Late Spring Musings Two hawks sit close on a dogwood tree, My spirit-friend and new-found mate I gently tell them 'All is well, Descend, no need to hesitate,' And slowly not to break the spell Retrace my steps noiselessly. She struggles to drag her lifeless prey, From me takes not her eyes away But looks with fierce and fearless love, Aware of my body's slightest move. Communion says the mind, I say, 'Oneness seals the closing day." I work alone upon the grass And watch a world of sorrow pass. Beloved friends so near death now And I not knowing why nor how Our lives in a reflected glass Shatter in the twilight's glow.

At the Inner Door Where now the muse with fiery tongue Whose words lapped at the waiting brain, I cannot say if she has gone Or if she might deign to come again, I only know that she was here And I but caught the trailing thread Of songs that touched the inner ear And held me fast when what she said Was heard in the silence that now has fled. But surely I shall hear once more For poetry is never dead If soul knock at the inner door.

Diamond Centre Jan. 17, 2011 Twilight and the tempest of the sea Crashing waves against the blackened rocks, Jagged where once we walked on welcome sands; Spume and spray, no terminus of sound Against the calm indifference of sky. Our lives in consecrated silence grew, We faced the great enigma of the self And looked beyond the surface for the soul. Now all is changing and the sea inside, Turbulent assails the old ideas And in the undertow our 'isms' drown. Far from the friendly shores that satisfied Our mortal longings and our appetites We founder against the cliffs of old desir

Beyond This World's Peripheries.htm Beyond This World's Peripheries I met her only once yet know That beauty is as spirits go, From other worlds they come to us Soaring high and dipping low, Low enough to touch our eyes! O loveliness of soul surprise My blinded view with inner sight That I may see where heaven lies Beyond this world's peripheries. Or is heaven in these earthly skies These waters teeming with a light, This soil of human destinies?

One Who Was Both Wife and Friend Mark how she sleeps the long unending sleep And all my dreams sleep silent by her side, Beauty so fair on seeing her I weep That bounteous love did in my life reside. Her coverlet these star-wrought tapestries As she rests at peace upon this golden soil, For now she soars beyond life's boundaries, Ended are the years of body's toil. The night's soft grasses bend beside the rills To pillow her, does she remember me When the mystic moon falls white upon the hills In radiant moments of eternity? It was joy that drew our kindred beings close For knowing her the flame yet brighter glows

On Waves of Joy and Gratitude The red-winged blackbird, sumptuous and bold Flits from swaying rush to sun-struck lea, An unpretentious resident of old His songs of ancient years come back to me As does the piercing cry of hawk and kite A marriage made of timeless memory, The swift and silent owls of the night, The mourning dove upon its homing tree. I have seen sunflowers turn towards the light In fields of vastness, mile on endless mile And saw the sand cranes in their pale pink flight Light up the sky before the sun could smile. The sinewed panthers let me watch their play, A swan befriended me, I stroked her breas

To Sam Spanier at Matagiri – On His 80th Birthday The Cradle of the Child There is communion in the fading day, The celebration of an ancient's birth, I watch the bluets rise from mossy beds Mid pungent odours of renascent earth. In the chill sunset hours on purple hills Or slate-black waters of the mountain streams I am returned to those ancestral roots, The greening habitat of youthful dreams. The cherries weep with blossoms lightly blown, I am the intimate of stately trees And lightly step into the vast unknown Dimensions of the new theocracies. To beauty we am called, the soul's delight, As a river to th

To Dance Again I had no interest in the dance. Wooden legs and feet of clay Were cause of my disdainful stance, Until I understood one day The world is dance and I must teach Unwilling limbs to rise and soar Beyond mind's insufficient reach As once in pageantries of yore I danced and sang with such delight In other worlds, on former stars. And now the body burning bright, Healed once more of earthly scars And endless centuries of pain Must learn to fly and dance again.

Ah, Memory In this happy sanctuary where the green Through grasses flows to break out in the leaves Uncompanioned I walk where once her feet had been, Her hair dancing in the faintest breeze Her eyes like diamonds set in sparkling seas. There floats to me the fragrance of peonies Mingled with the roses in the air, The passion-calls of cardinals in the trees The mourning doves descending pair by pair As I face the sorrow I alone must bear. Ah memory, you mix our joy with pain. With elegies you tint the morning song, For all our lives are found in your domain. You rain alike upon the weak and strong To the past and not the future you belon

The Light That In Us Burns The wasted years of labour spent In fruitless talk and argument, Desire dreamed yet once-fulfilled No desire is ever stilled, Turmoil of the groping mind The streams of thought that turn and wind And nowhere lead but there and back As in an endless cul-de-sac, But now the peace descending flows, A settling calm and wideness grows And all the outer being yearns To know the light that in us burns As spirit-flame, the soul, aspires To reach those vast immortal fires As uniting leaf and branch of tree Stretches towards its destiny.