Children of the Morning Sun

             

The sun beguiled its way through spotted clouds

Aiming a course across the morning heaven.

Columns of celestial light, split into scallop shells of golden amber

Touch the waving grass, green hills, wooded ridges and hollows.

Dark brown earth, revealed by the farmer’s gathering

Is lying damp from the night’s passing, 

Mounded into rows and furrows, ready for the next cycle of planting.

Covering the span from hedgerow to forest, hungry black crows gather

Coveting the spoils of the season’s harvest

 Reveling in their finds, releasing joyous squawks to echo across the valley.

One by one the children awake

Birthed from hollows deep within weed and thicket.

Upon trails veiled and shaded 

Lined with oak trees spreading branch and bush ends gnarled root.

The children of the morning sun arise from their burrows to greet a new day.

Rumbled tufts of brown, crimson and gray appear above the mist and dew. 

Claiming a place beneath the morning Sun; 

They survey a world of grass, tree and field; 

Wearing charms of yellow pollen, rose petal and maple leaf

Autumn’s fond reminiscence of summer’s gentle passing.

Quietly they move, nor snap or rustle flees from little feet

Plotting the grassy weed and loving the earth as much as it is possible to do so; 

Whose most gentle touch can be so soft

Making the early breeze jealous and the night jasmine humble;

Whose most passive way so light and good 

Making the flowers forget what the honey bee has stolen.

All the children are about

Sent upon their daily deeds by movement of the great light in the heavens. 

Burrowing, climbing, feeding and rejoicing in the pursuit of living

Knowing only of what they need

Feeling absolute within this place.

Greeting each dawn, the morning light, as if it were a last chance to say good-bye. 

Knowing that within their little hearts their labor will provide;

Another turn upon this splendor beneath this sun of the morning.

Coming of the Winter Spell

       (In remembrance of the Autumn of 1966)

    

A noise barely audible grumbles gently through the air; 

From a great height far above the golden canopy it falls.

Growing in intensity the laboring honks precede the flock

As the flock precedes the coming of the winter spell,

Foretold by strands of icy web

Holding the early morning captive beneath a breath of ghostly white. 

A shrinking circle of water awaits within a glassy frame

Holding cat tails hostage, entombing the creatures of the mud in a deep sleep

Until spring’s blessing can be renewed.

Descending on a silent glide towards the steaming mirror

Webbed pads break the sky’s reflection with gush and spray. 

Travelers from a distant land renew their earthly bonds. 

In nearby fields earlier arrivals glean the lost harvest

Between frozen, stony rows dotted with remnants of pumpkin, squash and corn.  

Near a distant tree line a small crimson figure patrols for mice

Along a fence overgrown with briar and wild grape

Clinging to rusted barbed wire strands, which hold gray weathered posts at attention,

Conjuring up visions of soldiers marching home from a lost war.

Chalky spires rise from chimneys

Spiking above the tree tops of the village. 

A lone car coughs and sputters in the distance.

Guernseys slowly gain the hillside 

Expelling vaporous breath with each laboring step.

On pond and field the visitors are well content

Resting along their journey’s quest.

Though another day will find them far to the south,

For now they wait this time to regain the strength of flight and freedom

Until a distant primal voice urges them to fly onward to warmer haunts

Where ice and snow cannot extend their frigid grip.

And so the feathered pilgrims make their way

Through space of air, over lake, river, forest, stream and pond,

Knowing in their deepest instinctive heart that they flee

Before the cold grasp of the arctic hand

Hastening the coming of the winter spell.

Moon of the Manatee

(Of  Blue Springs State Park Fla. circa 1980)

Blue springs give life and come from deep below

Starting the crystal flow that has ebbed unchecked before time was a conception.

Palms caress the boil; 

Extended fronds cast shadows from the great light’s reflection.

Dark mass is filled with noises, rustling in the night air.

The jungle closes in with steamy walls

Living, breathing and speaking of ancient days 

When humans were not yet God’s diversion.

Black shadowy veins crisscross the bottom

Thrown from branches illuminated by the Moon of the Manatee.

Schools, suspended in an invisible fluid;

Sleep in motion, dreaming the dream of the quiet ocean

Filled with sunlight and free of predators.

Hulky bodies are made chalky white by the lunar kiss

Bobbing slowly in the current, taking wispy breaths;

Whiskered faces, whose only expression is that of permanent happiness;

Bestowed by nature’s loving touch.

