Verses in Various Spirits

Part 5 of 8

1001.

They walked with grace, in skirts that brushed the grass,
And heels that struck the earth like tapping joy—
As if the world itself had grown aware
Of every step they took, each breeze they stirred.
At times, the hem would lift, and bare a glimpse
Of silken light upon a moving limb—
So swiftly shown, so quickly lost again—
It thrilled the heart with wonder at the world.

The bugs would swarm and bite with foolish haste,
Yet even that became a kind of charm:
A hand would brush the neck, and we would see
A gleam of white, a sign that life was near—
That we were young, and flesh was full of song,
And time was just a dance beneath the trees.

When evening came, and shadows climbed the trunks,
They leaned on us and whispered lovely things—
Untrue, perhaps, yet made of sweeter thread
Than all the truths that followed in their wake.

1002.

I love you, and I wish the world to know—
You who have wandered far from praise or gold,
O disinherited, O jeered and scorned,
Whom fickle crowds dismiss with idle names,
And call “the failed” with laughter on their lips.

But in this hour I rise and cast my lot,
To join the fray, to leap into the charge,
To break a lance, or two—or be struck down—
For such a life is worth the risk of pain.

Desire now flames like sunrise in my chest;
My rivals stand before me, bold and proud,
And though I do not know my name in full,
Nor grasp the weight or rules of this great game,

And though I may be far too small to stand
Among the brave, whose ragged honor shines,
I still step forth to spend what youth I have—
To pour these twenty years into the dust.

I think of you, the dearly brave and bruised,
With whom I might yet share a crust tonight—
So save a chair, a word, a flame of cheer
To warm the ones who walk the twilight road.

From far, I watch and wonder at your strength;
I weigh my courage on the scale you set—
The sorrows you have borne, and borne with grace,
Reveal to me the measure of the soul.

Had mockery alone the power to sway,
I might have turned and taken up the path
That leads me gently home, to softer lands—
But no, the fight is sweet, the dust is clean.

For I have seen your way, and it is good;
Your fate does not repel nor fill with dread,
But glows with honest hunger for the truth—
A fate I find more radiant than ease.

I know the feasts of Philistines are rich,
Their music loud, their cups forever full—
Yet I would choose the broken bread you share,
The silent hope that lives inside your dreams.

And if I fall, as all the brave must fall,
Then let me land among your outstretched arms—
And sit beside you in that ash-blown field
Where loss becomes a kind of victory.

To you, the mocked, the shrugged aside, the missed,
The ragged swarm of almosts and not-quites,
The haunted ones who walk without applause,
Yet speak to time in voices few can hear—

To you, pursued by phantoms of the great,
The ghost called Perfect driving you to hush,
Until you failed to please that silent judge,
And pleasing none, still held your head up high—

To you who bore within your secret hearts
Such visions as the world could never hold;
To you, the bards whose lines remain unsung,
Unwritten still, yet pulsing in the dark.

To you whose labors crumbled in your hands,
Whose sketches soared too high to find a frame,
Whose compositions died for want of form,
Yet filled the silence with a sacred ache—

To you who faced the light and flinched, then wept;
To you who dared to feel too much and failed
To carve the perfect statue of your thought—
You are the treasures buried in our time.

To you who, fearing harm, still stayed your hand—
Who could not draw, or paint, or sing, or speak
The subtleties that tore your soul apart,
And so you left them gleaming and untouched—

To you, whose finest works were left within,
O grand, unrealized, and glowing minds,
You chosen ones, you strange and flaming wrecks,
You holy fools who danced on burning roads—

To you who laugh beneath the weight of scorn,
Who wear your rags like robes of royalty,
Who wave your madness like a battle flag
And hope a stranger’s eye might glance your way—

You jesters, prophets, beggars, fools, and saints,
You Don Quixotes riding broken dreams,
Still chasing after wind with blazing joy—
You are the stars that flicker through our dusk.

For Dulcinea rides in every heart
That ever sought to love beyond its reach,
And you, the errant knights of aching craft,
Were only kept from glory by pure chance.

And I, your brother in this quiet cause,
A dreamer too, a vagrant of the mind,
May share your bread and madness ere the night—
And so I make this vow before the day:

These lines, the first that I have dared to write,
I send to you, O vanguard of the lost,
My noble kin, my comrades in the dust—
You shock troops of Bohemia, my friends.

1003.

It serves me little, now, to sit and count
The days beside this hearth, among the stones,
With mountains brooding, and my name reduced
To edicts passed in murmurs none recall.
The folk I rule grow fat with ease and sleep;
They do not know the fire that shapes my soul.

I cannot rest from motion. Life still sings
Its brimming wine, and I will drink it full.
I’ve lived in joy, and I have borne my wounds,
With comrades at my side or wandering lone,
When storms like ghosts crept low across the sea.

I am a name, but more than what I’ve done—
I am a hunger moving ever on,
A spirit vast, that gathers as it goes.
Much have I seen: tall cities, tempered laws,
The wit of foreign tongues, the clash of kings,
And in their courts I stood, not least among them.
I’ve tasted triumph on the plains of Troy
And heard the music forged by war and time.

All I have known now lives within my flesh;
I am a part of all that I have met.
And yet the world extends beyond my reach,
An arch of promise where the light still falls—
That distant land, still glinting in my thoughts,
Whose edge retreats forever as I move.

How poor the life that halts before it ends!
To rust unseen, to let the fire go out—
As though to breathe alone were all we crave!
No, life on life would never be enough
To sate the soul that yearns for what might be.

What hours remain, I welcome as a gift,
Each moment drawn from silence and the dark,
A spark that leaps, that asks to be made more,
To blaze with one last joy before the dusk.
Shall I, for comfort, hoard away the sun?
This restless heart would shame me if I did.

This is my son, Telemachus, my pride—
To him I yield the island and the crown.
He walks the patient road I cannot tread,
A quiet strength that mends and wisely leads
With temperate hand and kind observant eyes.
Most gentle is he, faithful to his hearth,
Devout in soul, and fit for steady days.
He serves the gods with grace—I serve the sea.

And see, the port lies open still for us,
The sails are swelling faintly with the breeze.
My friends, who once stood firm through sun and storm,
Who laughed at thunder, drank the wind like wine—
We are grown old, but not too old to strive.

For even now, a deed of worth may rise
Before we meet the calm of closing night.
The stars come out to lead us, and the tide
Still moans with voices calling from beyond.
Come, let us go! The hour is not yet done.

Push off, and let the breakers sing again
Beneath the oars. My purpose still holds true:
To pass beyond the sunset and the baths
Where all the western stars descend and burn.
It may be that the deeps will take us down;
It may be that we find the Blessed Isles,
And greet Achilles as we once did dream.

Though much is lost, the core of us remains.
We are not now that strength of ancient days,
That shook the earth and made the heavens bend—
But we are what we are: brave hearts that burn
With one same fire, though tempered now by time—
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

1004.

Who walks there, bright beneath the sky, so marked
By shackles on his wrists and lifted brows?
What has he done to earn such fierce dismay—
That cries pursue him down the crowded street,
And hands are raised in outrage at his name?

Why does he wear a gaze so filled with light,
As though he bore a burden not of shame,
But revelation none around him see?
They lead him off not for some common sin—
But for the untamed colour of his hair.

So rare a flame! So radiant and bold!
A shade the old would once have feared and scorned,
For daring not to bow before the mold.
Once, they would hang a man for being free—
For bearing hues that heaven gave in joy.

And even now, they wince to see him stand
With locks so wild, so brilliant in the sun—
That no disguise, no dye, could ever mute
The spark within, the essence of his soul.
They stripped his cap to show the world the truth:
That difference still draws the law’s cold hand.

Now work awaits him—coarse and ceaseless toil—
The treadwheel turns, the stones are split in heat,
And time will press like weight upon his back.
But in his heart he bears no curse or grief,
Except, perhaps, for those who will not see.

For what is shame to one who knows the sky?
What chains can still the music in his blood?
He sings in silence as the hours pass,
And greets each morning not with dread, but thought:
Why should the world so fear a little fire?

The colour of his hair—his flame, his gift—
Was never cause for hatred but for praise.
The soul that shines through difference is divine,
And dares, in joy, to challenge what is gray.

So let them march him where the hard stones lie—
He walks in brightness none can take away.

1005.

No bonds remain to hold or weigh me down;
All cords are loosed, all fetters gently fall.
I asked the heavens once to set me free—
They heard, and I give thanks with open hands.

The cup I drank was sweet, and bitter too;
It lies now empty, harmless in the dust.
My soul, once storm-tossed, rests at last in peace—
It asks for nothing more than this still breath.

I loved you deeply once, with all my fire—
I do not love you now. Reflect on that.
If once I stumbled, it was not through shame,
But from the fear of naming what was true.

Let all the years of silence, doubt, and ache
Be cast into the well of what has passed;
Let memory hold them gently, then let go,
And let the heart begin again to breathe.

You wounded me—yes, more than you could know—
And struck with fury where no guard was raised.
Yet not one word of blame shall leave my lips;
I will not curse the hand that shaped my path.

Strange how the ones who harm us most are sent
With faces calm, and eyes that do not flinch.
Your role was not of tyrant, though it seemed—
You bore the sword, but it was not your will.

It was not power that brought me to my knees,
Nor force that broke the proudness of my soul.
It was the will of something more than both—
The silent hand that guides through loss and light.

So be it. Blessed be the voice that called.
The play is done, the mask removed at last.
And now I greet myself in full once more—
Not with regret, but wonder at the change.

The sceptre’s gone, the sword lies in the dust,
And still, the air around me seems to sing.
I once built worlds from you—now those are gone,
And in their place, a vastness rich with thought.

This solitude is not a kind of death,
But something like the breath of early dawn.
I wish you peace, and joy, and quiet days,
And if you read this someday far from now,

Know that I send no shadow with this voice—
Only a kindness drawn from deeper springs,
A parting gift, unsullied by regret,
A final love that asks for nothing more.

1006.

We climbed the breezy ridges, full of sun,
And wandered down the quiet, golden glens—
Yet still we dared not chase the hare or deer,
For laughter stirred beneath the bending ferns,
And whispers trailed where no one could be seen.

They walk together, those whom none may bind—
The small, bright folk with garments green and red,
A feather from the owl fixed in each cap,
As if to mark them guardians of the dusk.

Down where the surf breaks white on ragged stones,
Some make their homes from sea-foam and from shells,
And feast, by moonlight, on the salted spray,
Their joy as brimming as the tide itself.
Others keep watch among the reeds and mist
Where dark lakes sleep beneath the mountain’s eye;
The frogs their faithful sentries croak through night,
While stars drift silently across the deep.

Upon the hill the King still holds his court,
Though age has touched his brow and dimmed his gaze.
At times he crosses on a bridge of mist—
A solemn white that fades with every step—
And walks from Slieveleague’s height to Rosses’ shore,
Or soars in song beneath the star-hung vault,
To dine with her who rules the northern lights,
Where auroras dance in robes of frozen fire.

They carried Bridget once beyond the veil,
And kept her in their joy for seven years;
She wandered back at dawn between two days,
But found the world she knew had passed away.
They laid her deep beneath the lake’s still face,
On flag-leaf bedding, lulled by quiet songs,
To wait in dreams the time of waking light.

