The sunlight on the garden
Hardens and grows cold,
We cannot cage the minute
Within its nets of gold;
When all is told
We cannot beg for pardon.
Our freedom as free lances
Advances towards its end;
The earth compels, upon it
......
Veiling, barely, his dread
Beauty and its blaze,
An angel sets warm bread
and cool milk at my place.
His eyelids make the sign
Of prayer; I lower mine,
Words interleaving vision:
--Calm, calm, be ever calm!
Feel the whole weight a palm
Bears upright in profusion.
......
About the size of an old-style dollar bill,
American or Canadian,
mostly the same whites, gray greens, and steel grays
-this little painting (a sketch for a larger one?)
has never earned any money in its life.
Useless and free., it has spent seventy years
as a minor family relic handed along collaterally to owners
who looked at it sometimes, or didn't bother to.
It must be Nova Scotia; only there
......
When I was a windy boy and a bit
And the black spit of the chapel fold,
(Sighed the old ram rod, dying of women),
I tiptoed shy in the gooseberry wood,
The rude owl cried like a tell-tale tit,
I skipped in a blush as the big girls rolled
Nine-pin down on donkey's common,
And on seesaw sunday nights I wooed
Whoever I would with my wicked eyes,
The whole of the moon I could love and leave
......
Earth has not anything to show more fair:
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty:
This City now doth, like a garment, wear
The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,
Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie
Open unto the fields, and to the sky;
All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.
Never did sun more beautifully steep
In his first splendour, valley, rock, or hill;
......
PINK SCALLOP SHELL
Along my road to Freedom stood
showy blue-green sentinels with
white cloud whiffs representing Sky
starling decorated bushes joined
Party of the Road to nowhere
this was where Freedom
danced naked, her shadowed body
awaiting with roasted chestnuts
......
RETURN MY TEARS
The darkened sky stole my tears
soprano crystalline they quickly disappeared
Lucy my name still neat to tweet, though
inner ocean could no longer drip sighs sweet
desert dry goals, set anew, a different stew
He no longer beheld teary dampened hues
charcoal cloud-lips licked tear salt refined
......
CRIMSON SKY
A crimson Sky breaks the distant shore
stargates opened veils upon veils
portals portending lyrical lemon drops
or so it seemed
since senses were lost
in open labyrinth lots
angels poured purple pearls
......
Hues of pink and purple tuck the day,
Now fading into gray—
A fragile husk, an empty shell,
Now quiet in the dusk.
Soft, wispy clouds of fluff drift low and slow,
Their curves kissed by a golden glow.
They blush and hush, then pale with grace,
As dusk begins to take their place.
They cradle your silent ache,
The weight you never dared to wake.
......
DIMASH THE SHEPHERD
(Story of One Sky Conclusion)
I am
Shepherd
Cloaking myself
In God’s soft simplicity
My tasks complete
Songs sung
Light shone
......