Scares on top of scares; 

Stretch from rounded backs to paddle-shaped tails 

Numbering in the hundreds, one for each encounter with the world of man.

Mother Manatee guards the small swimmer by her side.

Mingling with the brother and sisterhood of an old race

Hanging on by a flickering vestige of the original number,

Their grasp on this world a string

Dangling from the hand of creation; 

Poised to become either our companions of the future, or an entry in a book; 

Prophetic legacy for our children’s children; 

Perpetuating a world wanting more and more;

Perpetuating a culture leaving less and less.

Under the Moon of the Manatee water flows

Unchecked from its source, since forever was a promise

Made by the stars and planets. 

In this sheltered place the water shall always come

Renew the hope of all that visit this spot

Signifying eternal life and the renewal of all

With possibilities that only hope and love can bring.

COUSIN

Brown eyes stare upon a world of glass and steel;

Small primate hands clutch a mother made of terry cloth and buttons.

Held captive in a place of white walls, cages and test tubes; 

She has never seen the land of rain soaked jungles woven with swollen emerald rivers; 

Reflecting cotton ball clouds that sail across a heaven free of blame, hate or guilt.

Born into slavery from first breath;

Bonding with a laboratory’s crippling odors; 

Disinfectant groping with the stench of dry blood and defecation; 

Smells of misery, suffering and existence without hope.

This opus bequeathed by her prodigal cousin; 

Proclaimed in the name of progress, ordained by science; 

Sanctified by the need of understanding.

Small brown eyes that once shined with innocent wonder, shutter back;

Disappearing behind sockets racked with pain from a source it cannot comprehend.

Torture and depression are only dulled by drugs; 

Body and mind lay smoldering in a crippled fractured heap; 

Infected with our diseases or bruised and broken by the course of an impact test.

Whatever god that guards our little cousin is too far away to help; 

Forsaken and forgotten; 

Left as a burden to a jail keeper’s promise of human and respectful treatment; 

Caught in a daymare, flogged by the chains of selected superiority.

Stores tout our favorite remedy; 

Mascara laden shelves are waiting on a whim. 

Cures, paint, cloth and weapons of destruction;

Rolling out at the expense of living beings; 

Their welfare laying deep within our hands; 

We are the keepers or the destroyers of this planet; 

We are the visionaries and the looters; 

We are the saviors and the rapists.

With each day’s passing the forests and jungles grow smaller and smaller;

Yet, the sun still rises on this world; 

A world where success is measured by dominance and monetary wealth;

A world where the absence of understanding can be comforted; 

By the discharge of a pistol or the crack of a whip.

What future now awaits our cousins and kindred kind?

What future awaits us?

What tribute shall we exact for their sacrifice?

Full consequence will not be tallied at our cousin’s passing.

For within their fate our own is bound

As tight as any fisherman’s knot,

Each strand supporting the whole.

As it was at our divergence

So it may be at the great departure.

Our dependence flows far beyond the laboratory or the zoo.

Our life breath is the balance of this beautiful blue ball,

Suspended from a dream, hidden behind the illusions of Man; 

Existing on a swing line taking millennia’s to course.

Yet only the whisper of a prayer to start down a path.

A path only traveled once.

The Great Congregation

              (Africa, Tanzania 2003)

“I have come,”  cried the wind, squabbling with acacia and bush.

An old argument for sure, seldom settled in a season,

Measured by twisted branches and tattered grass,

Marked by waning mud choked pools of thirsty water baking in the equatorial sun.    

Boundless expanses limited only by the eye’s ability to see

Trail away to the four corners of these, the vast open spaces.  

Endless throngs of creatures weave through a sea of grass, 

Courting life and death by every water hole, behind every tree and beside every trail. 

Such is the way of this great place, equalizer of everything. 

Giving all that can be expected.

Taking all that is weak.

But for the hand of man, throwing back all things that dare to change her.  

So it is here that life is realized in its purest state,

Moving forward as one wave,

Rolling onward millennia after millennia. 

Though bits and pieces may pass into the big finality,

The wave rolls onward like these endless plains,

Changing only with the rain that brings the grass to feed the newborn, 

Adorning the acacia’s thorny clutch with flowers.

Black clouds gather in the distance,

Hinting of an unusual event on which all life here depends.