And on the slopes where moss is sweet and thick,
They’ve planted thorn trees, crooked, strange, and wise,
And warned with silence: none shall pluck them up.
For he who dares disturb their sacred roots
Shall find a sharper thorn beside his sleep.

The world is full of those we do not see—
And full of things we feel but cannot name.
They walk beside us lightly, step by step,
Where breezes turn the grasses with no sound.
So if you climb the mountain, go with care,
And if you pass the glen, then pass with joy—
For life is deep, and wider than we dream,
And not all light comes from the sun alone.

They troop together, friends of mist and moon,
In green and red, with feathers at their crowns—
And every dawn, and every dusk, they come,
Not feared, but wondered at—and loved in thought.

1007.

The wind is fair, and all the sails are set—
She skims the sea, not cutting through its face,
But rising like a seabird on the breeze,
My vessel, swift and proud—the brigantine.
They call her Dreadless, not for empty boast,
But for the daring written on her wake.
The world has learned her name from shore to shore—
Wherever tides touch land, they speak of her.

The moon lays down her silver on the waves,
The rigging hums, the night wind sighs through ropes.
The sea, in gentle rolls of blue and light,
Seems like a breath half-held beneath the stars.
And I, upon the stern, stand with my crew,
And sing beneath the heavens, bright and full,
As continents drift past in dreamlike scale—
Here lies proud Europe, there ascends the East.

Sail on, my joy, my wild and fearless one!
No gale nor calm shall sway thee from thy course,
No foe shall shake the purpose of thy keel.
We’ve danced through fleets and left our laughter there,
With twenty banners claimed from roaring decks—
And underneath my feet, the trophies lie,
Bright emblems of a hundred nations’ pride.
My joy, my wealth, is this, my living ship;
My god is liberty and wind my law;
My home, my fate, the everlasting sea.

Why quarrel kings for borders drawn in dust,
When I possess what none can bind or cage—
The shifting kingdoms under open skies,
Where no decree but nature’s word holds sway?
No shore exists that has not learned my reach,
No flag flies proud that has not felt my hand—
Not as a tyrant, but a force of life
That laughs where laws would only cage the soul.
My joy, my wealth, is this, my living ship;
My god is liberty and wind my law;
My home, my fate, the everlasting sea.

And when a ship appears and sees our light,
She veers with haste—for all the waves have taught
That we are monarchs of the bounding main,
Not feared in wrath, but envied for our mirth.
We share alike the bounty we attain—
For what is gold but sunlight held too long?
I seek no crown but beauty’s fleeting glance,
No prize but what the present moment gives.
My joy, my wealth, is this, my living ship;
My god is liberty and wind my law;
My home, my fate, the everlasting sea.

They say I’m doomed to die. Perhaps I am—
But life was never mine to clutch or cage.
And should I fall, I’ll fall with sails still proud,
A stranger to the chains I once defied.
I tossed my fate into the hands of stars
The day I fled the weight of tyranny,
And found in open air my rightful path.
So let them come—I’ll meet them with a laugh.
My joy, my wealth, is this, my living ship;
My god is liberty and wind my law;
My home, my fate, the everlasting sea.

My music is the North Wind in full cry,
The crash of cables and the surf’s deep moan,
The rumble of a distant ocean storm,
The cannon’s voice, the tempest’s lullaby.
And in such noise, I rest my soul with ease,
Cradled like thought upon the rocking deep.
The stars look down and whisper not of death,
But of the joy that comes when fear has fled.
My joy, my wealth, is this, my living ship;
My god is liberty and wind my law;
My home, my fate, the everlasting sea.

1008.

The pale light touched the rim of winter sky,
And in that hush before the full day came,
Young Polly stirred, her dreaming eyes now wide—
For joy had wakened her before the sun.

She leapt from bed with bare and eager feet,
And not a thought of cold or morning chill
Could slow her dash across the quiet floor,
Though frost was nipping softly at her toes.

She reached the door, and paused with sudden breath—
There hung the stocking, long and sagging low,
Its weight a promise wrapped in colored yarn.
She tugged it down, and laughter filled the room.

Back to her little hearth she danced with glee,
The world aglow within her shining eyes,
For from that cloth of dreams emerged a doll—
Her face all calm, her dress of velvet green.

Then came a nut, its shell of golden sheen,
And hidden in its heart, a thimble bright,
With scissors made for hands that soon would sew
And shape the world with careful, loving skill.

She found a book—its pages full of trees,
And children lost and found beneath their boughs,
And in her hands, the woods grew real and strange,
Their sorrow wrapped in beauty’s quiet fold.

The mittens next—so red they matched her hood—
She pressed them to her cheeks and felt the fire
Of woolen love that hands unknown had made.
Then came a jump-rope, white and finely spun,

With handles smooth as bone and coiled with care.
And though her stocking seemed too small for more,
She reached the heel and found a ball of thread—
A rainbow coiled in yarn that seemed to hum.

Then down within the foot, the sweets appeared—
Wrapped candies, shining like the evening star,
And in the toe, a tiny silver ring,
So round and bright it seemed to hold a wish.

A packet, last, of mignonette in seed—
She held it close and dreamed of warmer days,
Of garden beds, and bees, and sudden bloom,
Of springtime born from soil and patient hands.

And there she sat as sunlight touched the floor,
The dawn around her gently opening wide—
With dolly in her arms, and joy within,
And all the world a quiet song of light.

She ate, and laughed, and looked at all she had,
A child complete, a soul untouched by fear,
Her heart still full of trust in simple things—
The kind of joy that grown hearts yearn to keep.

1009.

O joyful nights, unbridled, wide, and wild,
How rich they’d be if only spent with you!
Not wild for storm, nor wild for winds that scream—
But wild with peace, and passion held in light,
A boundless stillness filled with whispered flame.

What use is wind to one whose voyage ends?
What need for charts or compass once at home?
The soul that finds its port forgets the sea,
And lays aside the sextant and the stars.

To row through Eden is no task at all
When every stroke is music, every wave
A cradle rocking breath to breath with joy.
O might I cast my anchor here tonight,
And find, in you, my harbor and my rest.

1010.

Come walk with me to Craigie Hill, my love—
The morning calls us with its golden breath.
The gorse is bright upon the windswept slopes,
And every turn reveals a fairer view.
The lark ascends and trills above the glen,
Its song a thread that pulls us toward the light,
As though the sky itself had learned to sing,
And bids us share the beauty of the day.

Why linger in the town with all its show?
The clamor there has nothing true to give.
It knows not peace, nor wonder, nor the grace
That blossoms from a hillside after rain.
Even the smallest bloom along the path,
Half-hidden in the grass, can stir the soul
With more delight than gilded halls bestow,
If only one’s own heart is open wide.

Let’s climb together where the breezes blow,
And from the crest behold the world below—
The trees, the meadows, wrapped in summer’s green,
And far-off clouds that drift with no regret.
Or by the well that dances through the ferns,
We’ll wander, hand in hand, where wildflowers grow,
Their petals bright with dew, their silence full
Of secrets known to earth and sky alone.

That hill remains the keeper of my heart—
For on its slope I first beheld your face,
And something deep within me, still and shy,
Awoke and knew it never could forget.
So come again, and let us walk once more
Through nature’s quiet gift of joy and time.
There, in the hush between the rocks and wind,
I’ll love you as I did when first we met.

1011.

The summer’s blaze beats down upon the shore,
Where waves rise up with bright and playful force
To meet the sun’s embrace, not with a rage,
But with the riot of a bold delight.
Yet in the hush beneath the mangrove shade,
You glide in peace, O river soft and clear,
And where the moss lies speckled bright with blooms,
Your sleeping pools reflect the morning light.

Within your bends the cotton-branches lean,
The mighty trunks of mahogany stand still,
And in the grottos cool with dappled green,
You laugh in ripples, murmuring to the palms
Whose feathery crowns are mirrored in your face.
No pageant of the world, no pomp of kings,
Could match the grace of this secluded world,
Where every ray is tempered by the leaves,
And light falls gently, wearing nature’s green.

Here all is calm, yet never truly still—
The flowing song of waters, rising birds,
The whispered growth of fern and canopy,
The branches swaying with the southern breeze,
All pulse together in a living hymn.
The garlands dangling from your boughs rejoice,
As if to crown you with their fragrant praise.
The lotus leans with dewy-silvered bloom,
The mango drops its treasures at your edge,
And papaws tremble softly toward your touch.

Parrots flash bright through poplars overhead,
Their shrill delight a joy to every ear.
The linnet trills its golden-threaded tune
While woodpeckers tap out their rustic song.
Sometimes the water flares in sudden gleam,
Disturbed by nymphs who laugh among your depths,
And you, amused, enfold them in your arms,
And drink their kisses with a quiet glee.

At dusk, the sun slips down behind the palms,
And silence gathers where the shadows stretch.
The birds send out their parting notes of praise,
And wind and leaf let go their final sighs.
The moon, now rising, opens up the sky—
A silver hush enfolds your dreaming shore,
And all is rapt in slumber’s sweet embrace.

You sleep beneath the quiet eyes of stars,
Unshaken by the leaping of the fish,
Untouched by oars, unbothered by the songs
Of curassows or crickets in the reeds.
The fireflies dust the air with golden sparks
As sugarcane and cotton stalks lean in,
And every petal breathes a fragrant wish.

From hammocks swinging by the cabin door
A girl’s soft lullaby drifts through the dark,
A samba tune of tenderness and light
That sings of love, and sings again with joy.
And lo! a harp erupts upon the breeze,
Its music bright with promise and delight—
A malagueña, born of fire and soul,
To rouse the hearts and summon dancing feet.

Then from the nearby villages they come—
A cheerful crowd that fills the moonlit woods,
With laughter, clapping, song, and spinning steps.
The river stirs from sleep and seems to smile,
Enchanted by the voices of the night.
The zephyrs lift the scent of blossoming trees,
And every leaf now trembles with new life.

The magnolias unfold their midnight wine,
And love returns in every breath and glance.
The stream reflects the joy of those it holds—
Their dreams, their yearning, and their secret vows.
And yet, beneath this revelry and grace,
A quiet yearning hums beneath the stars—
For even in such joy, the heart still seeks
The one whose absence makes the present ache.

But still you flow, sweet river, full of song,
Unburdened by the sorrow of the sea,
Content to hold the moment as it shines,
And rock the banks with music in your breast.
The moon, now calm, lies sleeping in your arms,
And once again you drift through mangrove shade,
Upon a bed of moss and star-kissed blooms,
In peace complete, and rich with love and light.

1012.

When I was cast adrift by fate’s wild gale,
With neither oar nor helm to set my course,
The sea surged up, and I, alone, was thrown
Upon a vast and boundless deep of dark.
Above, a single star began to gleam—
“O stay!” I cried, “let not thy light withdraw!”
But soon it vanished through the storm’s thick veil,
And I, unanchored, wandered without aim.

Around me roared the swells of night and fear;
The waves were high, the sky was sealed with gloom.
The cliffs closed in, their shadows deep and grim,
And still I thought, “No hand shall lead me home.”
O fool! For in that hour, unseen by me,
A higher hand had taken up the helm.

Through roaring waves and through the hidden reefs,
Through dread unknown, and midnight’s troubled sea,
The pulse of life yet held me in its grasp,
And led me forth, past every jagged edge,
Until, at last, the storm grew still and mild,
The darkness cleared, and through the parting cloud
There shone not dread, but calm—a tranquil shore,
Bathed in the light of joy and holy peace.

