Remember Beauty 9/11/09 Remember beauty, it shall last Through all the withering of time. Outward beauty is a mask To please the senses and the eye, Yet those with an awakened heart See beauty in a mote of dust And nowhere turn but she is there, Of such a radiance the eye Bereft of inner sight is blind. Only the vision in the heart Can truly see behind the veil The youth that leaps in aged limbs, The perfect form of the infirm, The peace that lives in troubled souls, The joy that made this stumbling world, The inhabitant for whom we seek Who lives in us unseen, unfelt And carries us to heaven's heights.

Preparing to Leave A red hydrangea in its brilliant dress Apart from pinks and multicoloured blues Calls me as I walk the garden path. A last lone iris singing by the lake Greets me as I near in dulcet tones. In the torrid heat of summer flowers rest, Even roses desultory blooms Are muted in the white-hot heat of day. O India, your jasmine-scented lands Sweetly call this traveller of song. Now autumn whispers in the tinted leaves And the mornings of my life grow cool once more.

Keeping Watch The hydrangeas in the near unbearable heat Sadly wilt, their leaves like dog ears droop, It seems as if they are prepared to die. The mop heads and the lace caps could bring tears To one who sees their shriven lifeless blooms. But then miraculously towards end of day A revival one might say, as suddenly When the sun has dipped behind the stands of trees Or settled in the stillness of the lake, All is made new, a resurrection eve, With vibrant shades of blue and pink and white. "Don't go into the garden until six", A phrase that I have often heard before. It is the quiet hour when Nature rests. The hawk is on the hunt, the rabb

My Only Refuge 9/18/09 It falls, this rain of days, incessantly, No sun is seen but yours within my heart. I have cut and stacked the wood of broken dreams, Piled upon the fire useless thoughts And thrown into the flames my dark desires. I have been burned by treachery, abuse, The gifts I offered charred upon return, Seen offered love reduced to smouldering ash. But you, my mother, lit a flame in me That shall not die though the heaven's pour, Igniting spark of soul to roaring blaze Consuming all my ignorance to know That you and only you are my life's blood. The past is dying and the new world born, In you my only refuge and my strength

Of Light^s Descent and Darshan Days.htm Of Light's Descent and Darshan Days 6/13/09   I lived and dreamed as a child And many a flowery garden laid Small in stature but O so wild Of gut and sinew I was made. I rose in back of the stake-bed truck My head upon a pillow of hay, The sun so bright and great my luck But closing fast the years to play. My father was a driven man Who drove his children, though with love Strong as a leviathan We worshipped him and found thereof A strength beyond capacity, And so I pushed the body more The parent smile I longed to see Until the body bruised and sore Begged rest and time that it might heal. I heeded not its wound

Release She has gone long into the healing peace And I no longer live to see her smile But still I work the garden in the spring Planting beauty, then to rest awhile But not for long in my remembering, For am I moved by forces barely known, Enamoured by the light I one day found And towards which my soul has slowly grown. That God resides in us there is no doubt But forces inimical await their hour, Faith and Will alone can drive them out For only then can one contain the power And from the grasp of troubled mind, release.

Prayer the Saving Attribute The Mother writes that each one of us Has within a beast ready to pounce And if we are not conscious and aware It can attack with devastating force. By turns it may by violence or stealth, Or by subtle means lay a lethal trap. One I know, a psychic and a witch, Tells me she takes him out now and then Puts a collar around his neck and says 'Let's go for a walk.' With me he plans And waits for the smallest opening. Often in a state of tiredness Or lack of will, perhaps in ignorance, He leaps upon the unsuspecting soul, Wreaks his damage and awaits with glee Our future weakness and infirmity

Call Down Peace 9/17/09 Each moment now is precious though I waste The hours with these same incessant thoughts That enter subtly through the fissured brain, Redundant openings to stations left Lives ago, still seeking to return, Troublesome and wearying and old. I have found a way for entrance of the light Directly to the heart and if the call Be pure enough, sustained, in truth, sincere They come in force, the dual avatars. Stilling of the mind remains undone But a wideness and a bliss envelope self, A recognition of the need to love Each facet of this million-bodied soul Of man, a love beyond the ego's grasp And call down peace fr

The Hymn of Human Destiny The grackle thinks its song as great As meadowlark and nightingale, And who are we to deprecate Whose auditory senses fail From the too-loud music of our time. Could we in silence like the deer Catch the harmonies sublime We then might note upon the ear Diviner music, ethereal sound, Lean to the wind or cricket's cry As one who has in silence found The hymn of human destiny. It is evening now, the linnet sleeps, The mockingbird sings no more And He who for us beauty keeps Arises in the being's core, And in the darkness brings us light To see with other than these eyes, Peeling back t

The Winds of Time   Today among the iris by the lake A calm descended on my troubled heart That for a timeless moment lived in peace. To know that one is on the path of light Illumining the great and minor flaws That would not be addressed for many lives Were we not blessed by having found a way To face the anger and confront the doubt That enters through the darkened cellar doors, Impatience and unworthiness of self, Desire and a vital restlessness. To recognize the patient guiding hand, The benignant touch upon our battered lives, Beaten at times but for a brief escape When stillness takes the soul and opens eyes Weak and tired from the