MOMENTS

Moments,
Like snowflakes
Enclosed in the hand,
Drift
Across my mind . . .

BREATH OF HEAVEN

How gently we are born 
Upon the wind of change,
That mighty storm
Reaching us as barely a whisper,
How softly we are carried
From moment to moment
With scarcely a hair to rearrange.

AT LAST

Only since man, has there been a better plan,
As we pushed through darkness, towards the sun,
The flowering of that timeless seed,
At last, at last, has just begun.

THE DREAMER

We import
The world of open eyes
Into our dreams,
And lend the dreamer
A definition
He does not own.

GOOD FORM

Your vision of me
Is my single covering,
And mine, of thee,
Thy soul's only modesty.

HATCHING

Can we piece together again

Our confinement,

From the laughing fragments

Of its shattering?

STRIP JOINT

Would you strip away

All that is warm with hope,

Mysterious,

Full of promise,

With the scalpel of your curiosity,

Pare me to skeletal bone,

Enchained forever by your sight,

Your eyes,

Your knowing,

A camera, to steal another soul,

A cage, repealing flight,

A pot, in which to miniaturise,

Is that who you would have me be,

A confirmation of mortality?

WHATNOT

A potter,
While glazing
The outside
Of his pot,
Is amazingly
Glazing
The inside
Of what's not.

HIGH TIME

A tide is rising high within,
Of a vast, reflective sea,
That hides with love,
Yet fast begins
To uncover eternity.

OLD WINE

I remember knowing

Warmth & desire,

Glowing embers

Of long distant fire,

To share a pillow,

Limbs entwined,

A new flavour

For an ancient wine,

As passion stirs

From banishment,

Wearing

Its ill-fitting coat

Of chastity,

Its wild obsession,

Shunned,

Its myopic vision,

Unwelcome,

Its choicest words

Best left unsaid,

Still unspoken

Inside the head,

Hoisted,

In their own

Eternal wondering,

Perhaps discretion

Is the better friend,

Without beginning,

Or pointless end.

ECLIPSE

Chased

By the shadow of a cloud,

A hair's breadth

From eclipse

By solid darkness,

Liquid gold,

Sweeps across

The vast field

Of time.

Her brush,

Eternity's horizon,

Her medium,

Light,

Framed,

Only

By this moment,

Love's workings

Unfold.

RUN OF THE MILL

Sails turning,

Wheels churning,
The mill complains,

Unaware
That its real yearning

Still remains,
To feel the will

Of water and air.

DUCKS & DRAKES

Chosen with care,

A rounded flatness,

Befit to spin,

These stones,

These words.

Set in motion,

Loosed,

To a brief,

Rhythmic flight,

A skip, a skid, a skim,

Bouncing out

From the shore,

Yet all too fast,

Only the footprints linger on,

An arrow-head

Of expanding rings,

Point toward the last,

Marking the place,

The moment of sinking,

As words that play

Upon our thinking,

Can only trip

Across the skin,

Until, all spent,

They drop within,

Beneath the superficial layer,

Heading down,

To bed of prayer.

MIRACLE

As a shell upon the ear
Close pressed will bring the sea,
Within my heart, so faint yet clear,
Is whispering to me
A voice in kind to silence near,
A zephyr stirring constantly,
As soft as only I may hear
Yet recognise with certainty.

Lucid, though no word be told,
Insistent as a drum,
The burden of its message holds
A distant, sacred sum,
Another region of my soul
Is calling me to home,
For it be one, yet not the whole
Of all it may become.

BEHOLD

Where lies the beauty of a rose,

If not arising up in you?

And where the course a river flows

Beyond that source to know it true?

Then nature's art is none at all

Save we distill the greater part,

As music charms no vacant hall,

Thus, love fills an absent heart.

THE POINT

Tomorrow tries
To stare at me
With its unseeing eyes,
I am a threat still,
A predator
To be fooled yet again
By the blind roundels
Worn on its wings.
Yet, there it is,

Tomorrow,
Impaled,

By the fine points
Of the conditions it made,
The ludicrous dreams
It carried in its heart,
Pinned to the plump,
Dusty velvet
In a collector's drawer.
Those lifeless wings
Will fly no more,
Their promise

Broken yesterday.

BLASPHEMY

If we could glimpse that secret,

Then conjour up a name,

Approaching a likeness

To destiny's beam,

Before the prism splits apart,

That sole spring of diversity,

The unwritten prelude

To all liberty,

To each luxurious moment

Of fanciful denial,

Every conceit of the human heart,

Would we dare speak

That word of words,

Set amongst

All those we share,

And pretend our understanding?

MATRYOSHKA

Profound yet simple
Fractal cell,
Within, without
Each nesting shell,
I am one,
And one the same,
But answer to
Another name,
And wearing but
The thinnest veil,
Identity,
Disguised by scale,
I exist
As large or small,
As heart or home,
Throughout them all.

NONE OTHER

There is none other,
Sister, Brother,
Watching now
From out those eyes,
There is none other,
Father, Mother,
All of life
Within you lies,

And none who question
Find that name
In liberty
So unprescribed,
Yet blesséd are
To ask the same
In love
So vast and undenied,

There is none other,
Sister, Brother,
Watching now
From out those eyes,
There is none other,
Father, Mother,
All of life
Within you lies.

LOVE STONE

Tides never cease to come and go
Or draw back with a sigh,
Nor stays the peace,
My spirits flow
From sinking low
To rising high.
My heart
As if a pebble thrown
Caught fast upon that sloping shore,
First rolling up,
Then tumbling down,
Polished,
Till a stone no more -
By waves that move too deep inside
To ever understand,
But prove me brave to never hide -
Just one of countless grains of sand.