Before me stood three angels of the dawn—
Their radiance not of sun, but soul made flesh,
An innocence that gleamed with living breath,
And kindness in their eyes, like rising day.
The air around them sang a silent hymn;
The ground they touched grew fragrant, sweet, and still.

O Providence! My guide, my secret friend,
How softly now I lift my eyes to you.
I thought my cries unanswered by the world,
But you had heard, and smiled, and kept your course.
And now I kneel not crushed, but full of praise,
And gazing on those figures sent to me—
Their every glance a balm, their every word
A chord that strikes the harp-strings of my soul.

What joy to serve them in the days to come,
To live not for myself but them alone—
To gather sunlight where their footsteps pass,
And offer every joy that I might find
To see their happiness grow ever full.
O fate, if I might barter joy for theirs,
Then let me feel the weight of trials still—
So long as they go dancing into light.

And when the end shall come, as come it must,
Let it not find them trembling or alone—
But me beside them, smiling in farewell,
Having known the glory of their living flame.
Let sorrow never dim their youthful eyes;
Let all the stars above them brightly burn.
And if I fade before their hour draws near,
I do so glad, for they have filled my soul.

1013.

What! Shall the thread be cut at sorrow’s cry?
Nay, not for grief do the Fates change their course—
Yet grief, too, sings beneath the hand of time.
Depart, pale shades! This hour is not your own.
The light is full, and full the heart with life.

Though brother parts from brother, still the path
Winds on through grove and field, beneath the stars.
The table stands with cups not yet drained dry;
The bread is warm, the wine is not yet spilled.
Your peace be with you, wanderers of night—
But ours is still the joy of rising suns.

We do not loathe the grave—it holds the rose,
The scented root, the cradled butterfly,
The sleep of soil from which new verdure springs.
Let silence have its holy, fragrant depths,
But grant us first the music of the stream,
The storm that dances, fearless in the hills,
The swollen river foaming with delight.

Not yet! Not yet, O sister veiled in black!
Let the last drop still tremble in the cup,
And fall, not stolen, but freely given.
Why must you hasten swifter than the dawn,
And take what still delights in scent and song?

You take the crown from brows still flushed with thought,
The strength from limbs not tired of the day,
And press your frost into the living blood—
Yet spring returns, and joy returns with spring.
Though tears may meet the blossoms at the gate,
The feast within resounds with flutes and fire.

We stand outside, and yet our hearts are stirred;
The voices call, the lights within are bright.
Perhaps the hour is near for some to leave,
But not with dread, for death is not the end.
The sea may toss, the mast may break and fall,
Yet stars still lead us through the wrecking dark.

Some drift, some climb, some lash the boards anew,
But hope still burns, though battered by the gale,
And songs rise faintly through the rain and flame.
The birds still fly above the troubled foam,
And monstrous depths give birth to shining fins.

What is this life, if not a fragile jar
That holds within it dreams of thought and flame?
When broken, it returns to Earth’s wise hands,
Who molds it to a newer, finer use.
No joy is lost; it only alters form.

This is no prison, save for those who sleep
And do not wake to morning’s trembling light.
Though pain may walk beside us for a time,
We laugh with it, and love, and love again.

O Mother Earth, thy flowers never fade—
I only missed their color in my haste.
I came to thee without a map or fear,
And when I go, I go with open arms.

1014.

Behold her there—my lady on the wall—
So full of breath and warmth, though still in paint.
A marvel, is she not? The master’s hand,
Frà Pandolf’s own, gave her this living grace
In just a day—and yet she lingers here,
Unaging, caught between the dusk and dawn.
Come, sit awhile, and let your eye be drawn
To what remains when time no longer moves.

I speak his name with purpose, for it stirs
A question on the lips of those who gaze.
They wonder at the glint behind her eyes,
The sudden flush that graced her open face—
Not cold reserve, but warmth too deep for words.
They turn to me, though none but I draw back
The curtain from her presence. Yours is now
The gift of looking, while I speak her life.

She loved too much, perhaps—you’ll pardon me—
Too freely gave her joy to everything.
The dropping of the sunlight on the hills,
A blossom picked and laid upon her hand,
The breath of morning lifting through the trees—
All these were cause for wonder, cause for praise.
She smiled as though the world itself had sung.
She thanked the breeze, the day, the child, the mule—
And me, of course—but never more than all.

Ah, how she lived! Her joy was not for me
To cage or count or weigh against my name.
I brought her gifts—an heirloom, ancient, proud—
But she would kiss a cherry branch with just
As much delight. This was her gift to me:
To love the passing hour as if it stayed,
And bless the smallest thing with equal heart.

Some call that folly; some might call it sin.
I thought it wild, but beautiful and strange.
And yet, I was too proud to say aloud
What swelled within me—envy cloaked as love,
A need to see my shadow in her light.
I did not stoop, and so I lost the day.
But now—she lives forever, as she was:
The moment caught in time, unmarred by pain.

And see—she smiles, though time itself stands still.
Will you rise now? The hall awaits us both.
We speak of dowries, yes, but more than that,
We speak of souls, of light passed hand to hand.
I ask not gold alone, but something rare—
A kindred joy that dances through the blood.
And yet, before we go, just glance again—
See Neptune there, the god who rules the wave,
Cast bronze by Claus, who shaped the wind and foam.

1015.

Awake, arise, O children of the flame!
The land has raised its gaze to you with pride;
It calls you not to sorrow, but to life—
For who dies free, in truth, has never died.

To live enchained is but a ghostly breath,
A life not lived but bowed in silent shame.
The trumpet sings across the hills—arise!
Let every pulse declare the dawn is near.

Fear not the voice of empire grown so hoarse,
That staggers, swordless, through its twilight end;
For tyrants tremble at the sight of hope,
And hearts on fire shall melt the rusted crown.

Cuba is free! The past has lost its grip;
Spain is a whisper, scattered on the wind.
Come now, the horn has called you forth again—
Be swift, and meet the morning with your strength.

See how our comrades, bright with dust and sun,
Have made the earth rejoice with liberty.
Their courage carves the path through fear and dark;
Their footsteps bloom with faith and brotherhood.

Cuba is free! We shout it through the storm,
Where cannon echo not in rage, but joy.
The trumpet sings again—O souls awake!
And march, not just to battle, but to light.

1016.

I once had sent a letter long ago,
To one I knew in youth, where wide winds blow
Down by the Lachlan, years now faded dim.
He sheared the sheep back then—so I had scrawled
His name, ‘Clancy, of The Overflow,’
And sent it forth on hope’s own wandering breath.

An answer came, though not in Clancy’s hand,
But penned in tar, or so it seemed to me—
The mate who wrote it said, in rugged strokes:
“Clancy’s gone droving north, and where, who knows?”

And now I see him in my inward eye—
Not lost, but riding still through time and thought—
A dream astride the dust of Cooper’s plain,
While cattle trail like shadows through the grass,
And Clancy hums, with hat brim pulled down low.
He sings, and all the sky bends near to hear.

For he has made the bush his breathing space,
His solace found in every leaf and breeze.
The river whispers to him as he rides,
And all the plains unfold like holy writ.
By night, the stars eternal break above—
A ceiling carved by ancient, patient hands.

And I, enclosed in walls that scrape the sun,
Where light falls thin between the city bricks,
Am bound to ledgers, schedules, ink, and dust.
The air comes in with smoke and weary heat,
And everything is touched with human noise.

The city’s voice is clang and hurried foot,
The rattle of the tram, the cry of wheels,
And distant fights of children in the lane
Mix with the thunder of unending pace.
The faces pale with haste and constant want,
Their shoulders stooped beneath the weight of time.

There is no time for beauty here, nor growth—
No space to feel the world beneath one’s feet.
These lives are lived by ticking of a clock,
Where even joy must take its turn and queue.

And yet I think of Clancy, far away,
Who watches clouds roll over untouched lands,
Who knows the seasons not by page, but scent—
And feel the stirring envy in my chest.
I’d change with him, to ride beneath the sky,
To lose the noise, and find myself again.

And yet—perhaps he dreams in idle hour
Of ledger’s calm, and light that falls in slants
Upon a polished desk. Perhaps he, too,
Would marvel at the ordered pulse of towns,
And wonder at the dance of lives compressed.

So here we dwell, each yoked to chosen fate—
He in the field, and I within this room—
Each to his task, and both with thoughts that roam
Beyond our lot, to what the other sees.
For joy lies not in place, but how we look,
And Clancy still rides on, within my soul.

1017.

I met a traveler from a distant land
Who told me of a place where silence reigns,
And time has written softly in the dust.
There, rising from the plain, two legs of stone
Still stand, though long divorced from torso’s pride,
And near them, in the gold and warming sand,
A face lies half-entombed, yet strangely calm—
Its gaze not wrathful now, but richly still.
The lines once carved in power’s harsh command
Now speak, instead, of fleetingness and form,
And how the soul outlives the things it builds.

The sculptor’s art, preserved by wind and light,
Still holds the shape of passions long since passed,
Yet in that hand once curled in mockery,
And in that brow still furrowed in resolve,
There breathes a truth more lasting than the stone:
That even kings may vanish in the sun,
Yet what they felt and dreamed, still glimmers on.

And on the pedestal these words endure:
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings;
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and rejoice—
For even dust may tell of what was dared.”
And nothing else remains—no walls or thrones—
Yet all around, the desert sings with light,
The air alive with wind’s eternal voice,
The sky wide open to the mind’s ascent.
The sand is smooth, and level as the sea,
And dances in the glow of setting suns.

So now I think: what joy to build and fall,
To rise again in thoughts, in dreams, in names;
For what is man but echo turned to song,
And what is life but moments held in flame?
Let all things pass—and pass they surely will—
But let them blaze, and cast their shadows far.

1018.

A thousand longings stir the soul to fire—
Each one a star for which a man might fall.
So many I have gathered, made my own,
And yet the ache for more still sings within.

Why should my love, whose glance undid my peace,
Fear blame or burden for my weeping eyes?
No law condemns the one who makes hearts bloom,
Even if petals fall with tears like blood.

We’ve read how Adam once was exiled far
From Eden’s gates in sorrow and disgrace—
Yet I depart with joy from one sweet street
Where once her shadow lingered on the dust.

O tyrant world! How strange your veils become—
If but one curl escapes from fate’s tight grasp,
The truth will dawn like morning on the hills,
And all shall see how beautiful the storm.

If one would send her letters of the soul,
They need not ask the stars or beg the breeze—
Each dawn I pass her door, with pen in ear,
A scribe of dreams still waiting to be read.

In youth I turned to wine and found in it
A golden echo of the joy to come;
And soon that echo grew into a world
Where every breath was filled with radiant fire.

From those whose hands I hoped would heal my wound,
Came sharper blades—but even this I bless.
For every pain has made the heart more wide,
And every scar a verse within my book.

To love is but to stand on life’s bright edge,
Where death and breath are joined in ecstasy.
We live to glimpse the heretic we love,
And would not trade that gaze for paradise.

Pull out the arrow if you have the strength—
But know that it has made a home so deep,
To tear it loose might cost you more than blood.
It sings now with the beating of your heart.

Reveal no secrets, even to the stars—
The blasphemed one may wear a lover’s face!
And in that face might be a glimpse of God,
Too vast for creeds, yet tender as a flame.