For within the mists of this profusion there is a balance

So precariously placed upon the edge of existence

Even the best prepared, if not careful, might fade across the line of extinction.

Silhouettes of grazing gazelle and zebra float on the horizon,

Dancing on the shimmering heat waves pulsating up from scorched ground. 

Vultures lose a battle over a wildebeest’s dried remains.

Matriarch gathers up the bony carcass. 

Bolting with gargling laughing barks 

She runs with her pack for the shadowy cover of the bush.      

Deep groaning roars repeat from all quarters.

Custodians of the plain declare their right and territory, 

Waiting out the heat until by cover of darkness, culling the sick and unsuspecting.

On high rock’s vantage a Cheetah surveys his possibilities,

Looking for any sign of weakness or lack of attention,

Possibly turning the race in his favor. 

Carefully doling out energy for each hunt,

Measuring every run and pounce,

Knowing full well the rule,

Expending more than the worth of the take will hasten the final hunt.

Hoof marks, dried rock hard into the shattered earth

Receive the first drops of heaven’s blessing.  

Smell of moisture and wet earth excites the throngs. 

A celebration is eminent.              

Mother leopard is vigilant,

Laying prone upon her thorny perch,

Watching time passing out of recollection, 

Beating slowly like a warrior’s drum; 

Counting to the cadence of the Masai spirits passing on the torment.  

An ocean of amber grass blades twist and bend in the altercation.

Stork and jackal choose no side; 

They know that the elements are the life and breath of this, the great congregation.

One brings the rain while the other gives food and shelter. 

A male baboon looks to the clouds above.

Closing his eyes he licks the air,

Scratching his chest he ambles to the troop,

giving way begrudgingly to the passage of gray giants.

Trumpeting bursts of glee rise above the thundery din of the storm.

“I have come,” cried the wind, passing through rift and mountain,

Beyond the sacred valleys, above every herd, pride, nest and burrow,

Bringing the moisture that will renew these grassy plains,

Sustaining these great creatures, this great land, this congregation.

Ghosts of the Stone

  (La Junta Colorado Nov. 96)

Rock lies cold and still within the barren isolation of these grasslands.

Overhead, ravens are in flight. 

Their song reverberates from canyon walls

As if to resurrect the voices of spirits long since departed.  

Below, a stream’s cutting force has coursed its way,

Exposing ancient stones of another time, of another world, of another order.

Huge trident forks, lying frozen in stone, mark a creature’s trail. 

These giant strides were measured tens of thousands of millennia before

The first blocks were squared at the base of the great pyramids,

Before our ancestors first stood erect upon the plains of Africa,

Long before humankind was God’s creation. 

The rising sun chases shadows into each large depression,

Accentuating their purpose, from heavy heel to deadly dagger claw,

Leading off into the layers of time towards Pangaea,

A place only alive by the gift of the fossil record and the grace of imagination. 

All evidence that their world existed seems far, far away.

But in this place something stirs alive a vision,

A vision filled with vast herds of placid giants 

Slowly ambling, grazing by the shore of an inland sea,

Unaware of the presence of their nemesis, the hulking beast,

The killer with jaws of death and the merciless empty eyes of a predator.  

Hunting from the cover of primeval forest’s edge, it stalks,

Waiting for the moment of attack

When serenity will make way for the collision of titans

Embracing in a mortal struggle,

Sending lesser creatures fleeing from the conflict.

Trumpeting roars, gnashing teeth and cries of death echo across an ancient landscape,

Causing all living things far off in the distance to pause and listen............

The silence of the canyon floor is not easily broken

To bear the truth that it has seen.

But for now, one can only ponder about the makers of the tracks,

Imagining the size and power of these creatures long since departed,

Reveling in the wonderment conjured up by the visions of the ghosts of the stone.

A dust devil plots its whipping way,

Pausing upon a giant track disturbing the soil within,

Gathering it up before the early morning breeze.

A monstrous dusty form begins to materialize; 

With claw and dagger teeth it reaches out............then fades as quickly as it came,

Dissolving away on the wind, back to the floor of the canyon;

Back to the stone from where it came; 

Back to the world of Pangaea.

Spirit in the Rain

The sky is breaking. 

To the west clouds crack and open into floods.

Along the horizon torrent sheets, stretching from ceiling to ground, begin to run

Across fields and forest forewarning of the deluge.

