On Waves of Joy and Gratitude The red-winged blackbird, sumptuous and bold Flits from swaying rush to sun-struck lea, An unpretentious resident of old His songs of ancient years come back to me As does the piercing cry of hawk and kite A marriage made of timeless memory, The swift and silent owls of the night, The mourning dove upon its homing tree. I have seen sunflowers turn towards the light In fields of vastness, mile on endless mile And saw the sand cranes in their pale pink flight Light up the sky before the sun could smile. The sinewed panthers let me watch their play, A swan befriended me, I stroked her breas

To Sam Spanier at Matagiri – On His 80th Birthday The Cradle of the Child There is communion in the fading day, The celebration of an ancient's birth, I watch the bluets rise from mossy beds Mid pungent odours of renascent earth. In the chill sunset hours on purple hills Or slate-black waters of the mountain streams I am returned to those ancestral roots, The greening habitat of youthful dreams. The cherries weep with blossoms lightly blown, I am the intimate of stately trees And lightly step into the vast unknown Dimensions of the new theocracies. To beauty we am called, the soul's delight, As a river to th

To Dance Again I had no interest in the dance. Wooden legs and feet of clay Were cause of my disdainful stance, Until I understood one day The world is dance and I must teach Unwilling limbs to rise and soar Beyond mind's insufficient reach As once in pageantries of yore I danced and sang with such delight In other worlds, on former stars. And now the body burning bright, Healed once more of earthly scars And endless centuries of pain Must learn to fly and dance again.

Ah, Memory In this happy sanctuary where the green Through grasses flows to break out in the leaves Uncompanioned I walk where once her feet had been, Her hair dancing in the faintest breeze Her eyes like diamonds set in sparkling seas. There floats to me the fragrance of peonies Mingled with the roses in the air, The passion-calls of cardinals in the trees The mourning doves descending pair by pair As I face the sorrow I alone must bear. Ah memory, you mix our joy with pain. With elegies you tint the morning song, For all our lives are found in your domain. You rain alike upon the weak and strong To the past and not the future you belon

The Light That In Us Burns The wasted years of labour spent In fruitless talk and argument, Desire dreamed yet once-fulfilled No desire is ever stilled, Turmoil of the groping mind The streams of thought that turn and wind And nowhere lead but there and back As in an endless cul-de-sac, But now the peace descending flows, A settling calm and wideness grows And all the outer being yearns To know the light that in us burns As spirit-flame, the soul, aspires To reach those vast immortal fires As uniting leaf and branch of tree Stretches towards its destiny.

Forgive Me Rose Forgive me rose, I love the peony And iris held in my beloved's hands And I have other paramours as well, Not kin to thee but of the heat-filled lands. Excuse me rose, I seem impertinent To dare comparison with your perfume But in my heart I hold the jasmine fair And breathed the scented lily in full bloom. But you are perfect rose, divine in hues Whose royal fragrances with gods can vie, I cannot pass without due compliment And hold you now, queen of earth and sky.

Music of the Soul^s Desire.htm Music of the Soul's Desire A higher music waits upon the air, Soars among the stars and weaves its song, Descending it can call the heaven's here, It answers to the prayerful and the strong. In all aspiring hearts it shall descend To make of earth a garden spot for God Where flowers chant and sorrow finds its end In Joy's embrace, the gates of love unbarred. Symphonic, world on world shall then rejoice As barriers fall and melodies inspire Angels and men to join in one great voice To sing the music of the soul's desire.

The Visage of Our Queen Longing for Her feet to come Her face beloved once seen, A voice from our ancestral home, The visage of our queen. We call in silence and we wait Counting not the years Nor mark the sudden turns of fate That fuel our human tears. The world assails us with its woes And nothing is what it seems, Still in us the Presence grows In Her earth's future dreams. We shall be one with Her again, Our souls of this aware When ego in its den is slain, Desire turned to prayer That being pure we may arise To kneel before Her feet And gaze untroubled in Her eyes And know ourselves complete.

In the Sanctum Sanctorum If in the past I have honoured thee Too seldom when the hurrying feet of life And the relentless pace of restless will Have overwhelmed my soul or inner strife Darkened the luminous glass in which to see The image of the one who is my guide, If the sense of separate self has blinded me And to desire's cravings I complied, Thou who are forgiveness and all love Patient as the charioteer of earth Who sanctifies with blazing hues of day, Know my failings and account my worth And in the sanctum sanctorum sit and wait Unseen but felt as with the inward turn All becomes a sacrificial rite Where day a

Haiku on the Moon in the Service Tree The moon appears Through darkened leaves Silvering the 'Service' tree.