The preacher scorns the tavern’s open door—
Yet still I saw him slipping through its light
As I stepped out, my soul a little freer,
His cloak now scented faintly with the wine.

A thousand longings burn beneath my ribs—
Each one a seed of joy or ash or song.
So many bloomed, and still I long for more,
For yearning is the pulse of life itself.

1019.

Though now I rest beneath a leafless tree,
Its limbs all fractured by the storms of years,
Yet once I sat the closest to the flame—
In every hall where laughter stirred the air,
Where love was weighed, and nations were unmade—
And still those embers glow within my soul.

Though youths now craft their pikes and plot with fire,
And shout against the wind for liberty,
I listen not in scorn, but quiet joy,
For in their cries I hear the voice of dawn,
That stirs the heart and rouses sleeping will—
While I, with gentler thoughts, reflect on time.

No woman turns her gaze upon this tree,
Its bark now cracked, its blossoms long since gone;
Yet I have seen the faces that once shone—
The laughter, grace, and sorrow of their eyes,
And hold them in the garden of my mind,
Where nothing fades and all is touched with gold.

O Time, you sculptor of the soul’s deep core,
You’ve not betrayed, but brought me to this place:
Where past and present fold like wings in flight,
And all that I have loved now lives in me.
I do not curse the winds that shaped my form,
But bless the stars that watched and led me here.

1020.

Away, sweet garden lands and perfumed walks!
Let those who crave delight in ease remain.
But lead me back where mountain winds blow wild,
Where snowflakes drift across the granite face—
There beats the heart of freedom’s sacred land,
Where love endures, though tempests lash the hills.
O Caledonia! your peaks call to me,
And I would trade ten thousand tranquil streams
For one fierce torrent from your craggy heights.

There once my feet, still innocent of years,
Did wander through the glens with bounding joy;
My bonnet firm, my plaid flung proud and free,
I strode beneath the pine’s unbending shade
And filled my ears with tales of ancient chiefs,
Their valor living still in whispering woods.
I lingered past the sun’s last golden glow
To catch the voice of legend on the breeze
And trace it by the starlight through the dark.

Have I not heard them, heroes of the mist,
Whose voices echo through the rolling gale?
Surely their souls, unfettered by the grave,
Still soar above their Highland fields in joy,
Still ride the storm, still keep their watchful eye
Upon the glens where once their banners flew.
Though winter crowns your brow, O Loch na Garr,
You wear it like a diadem of pride,
And in your storms I feel the breath of kin.

Though history weighed their cause with bitter loss,
And none could turn the tide at red Culloden,
Still, theirs was no defeat—no, not in truth.
They rest not broken, but in glory’s hush,
Their names still sung upon the mountain’s breath,
Their courage etched in every stone and tree.
The pipes resound, the mountains give reply,
And I, though far away, rejoice with them—
Their song runs deeper than the deepest glen.

Long years have passed since I last climbed your path,
O Loch na Garr, and years may yet go by
Ere I again shall see your rugged face—
Yet still you live within me, bold and bright.
Though other lands may flaunt their flowers in spring,
Though gentler fields may stretch in painted rows,
They lack the splendor of your solemn grace,
The wild, unyielding beauty of your soul,
The glad defiance of your rising cliffs.

1021.

Now from her quiet hearth I take my leave,
The cottage warm with love still in my mind.
I walk beneath the trees through hush and shade,
The woodland deep with secrets of the dark.
Through bough and leaf, the silver moon peers down,
While birches lean and whisper in the breeze,
Their fragrance stirred upon the midnight air.

O what delight the summer night bestows!
The coolness sweet, the silence full of peace,
Where every breath invites the soul to dream.
The spirit revels in a joy so vast,
It overflows the bounds of thought and name.
Each blade of grass, each branch, each passing cloud
Seems tuned to some immortal harmony.

The stars look on in kind companionship,
And time itself slows gently in its stride.
Yet even as the world is dressed in bliss,
And nature pours her wonder all around,
I feel within a deeper, brighter flame—
The echo of her voice, the light she gives.

A thousand nights like this, so richly veiled,
So filled with grace and mystery and song,
I’d gladly give—and more without regret—
To spend but one more hour at her side,
To see her eyes, to speak her name aloud,
And know that I am home within her gaze.

1022.

Upon a sunlit isle where breakers roll,
The dark-skinned Zimeo sat alone and still.
The sea wind curled around his weary form,
Yet in his gaze there stirred a living flame.

“O powers unseen,” he cried, “whose watchful hands
Still tend the path of those whom sorrow strikes,
Let now your mercy flow in morning light,
And lift the heart long shackled in despair.

“In early days beneath the African sky,
I ran with joy through woods of emerald green.
With brothers laughing near the river’s bend,
Each hour a gift, each breeze a friend to song.

“I kissed my Ninda by the whispering grove,
And felt within her arms the world made whole.
We pledged our love beneath the endless stars,
And dreamed of years unbroken by farewell.

“Oh, how the sun of fortune gently shone!
Its warmth embraced our village and our hearts.
For in that fleeting bliss we touched the gods—
But joy too bright may cast a deeper shade.

“One dusk, a sail split open heaven’s edge,
And with it came the smile too smooth to trust.
The strangers spoke with honey in their words
And led us, unaware, into the dark.

“They bound our freedom with their cunning gold,
And pulled us from the soil that shaped our names.
Yet even here, beneath this foreign sky,
The soul within me rises still in song.

“For though they chained my limbs, they could not bind
The quiet hope that kindles thought and dream.
My Ninda lives within each breath I take,
Her voice a star that sings inside my bones.

“The time has come. I see a light descend.
It bears the shape of her—my long-lost love!
She beckons me with arms that shine with peace.
The sea now opens not as death, but gate.

“I go to join the joy that once was mine—
Not lost, but waiting on a brighter shore.
This life is but the shadow of the soul;
Its weight, a step upon the path to truth.”

He rose, his chains as dust upon the ground,
And walked with grace into the waves’ embrace.
The wind grew still. The sea held fast its breath.
And stars looked on with silence and with light.

1023.

Beyond the threshold of the furthest thought,
Where silence gathers at the mind’s last gate,
There stands a palm, unbending in the light,
Its fronds aglow with bronze and evening flame.

High in its crown a radiant bird appears,
Gold-feathered, calm, and singing not for men,
Nor out of grief, nor pleasure known to us,
But out of being—full and unconstrained.

Its song is foreign, yet it stirs the heart,
Not reason’s craft, nor sorrow’s wounded voice,
But something older—free of name or aim.
And in that moment, joy arises clear:
Not tied to fate, nor forged in argument,
But born from presence, simple and complete.

The palm leans out upon the edge of space.
The branches move with wind from far beyond.
The bird sings on, its flames of feather loose,
And time forgets itself in watching them.

1024.

You walk into the place where light is born,
Where night gives way to day without a name,
That tender veil which pain alone may cross—
Yet pain made sweet, and needing no display.
It shimmers softly on the waking shore,
That always is, and yet has never been.

You, simple laborer of humble art,
Who build the shelter where the living dream,
Breathe deeply now within the pulsing air,
For those you loved are mingled with the light—
The dead not lost, but carried in the breeze,
In morning’s hush, absorbed by open skies.

Divide the loaf of solitude with grace,
Its crust of tears, its warm interior joy.
This is your portion, flesh and bread of life—
Given for those who pass, for one who wounds
And never knew, and one who heals through silence:
Your son, your soul, your fellow wanderer.

Desire no more. Let longing rest at last.
Lie still within the secret of the dew.
Let go the flame that carved you into shape.
Forget the shape—it was a passing dream.
Then open wide your arms, and take the world
Into your heart, now singing, now at peace.

1025.

Rain, fall gently upon my waiting skin,
And cool this brow with whispers from the sky.
Clear out my eyes—let all the veils be drawn,
That I might see the world in fuller light.
My soul stands open in the hush of night,
Prepared for joy, for wonder’s quiet step.
Each drop, a blessing scattered through the dark,
Becomes a compass for my wandering.

This journey has no end and needs no end,
A sacred path that curls through time and self.
I hear the voices rising with the rain,
Not ghosts, but echoes of a deeper song—
Perhaps a god who sings in leaf and stone,
Or silence calling through the breath of wind.
It is enough to feel the pulsing world,
And know that I am part of all it is.

1026.

By chance I wandered through the garden gate,
Not seeking much, just drifting with the day,
When there she stepped—my hen—serene and proud,
Out from a tangle by the pumpkin vine,
Her feathers fluffed, her purpose still aglow.

I stooped to find her hidden little hoard—
Ten eggs, still warm, their shells like breathing earth.
I paused, not sure what next the moment asked.
I picked them up, then gently laid them back.
Each one was mine, yet felt the world’s as well.

The spell began. The light around me stirred.
I blinked, and in their place I seemed to see
A golden hand of fruit—the banana’s smile,
So full of life it sang without a sound.
I blinked again, and oranges were there,
A basket brimming, sun beneath their skins.

Then naseberries, rich and deep with sweetness,
Curled in a tray like thoughts that ripen slow.
And then, a bursting bag of mangoes spilled,
Their scent the laughter of remembered days.

And last—I blinked, and what I saw was vast:
A mighty nest of stars, alight and calm,
As if the hen had laid the Milky Way,
And all the sky had gathered in my hands.

1027.

It matters not who holds the stronger hand—
The stripes or wool, the bold or meek of heart;
The dance begins, and still the game unfolds,
And somehow, always, she will find her win
While I, with gentle hopes, am left to smile
And tally up the cost of what I lose.

Yet even in the tide of her advance,
When tigers rage and half my flock is gone,
A breeze may shift, and help descend from high—
Unheralded, unasked, yet strangely just.
The Rusted Bearer, watcher from above,
Once neutral, stirs and lifts his aged shield,
Then drops—a yellow bloom, absurd and bright—
A flower with no mission but to fall
With gravity that writes its own commands.

It lands between the tiger’s bounding feet,
And checks its path with fragrant reckoning,
Then floats another blossom, softer still,
Its petals brushed with light and something more—
A scent not born of earth, but some old star
That knew the dreams of sheep and beasts alike.

This second gift, more aimless in its drift,
Descends in silence, touching air and thought,
Then grazes gently past her startled cheek
And slips into the hollow of her blouse,
Where foolishness and wonder share a room.
There lies her secret—a narcotic bloom
That sweetly tangles reason with delight.

And in that moment, balanced on a breath,
The board itself—the checkered plain of fate—
Becomes a field of flowers, play, and light.
The tigers pause, the sheep begin to sing,
And I, the loser, feel a sudden joy—
For even in defeat, the game is kind.

1028.

A new soul rises, formed of living light,
With strength and grace within his every limb.
He walks not bound by shadows of the past,
But turns his step toward brighter, fertile ground—
To lift his voice, defend the good and true,
To answer cannon-fire with common sense,
And thrust through hatred with the sword of joy.

Against the hard machines of tyrant law,
He brings the warmth of fervent human breath.
Where fascism once reared its grinning head,
He comes with truth, and with an open heart,
To wage a war of mercy, not of blood,
And plant the seed of kindness in the dust.

He cries: “Awake! Let justice wear her crown!
Let not the past consume the present flame.
The soul of man is not a tool for gain,
Nor housing made to cage the poor and weak.
Let us be bold before the tyrant’s gaze—
Together, walk the road toward morning’s gate,
To build a kingdom where the people reign.”

