Gravity

I suppose every child dreams of flying. I know I certainly did, and to little surprise - what better way to spend a lazy afternoon than freewheeling high above the tiresome, busy earth? Also, this is poem #150!


Gravity

For once the hills were high
as scuffed an ashen sky,
established summits swift to spurn repose
from eyries, hid in cleft,
and stony haunts, bereft
of brush and bramble, clouded from the crows,

where only eagles flew
upon a lonely skew
of eddies running, brisk, above the earth,
but now the land is worn,
the weary hummocks shorn
and shackled by the gravity of girth.

A better home for souls
who make their measured strolls
across the even alleys of the ground
could hardly be conceived.
And yet, are we not grieved
that fate has made us terra-firma bound?

Summer Muse

I find it much easier to write in the winter, when it is cold and dark and I am driven indoors. Summer is far too overpowering, both to the mind and the senses, to allow for much creative work. Still, I putter on, though I find that I do most of my summer puttering at night.


Summer Muse

In winter, words flow like the chill
that clambers at the window sill
and looks to undermine the hand
against the roaring grill,

and inspiration, ever rife,
is bedded, as a tender wife;
the moments make their own demand
upon a dormant life.

But in the summer, what a spell
of arid thirst. An empty well
and desiccate expanse of sand
suppresses, in a swell

of heat and sun and humid light,
such words the hand would hope to write,
and so I wait, alone, unmanned,
my muse upon the night.

The Guide

It is an inhuman, almost impossible, task to love that which is not immediately before us. Fortunately, we are given intermediate, imperfect creations, so that they may guide us to a love which has, as its object, the most perfect lover of all.


The Guide

What are the things we know?
The wind-bedraggled leaves;
the apples as they grow;
the water off the eaves;

a miniscule sphere
to complement the mind.
Whatever else is here,
whatever else we find,

is only but a shade
of silhouettes unseen,
and ever we invade,
and ever fall between

the outset and the end.
The only fecund guide
is fathomed in a friend,
a lover, and a bride,

in charity to wed
the mortal and divine,
to stitch a constant thread
in visible design,

that weaker hearts may sew
the happiness they yearn,
impossible to know,
but possible to learn.

Dog Days

This warm spell seems to have broken at last. There was a week or two where no supply of ice water and fans and cold showers could relieve the heat. Even now, the occasionally torrid day pokes its head between the rain clouds. I'll be so very glad when Autumn has truly begun.


Dog Days

What good an open window?
The sun ignites a blaze,
and all the world akimbo,
a muddlement of haze

and heat, a melting mirror
in which the earth is held
and sufferance is clearer,
the sooner we are quelled,

and everyone is waiting
for Autumn to arise,
but, ever unabating,
the sun besets the skies.