Even So
The street is steady and the lights are fixed
their glow projects between the yellow lines
the rain dissolves within a fragile mist
And I am here pretending to be fine
Category: Poetry
Encounters with the Light
I wait
For what?
For something that could come
or not
for inspiration that I’ve sought
in secret places of the soul
and mind, but recently forgot
to look for fleeting things,
to see the fragment in the whole
Begin Again
So I awake to fail again –
to think of futile goals I’ve made,
of time I did not mean to spend,
of moments I did not see fade,
of wounds to which I did not tend,
of paths where I should not have strayed,
of strangers who were would-be friends,
of empathy by self delayed,
of words unwritten, yet to send,
of love not given, plans mislaid
This Small Now
Only for this moment –
Can I love the face in front of me?
Only for a single breath –
can this be all I see:
these hopeful eyes,
this broken glance,
this thin disguise,
this fleeting chance
to be inside the given time,
to love a life that is not mine
and find
a beauty in
the preciousness of this –
existence, person, moment, gift,
the sacredness of what-now-is
An Ode to Crooked Lines
Something in me stirs
when I see sidewalk cracks –
those crooked lines
dividing surfaces so smooth
in twos or threes or fours
like faded stained glass underfoot –
the clefts all sprouting up with grass
and bending weeds
and crinkling leaves
and things that will not last
Lasting Words
Fear is a feeling you wish
you did not have to feel
your suffering
is a hard fact
(you suffered –
you cannot change that)
You wish you could change
the “what was” and erase
the hopelessness, worthlessness
of that dark place;
wish that your story could somehow be shaped
with an alternate slant
Hidden Signs
In seeking always for a concrete sign,
you watch the sky expectantly – with stars,
prophetic moons and meteors in mind.
You wait for words descending from afar
to tell you where to go and at what hour
you should begin. But night does not reveal
divine intent. The clouds obscure its power
and when the stars appear they all are sealed.
They ought to tell you: Look towards the earth,
where little stones and shrivelled petals lie,
where life in its perpetual small birth
lives simply and is not afraid to die.
Be not in search of grandeur or in haste
to know the whole. But be content with grace
(The giver never has a thought of waste)
The Mother’s Prayer
On days, on days like these I gaze
Upon the face where only beauty dwells
I cannot tell
Of darkness, there is only light
Inside these eyes and in my own
My heart will break, my heart will break
And would that you would never be alone
Now and at the hour when you will wake
And see the world the way I see
For love of you
Your eyes and all the truth they speak to mine
The rippled blue reflection of
a thought divine
My heart will break, my heart will break
And love like this so pure it can erase
The sorrow so long carried in this soul
And give a glimpse of nameless, boundless joy
For now we see in part but then
For love of you
We will see face to face
As I now gaze
Upon the eyes that shine up back to mine
Broken Parts
I want to see the world in broken parts:
These pieces only seem a wholeness when
a mind (which fears the mystical) is bent
on neat abstractions. Oh, to have a heart
that loves the littleness instead! A hand
to hold the pieces – pure as incomplete;
to see in brokenness an unknown plan,
in fragmentation joy and not defeat;
a peace to love small things in idleness
without the lusting drive to seize, convert
and mould mysterious things to my own shape;
to be content with glimpses, and to rest
in half-veiled truths – though unexplained, not less
Hushed Suffering
The sirens all are silent from up here
and suffering is hushed, though present still.
She searches for that strange elusive place
where rest can greet unrest and peace can fill
the parched and empty spaces of the soul,
and slow the frenzied pulsing of her thoughts
(the mind can have a heartbeat of its own –
in overstraining anxiously, will clot).