Though man has tarried long in idle joy,
Though time has dulled his sense of greater things,
The cry of hope returns, clear as the lark.
Say it again: let justice rise and shine!
Say it once more: let every state-built lie
Collapse beneath the laughter of the free!
And shout again: the tower of falsehood sways,
Its pillars cracked, its banner torn by truth.

The weary shall not always bear the weight—
Those gaunt with illness, young and old alike,
Shall one day breathe where they were once confined.
Though violence hid in laws and quiet rooms,
The morning comes as sudden as a spark,
And fascism shall fall into the grave,
Its death the herald of a gentler world.

The gilded gates of greed shall rust and break;
Self-interest, like a chariot of ash,
Shall scatter down the wind of reckoning.
No more shall worms of silence feed unseen—
No more shall spiders spin their web of power—
The dustbin waits for all who cloaked the truth.

And in that dawn, a single word shall rise:
Shalom—peace spoken from all corners wide,
The North and South, the East and Western lands,
Shall echo with the voice of life renewed.
No false accord, no bargain dressed as love,
Shall quiet hearts that long to hold each other.
No law shall tell the soul to cease its care.

Do something now, before the sky turns gold—
Unchain the prisoners, call the exiled home,
Unlock the gates that held back dreams too long.
Let Africa arise, with arms outstretched,
And feel the joy of morning’s early song.
O peace-filled ones, let all be done—
Before the dawn, let all be done with love.

1029.

Could it have been my face that met my gaze—
Strange in its stillness, marked by time and thought—
Within the glint of some forgotten glass,
That caught me, passing, in a moment’s pause,
And offered back a stranger shaped like me?

A blink, and recognition swiftly bloomed:
The eyes were mine, astonished yet alive,
The lips uncertain, curling toward a smile,
The brow half-raised as if to question joy.
I knew him then—the self I’d come to be.

No terror stood between us in that glance,
No breach of trust, no fracture deep with doubt—
But wonder, plain and radiant with truth,
That even in the quiet shape of bone,
A life had gathered, glowing from within.

I once believed my self a single form,
A solid mask worn lightly every day,
But now I see a shifting, breathing self—
One drawn from countless mornings, hours, and years,
Each passing moment making me anew.

And in this recognition, there is joy:
To know we are not fixed, not caged by glass,
But blossoming through change, through time’s design.
The mirror does not steal—only reveals,
And in its gleam, a deeper self may wake.

So let the image vary as it will;
Let age and brightness dance across the skin.
For every glance unveils another truth—
Another life still waiting to be lived.
What joy to find myself, again, unknown.

1030.

This morning I beheld the old oak tree—
The one that stood so bare and still last week,
Its branches dry as parchment in the sun,
Its trunk a relic of forgotten storms—
Now dressed in light, in subtle green reborn.

It seemed, until the rain had sung all night,
A shadow of itself, a withered heart,
A lonely sentinel on barren ground,
A child of drought, a figure marked for death,
The next to fall beneath the woodman’s axe.

But what a joy! The spring had come at last,
And in the hush between the dusk and day,
The tree had woken from its sleep of thirst,
Its limbs now clothed in delicate surprise,
Its silence filled with songs of sap and bloom.

I stood and watched, and could not turn away.
How strange, how tender was that greening wood—
As if the world had whispered to its core,
And told it, “Rise again, for life returns.”
Those petals, pale as shells from quiet seas,
Had climbed the bark like hope upon old wounds.

This resurrection, calm yet radiant,
Brought me to think on time and what it hides.
How many souls, like trees, seem left for dead,
And yet, with one kind night of rain and breath,
They blossom where no blossom was foreseen.

There is no end, I think, to life’s surprise.
Though some arms reach like bone into the sky,
The spring may yet adorn them without cause,
And dress the least of us in grace once more—
A mercy rising in the silent dawn.

1031.

Now write as freely as the morning sings,
In any shape your dreaming heart desires.
Too many rivers, red and swift, have passed—
Too many truths have shattered in their march—
For one to claim the only path is straight.

Let verse arise in fragments or in flame,
Let rhythm break and stumble, then resume.
All form is holy if the soul is there;
The breath that stirs the leaf can stir the line.
In poetry, all things are possible—
But not all things are equal in their grace.

One law remains: to face the waiting page
And make it better for your having lived.
No idle scrawl, no echo poorly heard,
But something born from silence into sound.
A shape of joy, or sorrow wisely worn,
That testifies: a soul was here, and spoke.

1032.

I was born beneath a quiet dome of sky,
In a white city hushed beneath its eaves,
Where lemon trees, like dreams in bloom, reclined
And spread their fragrance on the morning air.

The beds of flowers breathed a wordless prayer,
And every wall, each courtyard steeped in light,
Held echoes of a peace the world forgets.
The blades of old weathervanes turned and turned,
Restless as thoughts that seek a larger sky.

They danced above the rooftops like a wish,
Contesting with the wind, the cloud, the storm—
Not mad, but faithful in their circling flight,
Reminding us that stillness is a choice.

O city of my elders, deep in time!
Your laurel trees still rise with patient pride,
Your lilies bloom with silence at the dawn,
And every flame tree throws its fire wide,
As if to say that beauty must endure.

When I recall you—soft and far away—
You stretch within my thoughts like one at peace,
A sultana upon a silken bed,
Reclining in the sunlight of the past.

You teach me that the soul, once rooted well,
May flourish even in forgetful winds—
That joy, once known, returns with every step,
And memory is not less real than breath.

1033.

Was there a garden once, or was it dream?
I do not ask in sorrow now, but peace.
The dusk is soft; I walk a little slower,
Not lost, but drawn to something deep and wide—
A brightness flickering just behind the veil.

Perhaps it was imagined by a god,
Or shaped within the hush of mortal thought,
Yet what I touched was real: the scent of leaves,
The hush of petals opening at dawn,
The kiss of sunlight on an open palm.

I cannot name the place, nor trace the path,
But something in me knows the garden lives—
Not locked behind some flaming seraph’s sword,
But growing still within the breath of things.
It blooms in fields where no one thinks to look,
In kindness shared, in laughter without cause,
In every moment joy is freely born.

And though the world is bruised with toil and time,
With histories of brother lost to brother,
It is enough to say: I once was there.
Enough to know my hands have brushed the leaves,
My eyes beheld the shimmer in the dew,
My soul once drank from morning’s perfect cup.

And even now, beneath this common sky,
That garden’s warmth returns to light my step.
What was, still is, if only I will see—
And even one day there was worth the world.

1034.

A cloud drifts softly past my quiet roof,
Heavy with jasmine scent the winds have stirred.
It offers one white blossom to my hand,
Then sails beyond, into the boundless sky—
Its gift a breath, its parting filled with peace.

A bird descends upon my garden wall,
Its wings still trembling with the mountain air.
It brings a note from her whose thoughts are light,
And lays it near my heart, then lifts again
To glide toward peaks I’ve only dreamed to climb.

A knock disturbs the stillness of my rest—
A stranger stands, yet speaks without a word.
He leaves behind a voice I never knew,
A feathered hope that sings beneath my ribs,
Then vanishes into the waiting day.

Each comes, then goes, as all things come and go—
Not lost, but ever part of what I am.
Each leaves behind some trace of joy and truth,
And teaches me how vast the world can be.

1035.

This moment is my own—I call it mine.
The day has opened wide its golden mouth,
And I shall fill it with the sound I choose.
I beat the drum with hands that know the sun,
I raise a song born from the breath of dawn,
And move in rhythm with the pulse of life.

I do not seek your pale and listless claps,
Nor need the hollow flattery you give,
With smiling mouths that never learn the tune.
You ask me what I celebrate this day?
Then listen, not with ears, but with the soul.

The drum speaks truths you’ve never dared to hear—
It knows of sorrow turned to sudden light,
Of roots that drink from deeper wells than yours,
Of footsteps tracing paths through time and flame,
Yet still they dance, and dancing, gather joy.

Beware—when next you laugh and throw your head
To sky, unknowing what the silence hides,
The dance may shift, the drum may pierce the air,
And still my voice will rise, not to lament,
But to declare the living soul’s delight.

This is my rite—no need for borrowed praise.
I am alive, and that is celebration.

1036.

Nothing lingers now of days long gone,
The old has passed, yet light still builds its nest—
It weaves between the rails, those endless lines,
Where iron tongues hum softly toward the dawn.

Each gleam a promise born from shadows past,
A spark that dances on the breath of time.
Though all must fade, the light remains to teach
That life moves forward, ever weaving hope.

In every track, a story still unfolds,
And in each pulse, the joy of being stirs—
The future rising where the old has fled,
A quiet song of new beginnings sung.

1037.

Each people walks the Earth with dreams held close,
Their hearts enclosed by habit and by pride,
Their eyes too fixed on power and fleeting gold
To look beyond the mirror of the self.
Yet still within all flesh, a fire abides—
The same bright yearning stirred in every breast:
To live with grace, to love, to be made whole,
To reach for light, and weep, and seek again.

Though falsehoods rise, and walls of hatred stand,
And banners wave for names and nations’ cause,
There sleeps in all the same celestial seed—
The hope of kinship stronger than our fears.

We know the chains that press against the soul,
The silence thick with prejudice and loss,
But still we walk, we speak, we dream aloud,
For joy lies not in ease, but in the fight.
The birds that sing from cages stir the stars—
Their notes, though born in grief, ring clear with power.
They will not pass unheard. The work we do,
Though we may never taste its ripened fruit,
Will bloom in fields our children shall walk free.

There shall arise a time, though far it seems,
When men shall not be judged by outward flesh,
But seen through eyes unclouded by old hate;
When warmth shall flow between all human hearts,
And stranger shall mean brother, sister, friend.
Then customs may remain, but not divide;
And every voice, though shaped in different tongue,
Shall add its joy to one great song of life.

This task is ours. Though we may not behold
The morning we prepare, we shape its form.
Let others reap the harvest from our toil—
The sowing is its own exalted joy.
We build the bridge not for ourselves alone,
But that the world may cross and find its peace.

1038.

All things are where they ought to be, and still—
My loves are folded gently in my chest,
My heart as calm and wide as ocean’s line.
I’ve held the hands of friends, and in their grasp
Felt seasons find a home in warmth and talk;
And so I blaze with joy that does not dim.

All things are placed in order, calm and sure—
The blue of veins, like threads of golden sky,
Runs through the gaze that falls on brooding hills.
In mountain air, as patient as a stone
That basks in sun, I walk the path of stars
Into a wood that feeds itself with dreams.

You walk within my eyes to grant me rest,
And all fatigue dissolves within your hush.
You stir the silent earth that sleep forgot,
And carve a song from chambers of my past.
I go, and where I step, you bloom anew—
Your presence sown like kindness in the dark,
Your rooted light a harbor in the storm.
I draw from you, not out of pain, but peace,
As one might open veins to set life free.

All things remain in place and speak of grace.
The sun no longer dazzles me with snows
From other skies—my weather now is mine.
My luggage fits me as my own warm skin,
And keeping watch beside the breath of night,
While Ramadan unfolds her quiet flame,
My mother folds away my unread books
And waits with time, serene and full of years.

All things are in their place. The world is wide.
And I belong to it, and it to me.

1039.

So sudden came it—bright, not dull nor grey—
A thread of light, a shimmer in the dark,
A herald from the years I’ve yet to live,
And from the one I cherish most in thought.

