More Than Mere Magnificence More than mere magnificence I praise - The humble flower by decaying walls, Nocturnal blooms that shun the too-strong rays But shed their fragrance as the evening falls, The miniatures, the common and the plain To outward eyes that see not through the form, Nothing of modest beauty I disdain. I have marked the artistry of bulb and corm, And the calligraphy inscribed upon the leaf The patterning of bark on aged trees

Promise Long Foretold I lack the vision of the world to be Nor can I speak of things I have not seen, But faith is stronger than eternity And one has come who is both mother and queen Donning our earthly dress, her modest mode Approaching that we might cease from fear and run To beauty, veer not from the appointed road Nor truth the invincible weapon of light to shun. She gives us pause upon our hurried way To look a bit inside ourselves to know That we, divine, although we often stray, Or satisfied cease within to grow Are substance of herself and hers to mould That we may fulfil the promise long foretold.

Nothing of Old Selves to Keep Before the eyelids droop in sleep, The sleep that all forgetting is Yet one the spirit knows to reap, The accumulation of earthly bliss Progress of the soul's descent To ignorance in birth's dark cave Aware of the divine intent When to man the earth She gave. I seek the peace eluding me, The calm that comes when we recast This being of scattered energy Desperate to hold the past In the vaults of memory, Godlike hands to remould And nothing of old selves to keep.

From the Deepest Seat of Will Motionless like a deer in blinding light I stood transfixed by sorrow, unable to move To see beyond my loss her body's flight To the sanctuary of eternal love. Now silently I call and in the still And pain-filled night aware of Thy reply There surges from the deepest seat of will A gratitude that shall not fail nor die. Yet I must overcome the weight of years That press upon this envelope of flesh To conquer

In God^s Image.htm In God's Image And I, well I awake as all the world Awakes to first delight in common things. Profuse this year the 'Autumn Cherry' glows And in the leaden April sky it brings Beauty's fullness by the water's edge. Oh, that we so troubled and alone Might leap to new-found knowledge of the soul, Absent grief, no longer to atone For errors and omissions of the past. Man's days unchanging prepare for a great change Becoming conscious of the need to gro

The Undeveloped Country of My Soul 1/5/08 Again the daffodils appear Leaping through the half-frozen soil And in the cold beginning of the year A joyous dawning marks my human toil. The roses in their dress of summer green The glowing iris' aristocracy, The earth's entrancing drift of petal-sheen Draw me deep in Nature's ecstasy. And I return with every bird to sing Of the eyes of children deep and fire-bright, The sudden fall of peonies in spring, And over my head the star encrusted night. I move toward a far-off unknown goal In the undeveloped country of my soul.

An Eternal Spring Feb. 22, 2008 I wipe the sleep from tired eyes And wake to life's adversities Be there nought within me that denies The call to those intensities Of soul that now seem lost in mist Or drowned in sorrow's fathomless deeps, The eyes I loved, the lips I kissed The heights we scaled, the spirit-leaps And days of such intense delight Our life was borne aloft by Grace. In morning's arms we left the night And sought through beauty Mother's face, The peace that comes when joined by prayer As offered

Mirror of God's Delight.htm Mirror of God's Delight I walked in fields where flowers spoke to me And all that mind might dream could not compare With the wonder and the ecstasy Of the gathered beauty I saw blooming there. No cloud appeared in the blue of Krishna's sky As from the body's shell my soul arose. It watched me live and it watched me die With Nature and the earth in deep repose. I found the silence that contains all sound, Beheld a light that does not shadow cast In that moment when the spirit soared unbound Released freedom from the clinging pa

In Peaceful Rooms I have been there when the soul prepared to leave The body it had chosen to occupy, To carry the evolving psychic flame, Leaving with the softness of a sigh. I have watched the swelling waves of human grief Crash upon the loved ones who remained. Yet sat in peaceful rooms where the belief Of those who calm and silence had attained Invoked a force descending in the room, A force to still the anguish and the tears Allowing no impending sense of doom Relieving hearts from vain emotion's fears And a quiet into

Nothing Disappears Imprint this face upon your hands And feel the flame that burns in me Till all your being understands That ours is but one destiny, Our march towards the light foretold Implanted in this resistant clay But earth is young and I've grown old And dimmer grows the light of day. There shall be other lives for me To overcome the weight of years We are our own infinity And nothing that is disappears But as a tree from a dust-like seed Grows to fulfil the spirit's need.