Sun baked earth that lay in sterile hot silence

Suddenly becomes spattered with marble-size drops,

Creating black stains, freeing up the smell of grass root and earth.  

Distant rumbles echo over hill and valley. 

Somewhere on high freight trains collide in a twisting crash.

The wind races before the storm past every leaf and blade of grass,

Making frantic rustling as it passes through woods of maple, birch and laurel.

Blinding streaks of white light touch the earth in grinding bursts; 

The air crackles with electricity; wisps of ozone permeate the moment.

By field’s end, close to forest’s edge

Old cottage is in mourning for those who first founded these acres.

In front of the structure a tractor’s motor steams,

Touched by heavens fountain, revealing once again its green color.

A tin roof with rusty stripes of ochre and red, covers a single room.

The driver has escaped from the wetness,

Seeking refuge in the cobweb darkness of this shelter.

Outside, the torment pushes towards full force.

Windows, cracked, dusty and worn, begin to streak and clear.

Spiders, who had made homes upon a window sill, scurry to higher ground,

Running from rain drops that have found a hole,

A hole in the glass made by a stone

Thrown by the hand of a youth many years ago.

He sits in silence as the storm rages on,

An over-turned bucket his perch.

Hands hang between faded denim legs

Dangling at the end of forearms,

Worn and weathered by the many sun scorched furrows covered. 

His old leather boots rest flat upon the warped pine floor stained brown with lamp oil.

Reaching deep within tattered overalls he pulls a freshly laundered bright blue handkerchief,

Wiping the cold sweat and grass seed from the back of his neck,

Staring down at those hands, his connection with life. 

These were the hands that grasped his mother’s face, at his first knowing.

She rocked him gently in her arms and sang a lullaby. 

These were the hands that held on to his father’s back pockets

As his father plowed his way through these same fields.

These were the hands that threw a stone through a window and grasped the hand of his grandfather.

They would walk the forest’s edge together in early spring. 

These were the hands that held his sweetheart.

They took an oath and forged a bond that lasted a lifetime. 

These were the hands that held his first born as he stared into the eyes of his immortality.

He could not explain his life in more than what he had seen and done; 

A simple man who cut the earth and understood. 

He understood as did his father.

With care and good fortune from the spirit in the rain

The harvest would be assured.

All things that have been sewn will eventually be reaped,

Returning to the beginning, as all things must,

Completing the great cycle of the great plan.

The rain slows to a steady pace. 

A tired back leans against the crumbling cottage wall. 

Old eyes close, weathered hands lie peacefully folded in the cup of his wrinkled lap.

He dreams.

He dreams of warm days of sunshine and tall green corn.

He dreams of a stream deep within the woods, 

A stream he visited as a child.

Along its banks sweet honeysuckle grew; 

He dreams as he always did, that he was flying above it all. 

Through the clouds that drifted in the sunshine he could see the fields below,

Stretching out before him as he once could see his life. 

Now, in his dream he saw the end of the fields.

Where they stopped there was only sunlight and rainbows against blue sky,

Blue sky filled with milky clouds, blue sky filled with peace and rest.

In this dream he reached the rainbow.

Feeling the cold spray of the misting droplets, he passed beyond,

Beyond the fields, beyond the farm, beyond the crest of the farthest hill,

Becoming one with it all, becoming one with the spirit in the rain.

Grasmere

(Lake District, UK, Sept. 1994)

Silent lake lies below, casting only ripples in the calm.

Green hills flanking this water scene explode

With beauty for those with eyes that see.

He wrote of her many changing moods,

Like the weather over the North Atlantic,

Unsettled and unbridled in her ways.

But for the gentle breeze, this day,

Trickling over leaves and branches, Grasmere is static.

Gray stone structures guard Rydal Road.

The cottage dove sits beyond, enclosed. 

The humble structure can only remember how the lake once looked

When from its windows a man gazed across sleepy waters.

Did he exist, the man who walked these hills,

The one, of who it’s said, wrote so much in praise of nature?

Is it just a myth perpetuated by teachers,

Making schoolchildren reflect beyond their years?

There well may be more pomp than circumstance,

But here it all becomes possible.................... 

I can almost hear his quill scratching,

Scratching upon the paper stock

Within the vacuum of this place,

Within the protection of this place, Grasmere.

He told of daffodils and little girls.

His words raced out, celebrating his haunts where

Echoes danced among the woods of fern, on hills of heather,

Beside every brook and lakeside’s embracing way.