You vanished once I saw you, slipped away
Within the tangle of my reckless hair;
And now I search for you with quiet grace,
As one might seek a long-lost friend in crowds,
Not with a need, but mild curiosity.

No need to hide you—what is there to hide?
Let all the world walk past and see me whole.
Who would imagine that within this crown
There lies the mark of joy and time well spent?
You are my secret, though the secret shines.

Perhaps I’ll pen some playful lines one day,
And laugh alone while greeting passersby.
Should the barber, that sage of scissor lore,
Reveal your spark beneath his practiced hands,
He’ll muse aloud with scientific pride,
And recommend a tonic for the youth.

I’ll smile and say, “Let it remain untouched—
A thread of dawn among these strands of dusk.”
He’ll nod and we’ll conspire to keep you close,
A glimmer held between the hum of days.

In twenty years, you’ll not stand out at all,
For others will have come to join your light.
Yet I shall know you were the pioneer,
The first bright messenger from time to time,
Who whispered: Live, and love the lines you write.

1040.

Coffee and apples on a summer day—
The light is kind, the air is soft and still.
I sit within this quiet, human space,
A corner carved from time and tempered dreams.
It feels as if the world, so vast and loud,
Has paused to breathe, has tilted toward accord—
A truce declared in history’s crowded march.

The apples gleam with golden-hearted light,
As if they bore the sun within their skin.
The coffee curls its fingers through the air,
Its warmth a murmur rising from the cup.
In all I have not been, in what I lack,
I find, today, no pressing cause to grieve.
This simple hour is sufficient grace.

The apples cool with clarity and poise,
The coffee warms with whispers of unrest—
Two gifts the world has given without debt,
Beyond the range of all I may command.
And here I rest, well-fitted to this chair,
Contained but not confined, both known and free,
My comforts modest, yet entirely mine.

Around me, life is orderly and mild—
A room secure from sudden, clamorous change.
Yet I am not immune to what may come:
For sometimes, thunder walks across the floor,
And strangers knock to ask what names we bear.
Still, I remain—beneath the fragile peace—
Grateful to taste the silence while it lasts.

1041.

Because the forge and anvil sing his name,
Man walks among the armor and the drums,
Where clang of iron echoes in his chest,
And valor finds its echo in his soul.

Because his heart, impassioned by the storm,
Would rather settle discord with a cheer
Than silent compromise or softened word—
He blooms, it seems, in contest and in clash.

Because, when calm prevails and peace holds sway,
He fears his light may dim in gentle eyes—
Not knowing that true worth, when most at peace,
Still shines and earns the reverent gaze of love.

Because the charm he bears, in bright parade,
Seems fastened to the sound of marching feet,
He clings to uniform and saber’s gleam,
And fears the quiet truth of other paths.

Because he laughs too loudly at the game,
And weeps too fiercely when his team has lost,
He thinks his pulse, so quick to leap or break,
Unfits him for the measured tasks of rule.

Yet in his bold, untamed, and fiery ways,
There lives a wish to shape the world for good.
And joyfully, we watch him grow to see
That strength may also dwell in gentler forms.

1042.

If I should die one morning in your midst—
though death, I think, is only life unmasked—
then speak no solemn words above my head,
for prayers belong to those who need their weight.

No need to trade my joy for fabled bliss,
nor promise me some acres walled in light—
for I have danced on one good patch of earth
and kissed the sun across a single field.

Don’t stir the pot for mourning’s ancient sake;
I loved that couscous hot from fire and hand,
not scattered cold where no one sees it fall.
And figs are sweeter when they fill the mouth
of one who walks and wonders at the sky.

Let cats still find my stone, and claim the dust—
they marked my step with Thursday rituals
and never cracked the earth beneath their paws.
Let them remain as they have always been.

Come not with promises or sacred oaths;
I’ve heard too many dressed in veils of truth.
Speak plainly, or not at all—for I am gone,
and truth, to me, has flown beyond your grasp.

Say not, “He’s run ahead; we’ll catch him soon,”
as if the grave were but a game of chase—
no race compels me now, no course remains
but starlight and the lifting of the breeze.

When I am gone, then place me where the wind
can sing its endless psalms to rock and tree;
high on a hill, where no one dares to tread,
envy me not for silence or for peace—
but for the way I vanish with a smile,
becoming part of all that still shall bloom.

1043.

O child of Egypt, why let fall your arm,
when all the world’s wide beauty calls your name?
The flowing Nile, so sweet and full of song,
was made to soothe the wounds of toil and time.

It winds through lands once walked by gods and kings,
and still it carries light from age to age.
The sun that crowns the palm trees bows for you;
its warmth was stitched for you into the day.

Though Macedon and Sardinia were raised
by heaven’s hand, they too shall pass like mist—
but you, whose land is written into stars,
were shaped to hold the cosmos in your gaze.

Be not dismayed by laughter in the streets,
nor envy those who wander without aim.
For you were born where time itself was carved,
and joy is in your keeping, if you rise.

1044.

A night of rain, and all the earth exhaled
its breath in quiet joy, the fragrant damp
ascending from the ground as if to kiss
the air with all its deep and secret life.
My heart, still hushed from wandering thoughts of you,
took in that scent as one might draw in hope.

Beneath the trees, the branches whispered low,
and in their shade I saw again your eyes—
not sad, but wide with meaning, full of light,
like music drifting softly over dreams,
reminding me of all we’ve come to know.

The rain kept on; it tapped its silver code
upon the roofs and leaves, and through the sound,
your voice returned—not lost, but folded close—
a lullaby that held the world at peace.
It cradled me in memory’s warm arms,
as though the night itself had come to rest.

Good night, you said—your hands, though cold with rain,
held mine as though they wished to give me more
than warmth—perhaps a farewell wrapped in care.
And though the years must carry us apart,
that night still lives, reborn each time it rains,
a gentle echo of enduring grace.

1045.

“Cast off ambition,” said the weary priest,
His fortunes sunk, his power slipped to dusk,
And offered to a friend his mournful creed—
But let us take such counsel with a laugh.
What joy is there in life without the climb,
Without the steady push against the tide,
The blaze of purpose flashing in the soul,
The reaching past the grasp of common things?

Had Newton ceased when first he saw the light,
Had Dante flinched before his final verse,
Had any noble heart contented been
With praise half-earned, with laurels undeserved,
Then half the world we cherish would be dim,
And man a creature satisfied with dust.

What makes the long day worth its weary run,
What lifts the labor from a sodden yoke,
Is this: to give one’s utmost with a will,
To throw the self into the wind and flame
Of high endeavor, not for pride alone,
But for the very bloom of human breath.
Let none stand stunned before a record fall—
But step again into the sunlit field,
And play, and strive, and seek the greater joy.

1046.

In books we read of lands called Long Ago,
Where heroes strode with thunder in their steps,
And golden helms that caught the morning sun.
Achilles, Hector—giants made of bronze,
With brows unbowed and voices like the sea,
Whose every breath was shaped by fate and fire.

But now we see another kind of strength—
No gods descend to guide these gentle hands,
No flashing sword is strapped upon their side.
And yet they move with purpose through the rain,
Nineteen, and fresh of face, and full of dreams,
Their eyes still lit with wonder at the world.
The guns may shake the glass within the frame,
But not the steady pulses in their wrists.

The sergeant calls, and up the road they go,
No song upon their lips, but still a tune
Beats in their hearts like memory unformed.
And we, who watch, begin to understand:
Though Hector fell, the spirit lingers on.
For courage now is quiet in its form—
A muddy march, a silent lifted pack,
A look exchanged that says, “We’re not alone.”

O joy of being human in this time—
Not grand in myth, but rich with daily light,
With fellowship that bends and does not break,
And duty not imposed but freely borne.
Perhaps, we said, there are no heroes now—
Yet here they walk, beneath the drizzling sky.

1047.

I walk with questions rising in my steps—
not doubt, but wonder, as the earth might know
some whispering truth it keeps beneath my feet.
Perhaps the stormy wind, with sudden voice,
will fold its arms around me like a friend,
and I shall feel within its double clasp
a joyful echo of the life I’ve lived.

No longer do I chase the fleeing path
where dreams dissolve into the setting light.
Like earth, I’ve opened up and bloomed in time—
my flower spent, yet rooted still in grace.
And though the rod may wake me with its sound,
I do not curse the stirrings of its touch.
For even pain can carry in its cry
a call to rise, and meet the world again.

1048.

What did he do but lie beneath the tree,
the pear leaves whispering above his head,
his cloak wrapped close, his thoughts adrift in light—
not sunlight, no, but starlight’s finer fire?
He watched the orbits, charted with his mind
the vault of night, and found in silence peace.
The town, well-meaning, murmured all the same—
with awe, with fear, with good old-fashioned doubt.
“He drinks,” they said, “for why else would he sleep
beneath the sky, and never wed a wife?”

But who could marry such a soul as that—
not white nor black, not rich nor mad with dreams,
but full, capacious, like a bird in song,
composing letters in the dark to men
who shaped a land of laws and liberties.
He wrote to Jefferson with fervent hand,
and heard a courteous answer in his mind.
The tales from travelers told of great things—
a marble Franklin standing guard in state,
a city drawn from reason’s measured line.

He stirred the morning’s stew, then slept in peace,
while cows lowed softly through the pasture’s mist.
The clock he carved in youth still ticked with care.
The neighbors brought him bread, and blankets warm,
and found him sleeping, joy upon his brow.
At dusk he rose, and took his well-worn gun—
a figure silvered by his flowing hair—
and aimed, not out of wrath, but wild delight,
toward constellations he had come to love.
A star blinked out. He wondered, did he strike?
Then laughed, and lowered eyes to fields in bloom,
where life arose from winter’s gentle rot.
And in the distance, domes began to shine,
a spiral blooming from the nation’s heart—
the city he had dreamed, now waking whole.

1049.

To know its truth, its aim, its inner voice,
you must behold it whole, not part by part.
Not one small crystal tells the greater tale—
but all together, as a kindred flame,
a congregation born of sea and sun,
it takes its meaning from the unity,
not each lone grain dissolving into void,
but tribe of shining fragments, firm and bright.

It rises from the sea, a gift returned—
not by command, but by the sun’s caress.
A hardened foam, a memory in white,
the sea’s own laughter left upon the shore.
And when it yields its liquid origin,
it does not die, but finds a second life
as mineral, as voice, as truth preserved
within the salted breath of breeze and stone.

It is the desert’s whisper of the wave,
the ancient pact of water made with earth—
not vanished, but transformed, and reconciled.
It holds no name, it seeks no owner’s hand,
and yet it serves the world with secret joy.
In bread, in blood, in every tear we shed,
its hidden savor sings of what we are—
the pulse, the sweat, the taste of being alive.

1050.

O words, where have you gone? What do you mean?
Come back to me—I wander in the haze,
half-lost in dream, half-dazzled by the sun.
Why should this hand reach out unless it touch
some thread of purpose woven through the soul?

Yet everywhere, the minds of men pull back
before the gentle hand that offers grace,
ashamed, perhaps, to see a bond so pure
it asks for nothing, only seeks to give.

And in my palm, at times, a tender blade—
as if some petal’s sheath begins to grow;
at others, I behold a flowered crown,
as though my thought itself could bloom and sing.

