Sometimes I'll Wander

In the meadow

I stop and stare as sunlight

filters between clusters

of brave anonymous faces, 

whose artistry works well

 to enhance their fair-skinned

undaunted expressions.

A community of blooms, 

delicate and ardent in form – 

teeming with life in the stillnes

and vastness of the day.

Weighted With Silenced Words

Look here, see
how this dragonfly

clings tight to its
spacious world.

Weighted with

silenced words,
yet still adept at

B E I N G
the one it is. 

Far Below

A girl silently slips through the cracks

 of a fragmented foundation,

into a dark, sombre chamber,
that confines her and all she knows.

 . . . . .

Years later

she emerges

from that nebulous

cubicle, discovering

a sense of equilibrium

at the exact point

of her departure.

. . . . .

Thankful now, 

having been given

another chance,

she joyfully skips
stones across the calm

surface of a lake,

where far below
its boundless,

breathless periphery,

I’ve allowed

the words belonging

to the continuation

of her story,

to sink and take

their final rest,
bringing this poem

to its predetermined end.

Amidst Realms Of Light

Music is the language of the soul,

dance is the language of the body.

Body and soul, music and dance 

conceive an instrument of expression

through which the spirit communicates.

~ Maestro Hector Zaraspe

We Know

For yesterday

and for all tomorrows, 

we dance the best

we know.

~ Kate Seredy

Good Natured

Having just discovered you

minutes ago – please forgive me,

for already I’ve forgotten your name.

But, I remember well, your light –

explicit collaborations of colours aglow,

illuminating the impressibility of each petal.

. . . . .

I was intrigued at the ease by which

my attention abruptly shifted, 

observing the beauty of nature­,

whose centripetal force entices

the eyes to probe deep – 

its integrative core.

In This Silence

Something is written on it,

this mirror, captured hanging

with such an amicable, 

exquisite resignation.

. . . . .

Please,

take it away.

Remove it at once,

this stillness.

. . . . .

Here in this temperate air,

a stoical indifference 

h o v e r s…

privileged by the crack

in everything.

Another Moment Spent

Singled out for an instant,

this daisy in the meadow –

standing tip-toe with a dozen others,

revealing such an infinite patience,

wedged deep into the earth,

charmingly fashioning itself

into this memory.

. . . . .

In all things of nature there is something of the marvelous.

~ Aristotle

Interpretation

A Room Of Round Faces

Nobody Gives An Answer

I'm Standing By The Window Where The Light Is Strong

It Is To You I Turn

It is to you I turn. 

The table stands on tiptoe. 

Every object leaps to its place. 

The closed book rises

on its thousand pages

and my wakefulness rejoices. 

I turn to you, 

my song in the house of night, 

my shield against the quarrels. 

I turn to you, 

who unifies the upward heart. 

Your name

is the foundation of the night. 

The Accuser, 

with his thousand voices, 

stands in the place 

you are not named. 

Blessed is the name 

that holds this house 

in the firmness of mercy, 

and binds this song to the rock.

~ Leonard Cohen

Forgetting Everything, I Remember

,

The Song I Sing

Who By Solitude

I lost my way, I forgot to call on your name. 

The raw heart beat against the world, 

and the tears were for my lost victory. 

But you are here. 

You have always been here. 

The world is all forgetting, 

and the heart is a rage of directions, 

but your name unifies the heart, 

and the world is lifted into its place. 

Blessed is the one who waits

in the traveller's heart for his turning.

~ Leonard Cohen

Gathered Interpretations

How do we link life's

random puzzling coincidences, 

so as to shape a countenance

of gathered interpretations

whose lines of address

hone in on the true nature

of things initially perceived

in the rich soil of life's landscape

and its endless shifting terrain.

In Those Brief Moments

Life gives us brief moments with another…

but sometimes in those brief moments

we get memories that last a life time.

~ Mark Strand

I Stopped To Listen

I stopped to listen, but he did not come. 

I begain again with a sense of loss. 

As this sense deepened I heard him again. 

I stopped stopping and I stopped starting, 

and I allowed myself to be crushed by ignorance. 

This was a strategy, and didn't work at all. 

Much time, years were wasted in such a minor mode. 

I bargain now. I offer buttons for his love. 

I beg for mercy. Slowly he yields. 

Haltingly he moves toward his throne. 

Reluctantly the angels grant to one another permission to sing. 

In a transition so delicate it cannot be marked, 

the court is established on beams of golden symmetry, 

and once again I am a singer in the lower choirs, 

born fifty years ago to raise my voice this high, and no higher.

From The Book of Mercy ~ Leonard Cohen

And It Touched Me

POETRY

And it was at that age ... Poetry arrived

in search of me. I don't know, I don't know where

it came from, from winter or a river.

