gold And felt the pulse of earth beneath my feet, I held her fragrant in the cooling eve And burning in my hands at heat of day, Rich with the hidden wealth that fuels our lives. The dark tales of our fallen night ignored As the silver moon danced brightly through the trees. I knew summer as the cleansing stream Whose waters cooled the hot and tired flesh And soft sweet grasses pillowing my head, Contented as I watch the cloud-drift sky. The bursting cherry and the spicy pear Were like a nectar from another world. The woodland thrush who sang of pure delight, The cardinal i

The Vision of the Golden Tree Not only words the meaning of my heart Convey to those who are a part of me, But to the Unseen who sits and forms a part, The greater part that is my history. Now I embrace the darkness which is light For in the womb I knew the mystery And still retained peculiar inner sight, Acknowledging the future world to be. And though my knowledge rests somewhere behind The frontal being everyone can see I live infinitudes beyond the mind And see with spirit-eyes that all is he. I am becoming that which seemed a child In a near familiar paradisal land Whose symbol figures hold my soul beguil

Bougainvillea The fiery bougainvillea cascades down The whitewashed walls of luxury hotels And on the roofs of plain adobe huts Burns in splendour challenging the sun. Festive trees are lit with brilliant hues Reaching towards the dome of heaven's skies. I have seen urns aglow with purple bracts Set against the silence of the sea In Puerta Vallarta and in Cozumel And Cuernavaca, the flower of Mexico, Spilling from tall trees in India Or on a mansion's entryway arranged In such a burst of brilliance no leaf was seen. The eye enthralled in rapture strove to hold. Those clouds of pink and gold and orange-red, If all the world should die from ma

A Surreal Place I walked alone in a dark deserted wood Where briars held the lower ground that year, Among the huge foreboding trunks I stood And found a path that seemed to disappear From the eye's pursuit into a surreal place. Earth's flowers spun upon a wheel of dust Woven on the tapestry of space, My senses failed, I could no longer trust The feel of things, solidity of form. It was as if my spirit blown and tossed In some mysterious galactic storm, Some boundary beyond time's laws had crossed Into a realm of dream that was more real Than the dream of days in which we fill our roles On this spinning globe that hardly can re

The Eyes of Love I met her in the evening of my days. No more the instability of youth Or manhood's labour to fulfil his dreams Creating in a world of impermanence Some token of his passage through the stars. The eyes of love look not at aging form Or note the retribution of the years But see behind the veil of apparent things And hold with care in consecrated hands The cup of joy each spirit represents And know beyond the turbulence of time The God-force that inhabits every heart.

Lord of the Unseen Multitudes O Lord of the unseen multitudes Beyond the singing of the stars Earth cries to thee from timeless roods To heal her suppurating scars, To cleave the evil from her soil The darkness from its hidden roots, Relieve the burden of those who toil Beneath the polished leather boots The swastika, the devil's sign, And hatred like a noxious brew That scalds and mars the gifts divine, Retains the old, condemns the new And evil breeds beneath the sun. We cry to thee transcendent one.

The Serpent March 12, 2012 A shiver perhaps but absent fear Or fear controlled, for what we learned In childhood of the serpent's bite In memory's banks quiescent lurks, But if we knew the power and force To move without appendages Lightning fast and tightly coiled Another vision would we hold No longer to be crushed as foe, Respected now and oft revered A symbol seeking through the world His place among eternal things.