And in my mouth: a cheek, flushed like the dawn,
or else—a kiss! A joy no count could measure,
as rare and sudden as a burst of stars.

But ah, my heart! O words, what lies within?
Shall I cry out to sky and wind and fire,
and hope the gods will answer, light in hand?

Or shall I rest in silence—yes, that peace—
though joy demands a voice to make it whole.
Come then, O speech! O breath of living soul,
arise! Bestow what only you can give.

1051.

When I would walk the red clay village road,
Aunt Sue would hail me with her lilting cheer—
“How are you, dear heart?” ringing like a song,
Or sometimes, “There goes me sunshine girl!”
And Uncle Joe, still wheeling by with pride,
Would raise his voice as if to bless the sky.

Now in the city’s tide, I walk alone,
And thousands pass like waves upon the shore.
No voices rise to greet me in the wind,
No one to call me by the name I know.

Yet in the hush, I hear their echoes still—
Each word a spark that warms the urban chill.
Their love walks with me, steady as the stars,
A hidden choir in the noise of the world.

And so I smile—though no one speaks my name—
For I am held in memories like light.

1052.

My soul sank gently in the living stream
That courses through the body of this land—
Not lost, but drawn with purpose to its pulse,
A hand stretched out not desperate, but bold,
To touch the root where memory begins.

I moved through time like light beneath the skin,
Through layers folded deep in history’s cloth,
And reached the core—an ember ever warm,
An innocence that once began it all.

I swam in sweat not shaped by toil alone,
But gleamed with purpose, effort, joy, and pride.
I backstroked through the lineage of strength—
A time untouched by hatred or by shame—
And there I floated in ancestral grace,
Buoyed by the current of enduring love.

It held me in a cradle vast and true—
A skin-born reverence, a kin-born light—
An Indian love, undimmed, alive with fire,
So real it shook the walls of lesser truths.

And there I breathed, in peace with all I am,
In love with every echo in my name.

1053.

All praise to those who walk with quiet minds,
The humble poets, guardians of the dust—
For in their hands the whispered seeds take root,
And from their lines, the meadowlands arise.
Not crowned in gold nor swayed by worldly pride,
They speak in leaves, in wind, in morning dew,
And through their silence build enduring realms
Where every blade of grass becomes a psalm,
And every breath a hymn to life’s delight.
Their joy is not in noise, but in the hush
That falls between the thunderclaps of time.
They bless the earth by simply being still,
And from their stillness, worlds begin to bloom.

1054.

The village night comes soft with scented wind,
The hours drift slowly, wrapped in mellow hush.
The bell rings low to mark the vesper hour,
And gates swing closed with music in their clang,
As women, warm with laughter, walk back home.

Then echoing across the gentle dusk,
The wooden clogs of peasants strike the ground—
And suddenly the air is sweet with life:
Of chocolate boiling, cheese upon the board,
Fresh yucca bread, and cakes with golden crusts.
The world is full, and time no longer moves.

Out past the edge of lanterns and of homes,
A braying comes—a donkey calls for love—
And wheezes through his wheezy box of joy,
His accordion—a serenade in hay.

The druggist, old and patient in his shop,
Still guards his shelf of tinctures, drops, and hope,
And lifts his hand with oracles of cure:
A dram of castor oil for ailing days.

Above the roofs, the moon begins to climb,
Not stern nor distant, but a swollen pearl
That floats in blue, amused by all below—
The chapel dome aglow beneath its gaze,
Becomes, to dreaming eyes, a nursery flask,
And we, the children suckling joy from night.

1055.

When first you step across the humble stone,
The heart revives as though the air itself
Had whispered tales of purity and peace.
No stain defiles the ground, no trace of grief
Remains upon the wood or woven frame.
This charming home, so modest, breathes of soap,
Of winter’s crisp embrace and summer’s sun.
Its tablecloths lie clean as driven snow,
Its curtains hang in folds as pure as frost.

From every corner, grace and care exude—
An elegance, the fruit of patient hands,
Where every seam reflects the labor’s glow.
The mistress of this home, so young, so fair,
Commands it with the quiet strength of love.
Her voice, a murmuring brook, flows soft and clear,
And in its current, warmth and joy abide.

Her eyes, so dreamy, deep, and full of life,
Gaze outward with a kindness born of faith.
To her, the hearth is sacred, home divine,
And love of family her guiding creed.
Around her, children gather, bright and free—
One leaps in laughter, while another crawls,
And still her care enfolds them all as one.

Her life, a gift she gives to hearth and kin,
Her visage, like the crescent moon’s first light,
Both fragile and enduring in its glow.
No matter what your station or your age,
Could you but see her tenderness and grace,
Your heart would bow before her quiet strength,
In reverence for a life so nobly lived.

1056.

It happens, sometimes, in the dance of fate,
That one you meet by chance becomes the flame—
A woman walking lightly through the dusk,
With eyes that glint like stars in winter’s sky,
And every step a mystery and a song.

She speaks with laughter threaded through her voice,
A note that stirs the pulse and quiets the mind;
You take her hand, you wander through the night—
To theatres, cafés, or moonlit parks—
And marvel at the play of light and shade
Across her brow, the secrets in her smile.

She loves the cats, you learn—those creatures sleek,
Half-shadow, half-surprise, who curl and purr
And vanish at a whim. You laugh and nod.
You hold her close beneath the perfumed dark—
And feel a thrill, as if the world itself
Had paused to watch two hearts begin to burn.

But then a warning hums along the thread:
She draws away—not out of doubt or fear,
But something stranger still, a knowing grief.
“I love,” she says, “and yet I dare not touch—
For in my soul a restless creature waits,
With claws I cannot hide, though I would try.”

So both must walk apart though hearts are near,
Not caged, but bound by tender circumstance.
You quarrel now and then—not out of hate,
But from the aching wish to simply hold
What life, in all its strangeness, keeps apart.

And then one night, beneath the velvet sky,
You hear the softest sound—a padded step—
And turn, and call, “Is someone there?” No voice.
Yet in the stillness breathes an unseen life.
You draw your strength, your heart, your ancient blade—
And brace yourself for what the dark might send.

But lo! She leaps—not beast, but blazing soul,
And meets you there between the earth and stars,
And though you strike in fear and wild despair,
She falls not lost, but lifted into peace.

No curse remains. Her eyes grow soft and calm.
She takes your hand—not cold, but full of light—
And whispers with her final breath of joy:
“That love could rise above what I once was—
That you, who feared, still dared to hold your ground—
This frees me more than all the spells of time.”

And so you learn, beneath that starlit sky,
That even beasts may carry love inside,
That even wounds may sing a final grace,
And that the fiercest soul, once understood,
Can guide you to the edge of all you are—
Where joy and sorrow dance as one at last.

1057.

You walk each Sunday through the garden paths,
Where trees lean kindly and the flowers bloom,
And sunlight dances softly on the leaves.
You speak no word, and yet the air is full
Of something rich—your gaze, your quiet breath—
As if the world were pausing just for you.

You watch the orchids burn in silken red,
The lilies rise like hymns, the roses blush
At their own boldness—and though none shall root
Within your modest patch of earthly ground,
You smile, content to see them live so well.

You ask the gentlest questions of the day—
How does the mint recall our grandmother’s hands?
What dreams does one preserve in blades of grass?
You speak of beetles, lacquered like the dusk,
Who hover like a thought before it lands.

You speak of Rousseau stooping in the fields,
A man who saw the sacred in a leaf,
And found his peace beneath the open sky.
You wear white linen for the Month of May,
And in your silence, sow a field of calm.

And when my breath has folded into light,
And I have gone to join the stars in sleep,
You will not come with grief upon your face,
But rather bring dark lilacs to my stone—
Rich with a scent the rain will carry far.

And in that act, so simple and so true,
The world will know that I was once beloved
By one who saw in leaves and dreams and wind
A music strong enough to outlast death.

1058.

We drive between the shoulders of the hills,
Their slopes like waves of stone that lean toward us,
As if the earth were gathering its folds
To tell us something ancient, kind, and vast.
The road, a ribbon drawn through time’s own hand,
Opens in layers—valleys, cliffs, and crags—
Each turn revealing more than what was lost.

We glance beyond the glass, past one another,
And see horizons shaped by wind and sun,
The brittle ridges silvered with old light,
Like quiet faces lined by years of joy.
We do not speak; the car slows to a halt.
We step into the hush of stunted pines,
Where breezes carry scents of root and rock,
And light plays gently on the mountain’s skin.

Here, where the stream has long since turned to air,
And trees grow only where the sky allows,
We touch the mountain’s heart—the broken stone,
Still warm with sun, still echoing with life.
So near, as dancers pressing side to side,
We hear the music of the stone itself:
A hush, a pulse, a breath drawn deep and slow.

The mountain does not boast—it simply stands.
Its beauty is not youthful, but profound;
It does not beckon, yet we long to stay.
Its years are gathered silence, etched in shale,
And in its weight we feel the soul of time.
This, too, is joy: to find what does not pass,
To feel the pull of something vast and still,
And know that we are part of what endures.

1059.

At midnight through the streets of Milan’s heart,
We wandered—empty Orso Italia
Lay like a dream beneath the city lamps.
Ortese walked beside us, soft in step,
With Massimo and Guido close at hand,
And others, half-remembered now by name,
Yet warm in presence, woven into light.

I held the hand of one small, laughing girl,
Her hair a nest of curls, her eyes like stars
Just waking in the hush of urban dark.
And suddenly she turned to me and said,
“It’s dark. When it is dark, we must be quiet.”

A child’s command, like wisdom from the wind—
So simple, yet it rang through time and thought.
And in that stillness, something deep took root:
Perhaps we must be quiet all the time,
Not out of fear, but out of reverence—
For life walks with us always, veiled in night,
And wonder lives where silence gently grows.

1060.

So vast, so full, so light with living grace,
Your eyes command your face like sovereign stars—
Not stern, but bright with inward majesty.
And from their depth, a gentle flame ascends,
A soul alight with joy too pure to bind.
It rises like the dawn from ocean’s edge,
Where sky and sea entwine in blue embrace,
That soft horizon swaying like a breath
Between two realms of wonder and of peace.

Our hearts reach out toward that quiet line,
As if to kiss the distance with our gaze,
To rest in hope upon its trembling thread.
And in that hush, our being folds its grief
Like garments left behind on distant shores,
And opens, wide and still, to every breeze—
The scent of days to come, the wind of now.

We see the past drift by like golden dust,
Soft ashes of our steps on roads once known,
Now glowing in the memory’s last light.
Your eyes, when open, summon forth the dawn,
And when they close, the world is wrapped in dusk.

1061.

The wheatfields shimmered under evening’s fire,
And in the sky one brilliant star held fast.
The Pentland Hills lay cloaked in violet hush,
As if the world itself were drawing breath.
I heard far off the hum of passing wheels,
A motor slipping through the winding road.
And by the hedge, the ripened corn leaned close—
The wind had sent it reaching for my hand—
A brief and golden gesture, then it swayed
Back to its place, as though it knew its task.

I felt it then, the star above was mine,
And all the fields around me, full and kind.
I looked upon the wheat and softly thought:
“Where blood was spilled, now crimson poppies grow;
Where once men stood, the silence lingers still,
And starlight blesses every upturned face.”