What of this place that captured the soul of a laureate

Seducing with its gentle beauty and charm?

Are we ever more inspired then at first knowing,

Finding feelings that take a lifetime to mature and be understood?

Are we ever more in rapture than at the time of first appreciation,

Becoming aware of all the natural beauty that surrounds us?

I came to this place not by purpose but by chance,

Before this plebe’s encounter, never knowing of Grasmere.

And now I see it is inevitable to be here;

In this place that cries to see its reflection.

But for wordy attempts of description, no creation is deserved.

I know now it was not the writer, but this place, Grasmere.

Grasmere creates a thirst beyond the cure of water,

Evoking more than words and verse,

Instilling a longing that says, “Return to me someday

With eyes to drink my splendor, with ears to hear the stock-dove’s brooding voice,

With a heart large enough to love me, as I deserve to be, Grasmere.”  

Place of the Blue Canyons

(The Big Island, April 2004) 

It speaks to me, as even now I hear

The sounds of welling against the walls of colored spires.

Climbing from every crevice, stony colonies embrace the sun;

Multitudes of life weave in and out of every crag and overhang;

A blizzard of colors swirl in synaptic rhythms, a living vortex of scale and fin.

The surface, a liquid mirror, rolls with scattered reflections of the scene below;

Boiling breakers thunder with the mighty hand of the deep beyond.

A million bubbles flow past canyon walls, rushing with the current to find the open sea. 

White sand percolates in the surge, folding ripples across a face that smiles at the pleasure.

A thousand creatures dance in the pulsating flow.

Beyond the shallows the blue stretches down until it meets the darkness of the abyss,

Where fingers of light fade into silhouettes of stealthy hunters gliding through the liquid underworld.

Beneath the glow of a burning star this life began;

Beneath the stars of the limitless heavens this life unfolded;

Testament to the beauty that can be in one place, in one time, in one world. 

Measuring the passing of life; 

Knowing it is but a gentle whisper fading across the lips of the cosmos;

Floating in a sea within a sea; 

Floating within the canyon walls, above the sand;

The realm of our essence is truly here inside this watery cradle warmed by the touch

from the eternal light beyond the heavens.

Within its diversity the origins of our strength; 

Within its sanctum our birthplace among the stars.

Within the walls of the blue canyons

The miracle is conceived and revisited.

Prayer of a Dolphin

Calm waters blue and still,

Take my bubbles high into the surface light

Where sunbeams dance upon the water’s crest,

And the shadow of the albatross flies across the silver wakes.

Mother water clear and bright, take my voice throughout

The sea to every sheltered place of refuge; 

Across the desert aqua plains;

Down to the darkest, deepest depths; 

Over every golden sunny reef where I have played, where I have swam.

Great ocean vast and powerful, paint my soul

Upon each sandy stretch where the waves are crashing;

Where the surge boils in a twisting froth within the circle where life was created. 

When I no longer swim, take back what was borrowed to make what will be.

When I no longer look upon this world, let what I have seen be seen by others.

When I no longer breathe, let there be breath enough for those who can.

Calm waters blue and still,

Take my tears and salt the oceans,

Take my joy and fill the seas.

Mother water clean and true,

Let the stars become my eyes

And the universe my ocean. 

Old Friend

(Canoga Park, 1996)

I knew you first as small and frail,

A gangly pup more legs than frame,

Looking out into a world whose wonders

Were magnified through big brown eyes and curious furry brow.

Chasing ducks and butterflies you passed your youth at my side,

Giving your love and trust unconditionally

And asking only to be loved.

Many were the roads we traveled down together,

In the best and worst of times, in summers heat,

And winters rainy cold you never left my side.

And during all those nights I was without

The company of others, you were always there,

Asking little in return and giving everything.

And as in everything that life controls

A time must come to say good-bye.

Old friend, I will miss you and your gentle ways,

Your furry face and movement underfoot,

And I hope you know wherever you are

That you will walk with me always, forever by my side.

Lost World

(Tulum, Quintana Roo 1995)

Captured in a pose of tumbling stillness 

Weeping stones bereave their souls; 

Comforted by mossy velvet hands laden with moisture; 

Brought by air wet from the kiss of the Caribbean; 

Fragrant with the flowers of the jungle; 

Smoldering from a tropic sun’s relentless pulse; 

Driving the eco-force into fits of wind, rain and heat.

