Atlantis

 

Like the wash of a tide that did wane 

Forgetting to come back

A haunting remembrance

Still lies within

Of something lost

A vague and distant voice

From the white-tempest

Of great arches

And love’s terraces

Once fair-wrapt in beatitude

Drenched of the veins

That stain the escarpments

Of a single, immortal chrysalis

Forever iridescent

Of sea-choiring wings

Where ancient sounds of hails

Still echo with the seagulls

As they remember sibylline days

Forever splintered

In monotonous, lapping waves

That would hide

The dropped memory of ourselves

Rising to ascend eternity

Only to be drowned by time

In a crystal flood of silence

Now gone to the gazing stars that wonder
The pity of such beauty that makes the breath cry 

 

The Light of Eternity

 

The ancient peace of nature

Whispers in the oak and sighs in the grasses

Writing on the wind

Intoxicated of white sun tides

Its breath beyond

The melancholy of time

Life in its simplicity and innocence

With a language of its own

Amidst fresh mornings

Of rainbow jewels

To evenings of starry infinity

In seamless, inescapable beauty

An anonymous gate

To know how tightly it is locked

Undisturbed in its solitude

That audible silence

Listened to inwardly

Away from the noise of the world

And its transient moods

Where the whole of the universe is like a single sense

That would cultivate reverence for all life

And where nothing need be done

To see things as they are in themselves

Beyond all that mortal perishing can create

As twigs and leaves fall

Carrying away thought like arks

That lead back to the wholeness of existence

Transcendent majesty where all of the universe is a subtle temple

And every leaf shines with the light of eternity

 

 

Penumbra

 

Rainy imagination in the obsession of evening

Gazes at the floor boards

Where a thousand scrubbings have deepened the grooves

Shadowed by so many dark and light passages

To a gentle penumbra

Meeting in a new unknown of contradictions

Superimposed one upon another

With persistent images of amorous memories

A Raphaelite dream of forms

Like an alchemy of lovers reaching out of the silence

From the haunting enigmas of the objects

In the absence of those who placed them

To start life again as objects of unmitigated ordinariness: 

Pieces of driftwood and oceanic sculptures

All of them now disinterested in the play of thought

And the memories like a sunset looking backward in time.

 

A Sea Without A Shore

 

From a thousand softer

Or louder sounds,

Echo-woven

Hours proceed

Like ultramarine that writes its pleasure

      On the rain

At the edge of clear oblivion

In a light as white

As paper

That passes through

The heart

Of the poignant void,

Absent

Of stagnant realities

That resemble stones

       On roads that lose themselves

In pieces of the sky

Which evaporate

In the sun,

Earth dreams

       That turn inside-out

As life breathes beyond thoughts

In the shadows

Of transcendent branches,

Like butterflies

       In signs we understand

In a transparency

      For a single eye,

Born of metamorphosis

That leads

      To a door with spreading wings

To become the dew

      On blue moss, 

No longer apart from the stars,

But amazed

At the singular end of a sea without a shore.

 

The White Fire of the Stars

 

The smooth stones 

Are soothing 

Washed by so many waves

In so many star-tides

Of dreams

The wild rose brushed

By the sun

With reddened lips of beauty

The atom swirls

Upon the trees and fields

The eternal now

Echoing of itself

In the grasses and the crystal-stars

That are the lilies

Of the star-fields in the cosmic heavens

Aflame in the heart of everything

The light within

That is the light of all

Consciousness that knows heaven now

That ecstasy that is the white fire of the stars

 

Cyclops Particle

 

Awry as a particle

In the vision of a cyclops

Immediacy

So close to nirvana

If not for a single,

Cinder thought

Perhaps a shooting star

From a realm of the invisible

Or a moment

Of pre-destination

Crossing some great distance

To this temple of an eye

A speck now a stone, or punk-tipped glass

Not seeing the red-light

As a quick glance to the left

Now reveals an oncoming truck

Where the particle for a single eye will lose all meaning

 

 

 

Eternity’s Gate

 

And we will know in the layers

Of hidden beauty

Within the tangled atom swirls

The revealing traces

Of love’s footsteps 

Hastening the heart to it’s forgotten chamber

Where the unyoked spirit

Echoes in all

Like the grassy waves 

In the wind’s whispering wonder

Murmuring over fields

Of unseen paradise

With the breath of twined flowers

In softest hues

Swaying in soft-lying honeysuckle days

That would lengthen

Against the western sky

For the remembrance lost in lingering dreams

Inscribed in a universe of painted wings

That reach for the gift of eternity’s gate: the Light within us all

 

Wild Grasses

 

Like golden-honey

In the rushes

Of her dusk-sky,

Her tenderness lay

As her fragrance

Empties the air

Of all else

But her scent;

Her comely vessel

Naked in the moonlight,

Draped only

Of her long hair

Upon her slender shoulders;

Her dark eyes blushing

Beneath the garland

Of innocence;

That passion

Silken of heaven’s hue

With the whisper of ecstasy

Unfurled in her flower,

Soft of petaled-lips

With the sweet nectar that only love can know;

That gentle ache

So deep inside the heart

That stirs like a fire

To that splendor that fills the wild grasses,

Rippling like waves.

 

 

 

Ghost Dance

 

Those who have vision

Have seen what they have seen

But sad hearts

That have not understood

Make a story that lies

Blind ones

Who would have things

With their eyes

The deaf who hear shadows

Hoping to turn back

The darkening

Where the grasses remember

The world that was

Painted of buffalo dreams

As the wind rushed

On the prairies

With the full breath of life

The sacred land

Of the invisible dead

Now filled with the presence

Of dusty spirits

Voices wanting rightness

That is no longer willing to rise

As the great circle

Dances and slowly turns like a pale ghost

In the twilight of a lonely moon

 

 

Beauty Beyond Time

 

Sun-steep’d,

The grass grows by itself,

And seedlings from blown dandelions,

Wing soft upon the air,

Taking no care,

Nor having need,

Of rest from weariness;

  

For here, nothing toils,

Like a child’s wonder in deep repose,

Without thought;

Life that fulfills in pure being,

Ripe to the perfect,

Unexpected results,

Letting all flow in the trust of awe,

Knowing everything is the mystery within;

  

As the inner spirit sings,

With the whisper of the wind,

Carrying its white, slow motion comets,

That linger like a dream,

In amber light,

For its own half-open eyes,

Knowing the stillness

Of the silence:

The Imperishable;

That only Itself can know,

Beyond words in the great emptiness,

That is forever full,

Letting everything be allowed to do what it naturally does,

So that its nature will be satisfied.

This is the beauty beyond the beauty that fades;

This is the beauty beyond time.