I don't know how or when,

no, they were not voices, they were not

words, nor silence,

but from a street I was summoned,

from the branches of night,

abruptly from the others,

among violent fires

or returning alone,

there I was without a face

and it touched me. 

I did not know what to say, my mouth

had no way

with names

my eyes were blind,

and something started in my soul,

fever or forgotten wings,

and I made my own way,

deciphering

that fire

and I wrote the first faint line,

faint, without substance, pure

nonsense,

pure wisdom

of someone who knows nothing,

and suddenly I saw

the heavens

unfastened

and open,

planets,

palpitating plantations,

shadow perforated,

riddled

with arrows, fire and flowers,

the winding night, the universe. 

And I, infinitesimal being,

drunk with the great starry

void,

likeness, image of

mystery,

I felt myself a pure part

of the abyss,

I wheeled with the stars,

my heart broke free on the open sky.

~ Pablo Neruda 

Ode To The Seagull

To the seagull

high above

the pinewoods

of the coast,

on the wind

the sibilant

syllable of my ode.

Sail,

bright boat,

winged banner,

in my verse,

stitch,

body of silver,

your emblem

across the shirt

of the icy firmament,

oh, aviator,

gentle

serenade of flight,

snow arrow, serene

ship in the transparent storm,

steady, you soar

while

the hoarse wind sweeps

the meadows of the sky.

After your long voyage,

feathered magnolia,

triangle borne

aloft on the air,

slowly you regain

your form,

arranging

your silvery robes, shaping

your bright treasure in an oval,

again a

white bud of flight,

a round

seed,

egg of beauty.

Another

poet

would end here

his triumphant ode.

I cannot

limit myself

to

the luxurious whiteness

of useless froth.

Forgive me,

seagull,

I am

a realist

poet,

photographer of the sky.

You eat,

and eat,

and eat,

there is nothing

you don't devour,

on the waters of the bay

you bark

like a beggar's dog,

you pursue

the last

scrap of

fish gut,

you peck

at your white sisters,

you steal

your despicable prize,

a rotting clump

of floating garbage,

decayed

tomatoes,

the discarded

rubbish of the cove.

But

in you

it is transformed

into clean wing,

white geometry,

the ecstatic line of flight.

That is why

snowy anchor,

aviator,

I celebrate you as you are:

your insatiable voraciousness,

your screech in the rain,

or at rest

a snowflake blown

from the storm,

at peace or in flight,

seagull,

I consecrate to you

my earthbound words,

my clumsy attempt at flight;

let's see whether you scatter

your birdseed in my ode.

~ Pablo Neruda

Spanish; trans. Margaret Sayers Peden

Someone Like You

Blossoming

Time Flows

Weigh in on it. 

Photograph it, even.

Read into it –

the day, before its

half-gestured thoughts

disappear forever.

Don’t even think about

procrastinating, and simply 

let the hours stretch into 

just another 24-7 interval.

THE DAY

Think about it.

In The House Of Honesty

The more I cajoled and questioned

the narratives sullen posture,

the more upset I became,

until – 

colluding forces, outrageous in their

remedial ambition, punctured the vesicles

of outworn beliefs, and in their rupture, 

my way of being in this world

was ultimately affected –

and so too, my story.

Being Here, Alone

The geography of these rooms I know so well,

like the front or the back of my hands. The trace

of their lines, converging here in this early morning light,

as the clock prepares to burst its bimmel and daylight

cascades over the window's ledge. I love this,

 the taste of being here, alone, with not

a word said, while time buries itself further and further 

into the landscape, chalk full of poetry and quietness

that blends well with the precise talk of the clock –

its hands gesturing toward a sadness of sorts, the hours 

 tick, tick, ticking by, sounding like a requiem upon my heart.

Against The Grey

The Lonely Land

Cedar and jagged fir

uplift sharp barbs

against the grey

and cloud-piled sky;

and in the bay

blown spume and windrift

and thin, bitter spray

snap

at the whirling sky;

and the pine trees

lean one way.

A wild duck calls

to her mate,

and the ragged

and passionate tones

stagger and fall,

and recover,

and stagger and fall,

on these stones -

are lost

in the lapping of water

on smooth, flat stones.

This is a beauty

of dissonance,

this resonance

of stony strand,

this smoky cry

curled over a black pine

like a broken

and wind-battered branch

when the wind

bends the tops of the pines

and curdles the sky

from the north.

This is the beauty

of strength

broken by strength

and still strong.

~ A.J.M. Smith

Existing Therein

Where Imagined Things Reside

Amongst Us

As Plentiful As Daylight

Dramatic Targets