For Whom We Wait The ancient rhythms pulse beneath my feet But I have leaden steps, I cannot move, All melody is stilled, how shall I greet Another spring that promises of love? I watched her slowly die, silently Slipping through the shell of flesh and bone, Pulmonary insufficiency! I knew her soul the body had outgrown. But now I am devoid of inner sight, The mind no help and reason sadly fails To comprehend the passing of a light Before which all our understanding pales. Yet I have held the overflowing cup And rosy dawn delights the tearful eye, The wings of joy again shall lift me up To summits where the bright archangels

Loss and Restitution Companionless, a grief that none can share, The sudden recognition of the vast Alone in which my spirit now is cast, No map to guide my solitary course And heavy hangs the night in sorrow's air. Useless reason has no power here All argument is stifled by a pain That surfaces and then subsides again In moments when I open to the Force And understand that She whom I revere Holds past and future in Her careful hands, No tragedy we face has not foreseen, Allowed, and reckons not what might have been But moves us ever closer to the day Of God revealed who thwarts our well-laid plans That soul rise up withi

Winter Haiku - Scroll IV Frozen earth, Blanket of peace, Nurture the seed, the sleeping root. Graceful geese In perfect flight Flop and skid on the freezing lake. Icicles sing Their glasslike song Breaking in the morning sun. Landscape of snow, The crystal stars Illumining the frozen night.

Catbird The cat-bird comes at morning light A lyric air of joy is he, His ritual so fresh and bright Singing his songs of parody. A copier voice and nothing more He holds no cache of melody, Repeating trills heard long before From topmost branch or highest tree. And we who hear his practice round Reflect a moment on our days Covering the same dull ground In habit's grooves and hardened ways. And yet within this songster's voice A subtle variance is heard, A note perhaps of conscious choice Or repetition of a word That turns the movement of the stars Or calls to earth a rain of grace. We too shall hear celestial bars

On Soundless Feet - To Mother Shall I remember when the hour nears And death is but a half-step away, A sun in which our darkness disappears, Her smile, the promise of a golden day. Or shall I feel Her touch, Her blessing hand So gentle on my bowed unworthy head, Her grace to guide but rarely to command, That made the spirit wake from body's bed Aroused from dream-like sleep in heaven's fields To seek the one divine in all on earth, The path of light abjuring dark's ordeals, Recall the reason for this sacred birth. In the rapture of Her moments we shall meet God within who comes on soundless feet.

Upon the Sapphire Sky Isleep and in my unremembered dreams Take flight into those unknown hemispheres And ride upon the swiftly flowing streams Of soul experience; an oarsman steers, A being whom I faintly recognize The silent One, who speaks not but observes The movements of this life and calmly plies My ship of soul, a guardian who serves, Companion of my days forever true. By slow degrees unerring grace reveals The planes of consciousness; their royal hue Slowly across my inner vision steals. I catch a glimpse of raiment passing by And stainless feet upon the sapphire sky.

When God Comes Down And we shall land this sturdy craft of soul Upon the silver shores of awakening, All facets of our former lives revealed And finally alone with self and God Remake this careworn coat of bone and breath And flesh that cannot last the centuries' Decay and clothe in light the fibres of form When night is but a metaphor of day And death a distant memory in time. There is at work in every soul a force That spins the atom, binds the molecule, Unseen, unfelt it presses on our clay The imprint of the future's plenitude, The miracles that are and are to be Upon this whirling speck among the stars. Man's hope fulfilled to meet

Hold Me Ever Near I ask Thee only this, Let me go deeper still Anoint me with Thy conquering Will, Hold me ever near. But asking this I know Will light the dark below Whatever I must undergo Hold me ever near. All my being cries To see Thee once again And live within the soul's domain, Hold me ever near.

What Bud Unopened? What bud unopened presses toward the Light? It is the mystic rose with my breast. A mask of sorrow covering my sight Precludes the calm that ushers in the Guest. And yet I feel the beating of great wings, Their pinion-shafts preparing now to soar Beyond the bourne of unsubstantial things To break the seals upon the golden door. O spirit-bird fly from this human cage To join your voice in chorus of heaven-song, From silver notes upon a golden page Sing forth the melodies for which I long. I know this hidden rose that slowly swells And grows towards inevitable bloom – Surrender is its soil, from silence well

The Flowers Speak Wherever there is room to grow we bloom And offer to the Host our colours' prayer, We grace the fabric of the Artist's loom And cast our fragrance on His scented air. Beautiful and humble and divine The Garden of the Lord is our domain, Who tends it shall his consciousness refine That He may hear the chant of love's refrain And deeper plunge to consecrate and know That flowers are a symbol of Her grace, The soil prepared our nature then shall grow And blossom in the Spirit's timeless space.