For Mary Helen, Soul at Rest God's Transforming Kiss A little of earth's beauty has been lost. Though difficult to estimate the cost, I believe the joys of which the poets sing Are tinged with hues of sadness and the spring Not quite as bright in beauty as I knew When life rejoiced the loveliness of you And music filled the pages of my days. For love revealed the secret of the ways Two souls by light possessed can recognize The oneness found again in rapture's eyes Beyond the unknown form, the present face. Persisting through

Dawn of God's Delight A greater sorrow falls upon my days Than I have known when faith was still a spark. My spirit in a suffocating box Cries out against the voices of the dark And all the incongruity of death. Memories that open too-deep wounds Like razors slicing through the flesh to soul, For grief in all its violence surrounds Each thought, consumes the mind, the waking hours Fills with turbulence and silent tears. I move a dumb automaton of pain Facing the futile emptiness of years Bereft of the beloved by whose side All life revealed a poetry divine And music flowed a channel pure of love, In dual aspiration hel

Mallard Friends Effortless they fly almost as one Alighting by my window from the lake, Speaking in a tongue I understand Occasionally eating from my hand, This daily ritual of give and take In which I am the true recipient, For I receive their trust, they my food. Their bodies glisten as with crystal tears. For me they leave behind their innate fears, Mallard friends, my feathered brotherhood. An iridescent magic in the sun, A oneness that I rarely feel with man At times they simply come and fall asleep Before my door and I this compact keep, A careful steward of a sacred clan.

When Visited By Love When we no longer carry ego's shield Or halberd of our insignificant thought And see in others enemies to yield On bloodstained fields in senseless battles fought, When we no longer need the taste of tears And open to the wonder of it all, God from our shadowed background reappears Responding to the spirit's urgent call. Then shall we truly wake and realize The One who in each living creature dwells, Who looks on us with calm compassionate eyes As light divine invades our human cells. The lotus from the mire blooms above, So too our lives when visited by love.

Song Ethereal In this song ethereal I felt thy soul ascending Blazing a luminous golden trail, Your love and light unending. Such beauty unseen resides in us And joy we hardly know A subtle unknown nucleus Calls us to forego All transient care and find the source Of joy eluding thought, The rapture free of heart's remorse In godlike moments caught. (Inspired by the second movement of Samuel Barber's Violin Concerto)

Recognize Thy Face The news exacerbates our fears, And if we care at all As shattered writhen bodies fall Eat our bread with tears. Will peace yet dawn among this race Mortal yet half-divine, Who demons harbour to disgrace This being that is Thine? I remember Auden's lines: ". . . the seas of pity lie Locked and frozen in each eye." How aptly he defines The hate that lives in humankind, Fanaticism's field – Is there a key we still might find And every being yield To love and every heart embrace The spirit's ageless cry, In every soul that passes by Recognize Thy face.

Alone With Time and God On the ninth day of the ninth month the trees Resplendent in their 'Joseph's Coat' grew still, The failing of the year by slow degrees Was felt in night's descent and sudden chill. The vapours from the surface of the lake Rose billowing in white phantasmal forms Yet sorrow all this beauty could not slake Nor quell within the fierce and violent storms That fall upon the soul in time of loss. I walk upon the paths our feet had trod, The soft pine-straw and deeply yielding moss And feel myself alone with time and God. The wind whips through this fragile house of clay And rain like tears consecrates my da

Remembered Fields of Light (11/20/02) Was Arthur King of Brittany, the Bear, My kin and brother in those ages past Or was I he who wed fair Guinevere Whose destiny with Lancelot was cast? Why do the pains of centuries recur In moments when my heart envisions her Or when I listen close and hear the call To battle from the mouths of vanished kings, And know my armour's sound in that great hall, Aware these are no vain imaginings, For I am there again in other space, On the face of time

Balcony Darshan – The Soul Looks Back I saw Her once in golden air Moving on jewelled feet, A vision of grandeur passing fair, Love divine replete. Alone I stood with a thousand eyes Fixed on Her balcony Awaiting a moment of Paradise, But then She cast on me The diamond gaze of God's delight. I felt a physical blow, Her spinning orbs drove through my sight, What seeds did She there sow? Only the passing of the years And stilling of the mind Or moments when the Grace appears Enable me to find Her marvel-changes wrought within, Moulding new harmonies, Wearing the shell of ego thin To gain

With Clear and Steadfast Eyes I, tender of the flame depart Too frequently the light Deep within the cavern of my heart. There seems no will to fight These demons of desire and of mind. Ever the same old moves, In narrow circles is their play defined And empty, hollow grooves. Yet I succumb and cannot rise above As yet their little play, I know not how to consecrate nor love, So often do I stray. The fire burns and will reduce to ash These hostile entities Who torture with delight or with the lash Aspiring devotees, Rejoice in every great or small defeat, Theirs to tempt and halt The souls who