The Rider Footsteps in the alleyways of fate, I hear them coming but I cannot see. Fate is a foreign land and desolate Where an unknown voice faintly calls to me Deepening the eternal mystery, And I barely conscious to the core Stand and watch the waves that rush and leap As the first earthman on a distant shore Stretched before him like one waking from sleep, Saw endless horizons of eternity. The music that I heard before my birth Is with me still and yet I cannot hear The melodies that urge the soul on earth Immersed in grief or solitude to bear The poison arrows of iniquity. The world in violence and anger moves Rushing wildly tow

The Psychic Within Soon I will return To the birthplace of my soul, Not my eternal soul Which is everywhere And never having been born Sleeps not nor dies, But the psychic being within, The silent witness self Growing through centuries With each new form and face.

A Newer Man She spoke as the world pursued its deafened way But one heart touched all open hearts were moved. Some came responding to the divine call But in our time science is the lord, Its answer to our need to prolong life, A drastic surgery augment the brain A chemist's potion keep the cells alive That blood may run unclotted through the veins Extend the years beyond our given time That we may watch the sitcoms at our ease Surf the channels for our favourite games, Half listen to the politicians lie, Drink our beer, eat pretzels and grow fat Or watch enthralled dramatic nightly news To satiate the vital appetite, Invite disaster in our livi

The Light Within The illusion is that we know ourselves so well. We work and sleep in comfortable clothes And build our world a heaven or a hell, Suffer the joys and failures life bestows React as one in anaphylactic shock To those who wound from envy or in spite The surface man in whom we place our stock And sometimes savour a perverse delight In retribution at our foes expense. We are pinhead personalities Content within our circumscribed defence We attend not to the inner voice that pleas For recognition who has been the guide Through births unnumbered beyond unmeasured stars, Ever the guardian, ever at our side Inspiring

When You and I Were One I have seen the rose in the morning Perfuming drops of dew Yet hold a thought in the evening, The memory of you. I have walked in the dust of the desert And over forgotten land, Yet hold to a thought in the gloaming That once I touched your hand. I have tasted the fruit of the autumn Redolent of sun Yet hold a thought of the springtime When you and I were one.

In Winter's Womb is Hid the Child of Spring I am swayed by both remembrance and regret And buffeted by storms that seem to last Beyond the soul's endurance and forget The higher calling, haunted by the past. I stand upon a plain in present time, A tortured Janus, the future looking back, Hesitant to dare the daunting climb And all my life a weird and winding track. I know there shall be other births for me Too much remains undone, the spirit weeps For the hiatus in my destiny And lone within its silent vigil keeps. Now in the season of the dying leaf One feels that death could shatter everything Yet i

A Song Yet To Be Sung I have seen wisdom in a young child's eyes And beauty flowing from a wizened face, Truth looked down on me from a cripple's chair And the lame showed me a singular grace. The blind have smiled at me as I walked by, The deathly ill shining from their bed Blessed me with the strength to carry on, I saw joy upon the countenance of dead. I feel a smile of earth, a smile of sky, The fierce embrace of the South Indian sun, The mountains call me to their solitude With the creatures of the earth I am one. There is a music waiting to be sung, When all the hate in human hearts has flown Before the winds of Truth

Father Knowing him nothing did I know. He kept his anger hid beneath his skin Desire and prejudice rarely did show; Even his love was closeted within. The thrill of life ran pulsing through his veins He could not drink enough of earthly gifts, Yet little of the man I knew remains But memories that come in waves or drifts. I fiercely loved him when I was a child And loved him more as year on year sped by. Although my days rebellious, vain and wild Must have stung his soul, I rarely saw him cry, Not at my mother's death did a tear flow Or as the family perished one by one, But when my sister died it hurt him so He collapsed before the l

Beauty Must Be Found Beauty must be found, she is not dead In the violent upheavals of our age. Without her face to guide, her hand to lead Our art is a scrawl on a smudged and tattered page, Our music not more than a discordant din, And poems lost in barren fields of prose, The human soul dressed in a garb of sin. Where now the exquisite language of the rose, The melodies that set the spirit free, An architecture founded upon love, A poetry uplifting by its grace The darkened mind, the hardened heart to tears.

The One I Know But Cannot Name All self-loathing feeds upon itself And larger grows encompassing the soul, Anger blinds the eyes, invades the heart Impatience cripples our walk towards the goal. As a scientist tests and tests again His theories and discards without concern The failures that were certain of success So we must look into our depths to learn The reasons we embrace out darker side Forgetting why we came and ply our round Of commonness or worse, at evil's call. The spirit waits, certain of its ground Certain there will come the light of truth And set the being on its course again To follow in the fo