Divine Fire Now falls the golden orb of light Burning in a burnished sky Slowly yielding to the night The fire that our souls live by. O Sun of our illumining Linger not long from earthly sight For love in us aspiring Would free the spirit of delight To dance upon the altar-stone In Agni's purifying blaze Flaming down from the Alone All human imperfections raze, Eternity find in every cell And in thy solar splendour dwell.

Oak Tree Dying and One Who Left The bare oak stands a sentinel of grief Its leafless limbs afford no shade or rest, Stark and black, devoid of greening leaf Where no bird lives or builds its happy nest. Death is a mighty shell-shock for the soul Left behind to wander through life alone, A deadening nescient numbness his paltry dole As fades the image of the beloved one. The winter of our sorrow cannot remain For life in us is strong, we must survive The nights of sadness lingering, the pain Of loss; we shall not fail to keep alive

Time For Broken Things To Mend I watch her hobbling up the long high hill That rises from the lake to reach my door, Injured and in pain advancing still To greet me as she's often done before, My mallard friend who lives from man apart Yet chooses to acknowledge me as friend She of the crippled foot and I the heart Both needing time for broken things to mend. Fall has come and russets tint the sky The mauve of asters, bright chrysanthemums Sparkle as the fleeting grasses die. This welcome chill invades the limbs and numbs The flesh and numbing too the heart, But I live on hoping yet to heal The fractured soul before

Eternal Life is Sown 4/6/02 Joy has fled from me relentless Death Who sets the seal of sorrow on my soul And now in pain I draw each laboured breath For one I love your ruthless cunning stole. While yet in fairest bloom you cut her down O ploughman harrowing the fields of life, Pariah of God, nothing do you own But residue of agony and strife, For spirit soars beyond your outstretched hand To rest in stellar avenues of peace In realms of luminosity shall stand One day to break your fateful scythe, and cease To feed your

The Bonds of Night Wild drakes have shed their iridescent dress, The gold of finches fades before my eyes And blue-bright days an other-worldliness Assume as autumn's fires fill the skies. The seasons of our lives, their varied beats Must change as well upon the first leaf-fall, As surging force in stem and branch retreats To sleep in roots until the spring shall call From dormant fields and dreaming woodland trees The first green notes to sound her motived score. And we shall add our songs to symphonies That issue from the universal core Of beauty rising from a world-delight Whose flaming touch shall shear the bonds of night.

Autumn Haiku - Scroll 1 Autumn moon Hanging bright Orange lantern in the night. One perfect leaf Red and gold Unmarred by Autumn's touch. Lonely leaf Spirals down, What beauty drifts across our souls. Desultory wind Scattering leaves With sheer abandon and ennui.

The Unknown's Touch If all the world forget and fall asleep We shall recall when beauty walked awhile On earth, the memory of Her feet shall keep Within our breasts and waken to Her smile. And though Night's cloak is hurled across the skies, Consumed the light by which we ply our way Across the vast unknown that sleeping lies Between the worlds of darkness and of day, Love shall prevail and greater light shall come. In secret groves no human eye can see A city rises round a golden dome, A consecrated dwelling-place for Thee. A voice we hear, our spirit's counterpart Echoing through the corridors of time, It grows a living man

O Music If Heaven's vaults would open to my prayer And music of the newer world descend Harmonious to heal the earth's despair Its rancour and it rivalries to end, For this my life as instrument I'd give And listen for the sanctifying sound, To hear again those subtle strains I live That open to us the spirit's native ground. For there the forces of division fail, The fuel that fires our greed, our hate, our lust, In flames consumed, so bright the sun seems pale And all our littleness reduced to dust. O Music touch our hearts, play on these strings The songs that tune our lives to higher things.

A Mind of God I wake in night examining my dreams To find a clue that tugs at me by day Or failing sleep drift on memory's streams Recalling beauty that has flown away, Away from life into the arms of Death To worlds of rest I do not know or see And splendours that would take away the breath, Make all we know an unreality. For death a blatant charlatan or fraud No longer passes there as king of night Nor must we face him fearful, overawed As he is but a tool the growing light Will cast aside when we awake to find The key to conscious immortality, Within the body's walls perceive a mind Of God resolving all duality.

For Mary Helen 2/10/02 To Mother Returned These days so empty of her human smile That cast on me the spell of god's caress, I lay in music's soothing arms awhile Recalling moments of such tenderness At Mother's Feet and in Her constant Grace. Beyond her time's departure Mother spared That I might look on her angelic face A longer spell, and slowly grow prepared. Of suffering's bonds her spirit now is freed And all the harsh disharmony of pain, Her soul restored to Mother as decreed To all who would a higher life attain. Acknowledge then her final peace and rest Enfolded in our sweet Mother's breast.