So through the ages
Poets ask
What is love in the end?
The wits and sages
Called to task
But none can comprehend
The mystery
That is this word
Which makes the world spin round
A history
Of love unheard
And seeking what’s not found
So though the years
The poets sigh
For love and love alone
But only tears
In tears we cry
Can love at last be
Shown
He wishes he could spare her tears today.
But there is nothing, nobody who can;
For tears will out – they’ll always find a way,
To issue when they will, despite of plan
That she might have of putting on brave face.
He loves her with an old man father’s love,
Full wishing he her sorrows could erase,
But knowing what her tears are symptoms of
He does not try to do what can’t be done.
No comforting with words that are but lies,
No hopes that have no hope, no stories spun,
Just loving silence all the while she cries.
But if a bridge from his love could appear
She could walk to the moon and back from here
Half-frozen mud, cold bracing air
A wind that makes my neck aware
That leaves torn from the tree will die
These poor gray strays who tumble by
And like the ghostly light I seek
The morn recedes behind the line
Only of chance to risk a peek
At drifting lives
Like yours
And mine
(“Aware” – 11-19-2014)
tangled fall and wind aslant
should is shouldn’t, can is can’t
up and moving, must away
find the heart, forget the day
clouds that beckon from the skies
wind that laughs, and ground that cries
soul that sorrow knows, and grows
simple devastation
mangled wall of former grief
love is long, but life is brief
up and moving, in the fields
harvesting the flow life yields
though the path be wet and cold
though the back grow weak and old
conquered fears, and heart that hears
still in
exploration
The ugliness of life, it waits
Around the corner, in the dark;
For all we might procrastinate,
The ugliness of life will leave it’s mark.
For long with patience will it seek
The moments we are down, or weak,
And scour down the shores and docks,
The country roads, or city blocks,
Or happy pathways in the mist
That we might hap to walk upon.
The ugliness of life, it sits
And from its hiding place, it won’t be drawn.
Until the moment it might choose
To show itself, to our regret:
When all we seem to have, we lose,
And our few certainties, upset.
Yet still we travel, as we must,
Our meagre stock of hope and pride,
With ugliness around, we trust
It’s sister, loveliness, is just outside…
The ugliness of life is there,
Around the corner, every day;
In all we seek, for all we dare,
The ugliness of life won’t
Go away
The hallowing of hollowing,
A process I know well:
I filled myself with nothingness,
And grew too proud to tell –
I thought my sorrows justified
The moments that I stole;
But then, the truth intruded on
What was left of my soul —
I know the emptiness I’ve lived,
I feel the keening lack –
But now, my eyes have seen the truth:
There is no going
Back
Boys lose much
The day they first learn
Not to cry
When I was still a hopeward boy,
I’d often dream of flight
Out past the clouds, into the stars,
And everlasting night.
I dreamed of beauty pure and cold,
And music in the spheres,
But destined I was not to be
Among the rocketeers.
The sun now bothers tired eyes,
The night I hold at bay;
The cycles of the earth go by,
I miss them, either way.
For now, I float in metaphors,
And live in seminars —
But cannot, even in my dreams,
Get back into
The stars
Along the Cliffs of Dolor
I saw, through mists of rue,
A figure circumpolar
That always stayed in view.
A lurking constellation
That hung both day and night —
Bright sorrow’s steady station:
It’s never out
Of sight