Standing in defiance, perimeter walls have fought a battle siege

A thousand and one hundred years; 

Waiting for the return of the un-returnable;

Waiting for the children of this lost world to appear;

Waiting for the temples to fill with the smoke of incense and fire once again;

Waiting for the glory to extend its hand within these ancient boundaries;

Unifying the original ways of a culture; 

Now only a ghost, floating upon the enigma that we implore; 

Lacking in its truth of who has lived and who has died. 

Only a quiet voice is heard,

A mumbling whisper

Scattered about the world by the hands of merchant and collectors;

Separated, amputated, lacking any provenience that could have enlightened.

Crumbling blocks stained black with mildew are mute.

Sunning reptiles, guardians of the stone, gather warmth,

Posing like the ancient statues that they mock,

Locked in smug silence becoming to the scene.

Stone faces stare out from the facade unblinking, unhindered,

Faded and worn from their original luster.

With no relief in sight they travel onward into the future,

Seeing strangers from another world encroaching with curiosity,

Witnesses to the last breaths of finality.

A thousand and one hundred years ago

The children disappeared into the jungle, 

Dissolving a race and culture; 

Denying everything, but the dreams that came each night; 

Eventually fading into fleeting memories

Difficult to recall and impossible to remember.

Storm clouds hang to the east across the expanse of the aqua blue horizon,

Moving in to wash away the heat from the morning,

Throwing foggy sheets of water upon the sea.

Closer, coming closer, the weather finds its way. 

Giant crystal globes begin to fall as they have a million times before

Upon this relic from the past; 

Upon this abandoned legacy of a race;

Upon this lost world. 

It will slowly erode, it will slowly disappear

Until the ground from where it came reclaims this book without words; 

This song with no melody; 

This stage without players; 

This ancient world

Lost as surely by us as it was forfeited by its children,

Who no longer believed that it was ever real.

Whisper of The Wind

(A remembrance of the Dublin farm 1967)

               

The whisper of the wind flows over grassy meadows,

Hailing all who might listen to come and feel the promise of a new day.

Shadows of the night depart, retreating behind tree and rock,

Leaving crystal liquid diamonds slowly vanishing before the warmth of day.

 

Teams of wren fly their way along fence, branch and vine,

Singing of gladness brought by the renewal of light and the dawn’s beginning.

Scattered sequins sparkle and fade across the expanse and heights of the great blue celestial.

The smell of grass and flowers breaches every sense that is alive 

And permeates the soul of every waking action.

The whisper of the wind glides across watery marsh,

Capturing fly and mosquito in its grasp; 

Bending stock and reed; 

Sending ripples that disturb the water spider’s ballet. 

Wavering from the whisper’s touch, an Egret poises on one leg, 

Gazing vigilantly at the water line; 

Confirming the fate of a dragonfly larvae

That climbs towards a metamorphic rendezvous it will never keep.

A dust devil springs to life across a plowed field, 

Turning gunny sack brown with each dip and whip of its course; 

Running before the wind like a top possessed by demons;

Reaching the forest line, disappearing like a ghost into the wall of green.

Even the rabbit’s burrow, down beneath the hollow’s lowest trail,

Hears and feels the voice of the whisper entering chamber ceilings adorned with grass root;

Sliding by furry occupants escaping from a back entrance into the light and beyond.  

Sulfur colored butterflies and white puffy dandelion seed are carried high

Into the air floating above this summer scene moving with the whisper,

Witnessing from far above the grand design at work.

As the whisper of the wind touches all things

So do all things invite the touch of the hand of creation,

The hand which regulates the clouds, distributes life giving seed, 

And causes the birds to measure their pace against its caress.   

All spirits rejoice as the breeze gathers up the essence of the earth,

Its life blood, dust and water,

Casting it to the four corners, 

Renewing the gift of life within this magic sphere.

Sending forth the vital mixture,

Stock of the cosmic soup, up into the air,

Sending it forth to replenish the great odyssey,

The great design which is life.

The Swimmers of Wyndamere

       (The lake district, UK, Sept 1994)

Heaven’s glassy mirror holds captive twenty swimmers,

Driven on by unseen forces, riding on a crown of ripples.

Golden maiden’s arms are stretched and weeping in mocking gesture,

Casting off feathery white ships onto waters,

Her hair gently waving at the parting;

Reaching down breaching reflections of the heather-laden mountains fold,

Capturing the fleeting clouds and cradling the home of the laureate. 

