Two Strangers There is a stranger cowled in robes of dusk Familiar yet unknown who follows me, In the unguarded moments I lean to hear His whisper and his treacherous advice. He is the accompanist of our darker songs Sweet with sorrow, longing and desire. Lately he waits in alcoves of the mind For a too-great light impedes his lethal steps. There is a stranger known and yet unknown Who guides the rapid progress of the soul. I have seen him in the vastnesses of space And in a secret chamber of the heart. Though rare are his appearances in life My soul he takes on journeys beyond time, Without him I am but an empty husk Drifting in the fi

From Inward Depths A wanderer along life's rushing streams Seeking for his soul's identity, A solitary gatherer of dreams Pacing the world for the new epiphany. In the restless late-night musing of the mind He walks through furrows worn and oft-tilled fields Picking through abandoned husks to find A kernel or two of life's meagre yields, Then seeks for silence in an inner plain Of calm whose pools reflect a brighter light Than sun can give when from the dark domain Takes up his throne the dark king of night, Or when the restless vital self below Rises up to urge the heart's ascent And passion rules, he would attempt to go

He Who Lights The Pillars of the Skies Who is this beloved who causes me to weep Hardly having gazed into her eyes Or touched her face or kissed her dove-white feet? A vision fugitive before me flies, I cannot see the person for the dream, And all the world is filled with memories Of one who came to me on that dark night, One whose bearing spoke of death's demise And dawns to come with amethystine skies. Is this she who once I saw in human dress Seated throned upon a golden dais? Those who would climb above the world's duress No sincerity of soul her love denies, The Mother of all lives, Creatrix, She And He who lights

Seal Up My Eyes Seal up my eyes in sleep That I may dream again Of woodland fays mid mosses Fair in that deep glen. Seal up my lips in silence, No sound allow these feet For in this mystic moment All Nature is complete. Seal up my heart to sorrow And open again the gates Of love that each tomorrow Joy designates.

Seeking March 23, 2012 We seek for safety nets yet search in vain For certainty in an uncertain world, From sorrow's grip released return again To aching memories of grief's recalled. Yet something there is in us that strives to find Meaning in the emptiness of days, Escape from television's hypnotic eye And puerile ads that batter beleaguered mind Promising fulfilment of desire, Or music that invites the vital rise And overwhelms the spirit with its claims. Satiety would prod us for still more And yearns for danger and the passing

The Golden Way The garden of our sorrows built In the soil of everlasting spring Where the flowers of our dreams all wilt, Is only a false and fleeting thing For where love is our nature blooms And sadness lives unwatered long, There are a million starlit rooms And singing faith's eternal song The soul outlasts the body's brief But fragrant years in its house of clay. No longer have we time for grief And hardly time enough to pray For pressing on the earth a force Intolerant of time's delay Follows its unerring course Hewing for man the golden way.

The Nameless Ray To the precipice and back We walk our measured blinded way Looking neither left nor right Or upwards to receive the day. The world is filled with violence And we impotent turn away Or in the hour faith demands Kneel and of the moment, pray. Are we then marionettes on strings Puppets pulled to our dismay Flirting with evil or fleeting good Acting out an unscripted play? All is an arcane mystery, There seems no truth that we can say With certainty, 'This is the truth'; Desire and greed lead us astray And the sameness of unending hours. Our lives, our dreams are but Time's prey Unless we turn to

Beyond the Studied Paths of Time There is still too much in us that would resist The swift descent of the transforming grace Old established things reluctant prove To vacate their ensconced familiar space. The ingenious machinations of the mind, The vital self in love with its desires, Even the body's unwillingness to change Weigh heavily on the spirit that aspires For calm and peace, surrender to the Light, The radiant godhead whom we feel we know Within, above, perhaps our very soul Encouraging our feet to swiftly go To the mounting hills that towards the heavens climb And leap beyond the studied paths of time.

The Spirit of Youth I lived in a private world of green and gold And felt the pulse of earth beneath my feet, I held her fragrant in the cooling eve And burning in my hands at heat of day, Rich with the hidden wealth that fuels our lives. The dark tales of our fallen night ignored As the silver moon danced brightly through the trees. I knew summer as the cleansing stream Whose waters cooled the hot and tired flesh And soft sweet grasses pillowing my head, Contented as I watch the cloud-drift sky. The bursting cherry and the spicy pear Were like a nectar from another world. The woodland thrush who sang of pure delight, The cardinal i

The Vision of the Golden Tree Not only words the meaning of my heart Convey to those who are a part of me, But to the Unseen who sits and forms a part, The greater part that is my history. Now I embrace the darkness which is light For in the womb I knew the mystery And still retained peculiar inner sight, Acknowledging the future world to be. And though my knowledge rests somewhere behind The frontal being everyone can see I live infinitudes beyond the mind And see with spirit-eyes that all is he. I am becoming that which seemed a child In a near familiar paradisal land Whose symbol figures hold my soul beguil