All that is has stopped to supple from the beauty of this moment

But this time has no captor, no owner, no designer;

Only swimmers slowly waltzing

Among floating cherry leaves and dandelion umbrellas.

Long white stockings capped with onyx rise above the surface,

The surface of illusion’s heart, strumming the strings of an invisible harp

That coax an ancient Celtic melody, calling soft and low.

Weaving in and out the Queen’s queue goes,

Never looking back to see cracked mirror’s seven years of lament.

What perfect artist’s brush could emulate the splendor

Of this that is unpaintable;

Nor words from this pen would capture,

But failing, plus a thousand times to hold the truth

Of what the eyes are privileged to consume

And what the heart endeavors to renew at each remembrance of the moment?

Twenty swimmers cast tender wakes,

Disappearing apparitions from a summer’s lazy dream,

Disappearing on the horizon

Into the expanse of Wyndamere. 

       

After the Rain 

(Sometime in my childhood 1964-ish)

After the rain had come,

After the cool hand of heaven spent its liquid gift

Across this land’s thirsty lips, quenching parched corridors of tree and vine,

Renewing a bond as old as the mountains and the sea;

After the lightning’s mighty grip released the earth and sky

From the dance of blue fire. 

After the thunder’s mighty voice was silent;

But for a distant echo lingering between the wisps of ozone;

After the wind’s driving thrusts abandoned all efforts to topple the weak or dying,

A mark remained upon the ground in every puddle’s muddy edge,

In every jagged rivulet’s course; 

In tiny silver orbs covering every plant, bush and blade of grass;

In every stream whose bank runs full and brown;

In every field that holds the farmer’s gift;

In every corner where the sacred drops had fallen.

No softer breath exists then that from cool moist air, 

Filling the lungs with cleansing presence, 

Flooding the soul with memories that no cause or reason can revoke,

That no human can deny or creature can resist.

After the rain had gone a golden hand laid bright

The meadows reach with tendril bands,

Piercing the clouds,

Driving the shadows from the hills,

Ending the day as all days should end, 

With the warmth of the sun moistened by the kiss of the rain.

Darkwing

(A reminder that every beautiful thing has a dark side)

The night breeds the cold, shocking the leaves

That fall upon the naked ground.

A blackest rain extends its icy touch,

Permeating to the bone, causing true regret in every being

That loves the bright warmth of the day’s renewal.

Flying on course towards the haven; 

Where fair souls are hung to whither

She floats upon the edge where no living thing wanders.

A lonely creature’s howl crosses a fallow field,

Echoing over remnant shafts of frozen wheat

Through rusting tributes to the human existence. 

Darkwing, you fly over shadows and silhouettes of this maddening dream. 

Darkwing, you run upon the air,

Thick with the resurrection of the nightmare’s vision,

Cloaked within your feathery cape,

Converging with the spirits on a flight towards forgiveness.

Your oily sheen is revealed in a streetlight’s death-white somber glow.

Empty eyes, darker than plowmen’s coffee,

Seeing the night as few have,

From a height where all transactions are revealed,

Where all illusions are betrayed.

Darkwing, you bring the night

Beneath your feathery cap of onyx. 

Though the dawn may end your mission,

Finding you hidden from the world,

Behind the molding granite walls of a dank, silent crypt,

You will rise again like Lazarus 

When the last light of a falling star reveals the day’s final deeds of man and creature,

When the heavens turn dark; 

When the morning sun’s glory is but a promise to return.  

Heart of a Jackal

(Africa, Lake Nakuru, 2003)

Strong heart that pounds within,

Measure your feelings tall.

Be it such that pain may never course its twisted way.

True heart that counts the passing time,

Rejoice in knowing that freedom was always yours.

Rejoice in seeing all the weight gathered

During troubled time, fade like mist

Before the strength and sweetness of the morning breeze. 

Strong heart that beats within,

Know that all is well,

That the springs are full of heaven’s gift

And the valley runs anew with nature’s bounty.

Finish your course, true heart, 

Heart of a jackal; 

Your cunning; 

Your lasting, 

Your thirst for the chase must never end,

This side of the great gate

Separating all creatures that have been before you.

Purest heart, run before the wind, 

For you know tomorrow has no conclusion,

Only another tomorrow,

Heart so strong, heart of a jackal.   

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