But no despair could settle in my chest—
For all the fallen find a path of light.
Above the earth, the sky swings wide with grace,
And even those who wander far and late
Will see the gleam and know which way to turn.
The wind, though mournful, sang of life renewed,
And I, with awe, looked up and softly said:
“The gates of Heaven never do close tight—
A star remains for those who walk by night.”

1062.

O poets not yet born, but soon to rise,
May you ascend like dawn across the hills—
With radiance drawn from earth and sky alike,
As red as bursting blooms in morning light.
When daybreak sings upon the quiet land,
May you awaken, countless as the birds,
To fill the air with wings and fearless thought.

I lift my voice in hope that you will come,
And find the sky I fashioned wide and clear,
Where every word may glide with open grace,
And verses soar like swallows through the wind.
I leave for you my blessing, warm and full,
A memory set in the tremble of strings—
Strike on the lyre the music I began,
And play the song that rises with the sun.

1063.

O gentle moonlight streaming through the pane,
You walk in veils of silver, calm and bright,
And draw the soul from shadows into peace—
Your touch is soft as breath upon the earth.
Within your glow, my restless thoughts dissolve,
And sorrow folds itself into your light.

You do not speak, yet all your silence sings.
I feel you lift the burdens from my chest,
As if your beams were woven from pure grace,
And mercy brushed my cheek with scented air.
O carry me into the tranquil mist—
A wisp of joy, dispersed yet never lost.

No need for bridal veils or blooms to prove
The sanctity of love that simply is.
The petals fall; the crown fades into earth—
But still I shine where your light makes its home.

So let me be the shimmer in your skirts,
The breath that floats beside your silver path,
The smile that rises softly with the dusk—
And never needs to ask for more than this.

1064.

If love has pierced your heart, then go, just once,
And walk the quiet breadth of winter fields.
There, joy expands in spaces left untouched—
A bounty in the hush of what remains,
The calm content of open-handed earth.
A few bright grains still glisten on the ground,
The gift of harvest lingering in frost.

If sorrow’s weight has ever touched your soul,
Then visit once the stillness of that field.
There, heaven speaks in every breath of cold,
And comforts loss with stars that do not end.
A pond reflects the sky’s unspoken grace—
Its gaze turned upward, tender, wide, and clear,
Mirroring longing in its patient eyes.

If longing lives within your deepest self,
Then seek the path that winds through winter’s hush.
There waits the wisdom silence often brings—
To watch is also to be truly seen,
To walk alone is not to walk apart.
The scarecrow stands beneath the open sky,
And feels the whole world turning in its chest.

1065.

I found a spider floating in my cup—
Its legs outstretched in still and sodden grace,
Its tiny form a marvel in the light,
Hair clung with steam, like silk caught in a dream.

The waiter, with Castilian dignity,
Said not a word—his silence eloquent,
As if the world were wise to hold its breath.
And truly, why should sorrow speak just then?

For I, not it, was stranger to that place,
The coffee not entirely my domain.
Who’s to declare what world a cup may hold,
What destinies dissolve in morning brew?

Perhaps the spider lived its final hour
As nobly as a sage beneath the stars,
And I, in seeing it, was blessed to think—
That even in so small a thing, there lies
The weight and wonder of all living breath.

One day, who knows, I too may gently drift
Into some broader cup not mine to name,
And someone, pausing, might look in and smile—
And learn, as I have, life is not our own,
But shared with all who stumble into light.

1066.

Each Sunday comes with ease upon the air,
A hush that settles kindly in my bones.
I lift my glass—light amber, crowned with foam—
And take it with a plate of radishes,
Their bite both sharp and clean upon the tongue,
And pistachios, that crack like firelight.

A boy, not tall enough to reach the bar,
Brings forth these humble gifts with open hands.
His eyes are wide, like windows just unlatched,
And in them swims the morning yet to come.

I pay him what the hour can afford,
Yet deep within I’d give him more than coin—
The steady voice that teaches how to mend,
The patience wrapped in stories at the fire,
The shelter of a laugh that means he’s safe.

O Sundays, you are soft as folded cloth,
And hold the world between your gentle palms.
I drink to life—not just the one I live,
But his as well, the yet-unwritten script
Of joys and trials he’s destined still to know.

And if, by grace, I cannot call him mine,
Still may he walk away with something warm,
A kindness passed like bread across a table,
A fleeting glimpse of what the world might be.

1067.

I cannot go to school today, I said,
My limbs were wrapped in aches too vast to name,
The fevered dreams of youth became my truth—
A galaxy of ailments I proclaimed.

The mirror showed a face I scarcely knew,
With cheeks like clouds and eyes of trembling blue,
Each breath a journey through imagined storms,
Each twinge a sign of some new epic war.

A rash of purple stars across my skin,
My throat a cave where winds would not be still,
My legs gave way, my arms betrayed my will,
And still I lay and listed every pain.

So strange it is, the body of a child—
So fierce, so fragile, and so swift to heal.
I built a kingdom on the edge of time,
Where measles sat like monarchs on my brow,
And chicken pox were soldiers at the gate.

I named each wound as if it were a friend,
And smiled to see how vast my empire grew.
For in that hour of strange self-pity’s grace,
I ruled the grand domain of what might be.

But then—a voice broke in, like sun through glass,
“You need not dress, my dear, for school is closed.
Today is Saturday.” And all at once,
The masks of ailment fell like leaves in wind.

My soul leapt up as though from winter freed,
And every burden vanished in the light.
How quick the world can turn, how swift we shift—
From shadows into joy with just one word.

I found my shoes and flung the door aside,
The sky was vast, the wind was full of songs.
No aches remained, no sorrow left to claim,
For youth, when freed, forgets all pain with play.

1068.

The forties came like thunder in the bones,
with iron trains and cries that split the dusk,
a rattle through the frost of distant lands.
Yet still we walked—our spirits hardly bent—
through fields made grave by fire and retreat,
where homes lay scorched, and sky was thin as glass.

That boy was me, wool cap askew with pride,
my badge of tin cut out from salvaged scrap.
Not regulation, no—but mine alone.
I stood beneath the hissing of the wires,
with rationed bread tucked warm against my coat,
and laughter poised like music in my mouth.

Yes, I was young, and joy clung to my ribs—
the joke half-told, the limp a play of charm.
I courted danger with a match and smoke,
rolled dreams in paper, lit them with my breath.
The girls all smiled; I gave what bread I had.
Who knew how much a crust could mean to joy?

We knew the war, of course—we smelled its weight,
the oil and ash, the telegrams and flags—
yet still we lived, as if the earth were kind.
And in that bitter space, the heart was wide,
and youth unshaken, though the guns did bark.

O what a strange and wondrous fate it was—
to carry both the sorrow and the spring,
to dance with fear and still believe in stars.
The forties—fateful, heavy, lined with grief—
yet brimming, too, with secrets of the soul.
For we were young, and all the world was vast,
and still we felt it pulsing with our steps.

War walked beside us like a ghost in boots,
but did not steal the wonder from our eyes.
And now, when silence hums across the years,
I feel it still—that fierce, unyielding light—
the glory not of peace, but love endured,
and all the things we gave with open hands.

1069.

A voice returns, though softened by the years,
no longer sharp enough to stir the ear,
yet still it echoes—like a warming bell—
across the hush where memory leans to rest.

It does not call from grief, though graves lie deep;
it brings the news of blossom and bright days,
a radiance that runs beneath the skin,
and lifts the lips with sweetness unforeseen.

I listen now—it is no ghost or myth,
but simply human, kind and full of breath,
that rides above the clang of daily war,
beyond the gossip’s tide, beyond the storm.

And you—can you not hear it in the air?
It whispers like a friend beside your path:
“The ache you carry soon will melt to peace.”
It hums, “A gentler season draws in close.”

Come—lean toward the hush beyond the noise.
There is a joy that outlives all despair.
Don’t you hear it? Even now—it sings.

1070.

At last, a law emerges from the dust—
a simple truth, discovered late in time:
that human life proceeds in growing curves,
in patterns woven deep, in arcs of light.

One grain of rice upon the checkerboard,
then two, then four, then eight—a world expands
by doubling dreams, by multiplying hopes.
Who knew what treasure slept in humble things?
The ancient king, astonished by the sum,
had never guessed such wealth in so small seeds.

And I—by time awakened from my play—
found both my hands still juggling joy and chance.
The earth was spinning faster, and I clung,
not out of fear, but not to miss the dance.
My hair, now streaked with sun and starless dusk,
was loosed like banners tossed upon the wind.
And still I laughed, and still I threw the dice.

The days peel off like petals from a rose,
and pages from the calendar fall soft.
The world grows leaner—yes—but not less full.
Its moisture feeds the roots of memory,
where smiles and dawns and glances still arise
as harbingers of joy not yet arrived.
We live along a curve of widening light—
this much I’ve learned.

And centuries from now,
a mind, perhaps more delicate than ours,
will feel the quiet hush of final thoughts—
not fear, but calm, the hurricane’s still eye,
and know how vast the sum of all that was.

The dice will roll once more and come to rest.
And all will pause to see their upward face—
those ancient dots, now stars against the dark—
and feel, with awe, how far the light has reached.

1071.

At last, his limbs at rest, the fight long done,
he asks no more for glory or for crowns.
Enough of that—enough of cheers and praise,
the banners raised by hands that hid their aims.
He knew the difference now: between the mask
of fondness and the gaze of honest light.
The hero’s friends, the foes, the faceless crowd—
they blurred together like a morning fog
and passed away, like tales once told in fire.

Now here, on Leuce’s bright and wind-swept isle,
he walks alone, but not in solitude.
No sword, no oath, no need to wear the helm,
no pomp of valor’s pretense in his step—
only the sea, the salt, the sun, the sky,
the soft-footed goats who graze among the rocks,
and silence, vast and humming with the stars.
He tastes the world without its warlike spice—
the ocean’s tang, the hush of twilight winds,
the slow descent of constellated thought.
He’s come to love the ease of being small,
to smile upon the futility of fame,
which, like a tide, withdrew as it had come.

But even now, they chase him—those who build
their statues, light their flames, and chant his name.
They bring their garlands, gifts, and tributes due,
and after all their prayers they leave again.
Only the gulls remain with constancy,
each morning winging down to greet the shore,
to skim the foam, then rise and softly sweep
the floor of his new temple with their flight.
Their dancing wings more sacred than men’s hymns.

And in their rise, a rhythm moves the air—
perhaps a poem forming without words,
a silent ode to life beyond the clash.
And he, now gentle, laughs with kindness deep,
not scornful, but amused by all their noise:
their baskets packed with eggs, their singing tins,
the records spinning songs of other loves.
He welcomes them, these travelers of hope,
and knows he’ll smile again to see her come—
the Helen who had launched so many sails.
Yes, even now, he waits to see her face—
not for its ruin, but its radiant dream.

1072.

Far below the restless waves where light grows shy,
Where silent currents rock the sleeping forms,
A miracle descends—soft petals drift
Like pink-hued snowflakes through the liquid night.

What joyful paradox! That blossoms bright
Should visit realms where flowers never grew,
Bestowing spring’s sweet benediction where
No root may anchor, no green leaf unfurl.

Rejoice, you dreamers of the sunless deep!
Though surface worlds may bloom and fade unseen,
The cherry tree remembers all its children—
Sending love notes down through shifting blue.

How tenderly they fall, these floral kisses,
Each petal whispering as it descends:
“Sleep well, but know you’re cherished from above—
The earth still sends its beauty to your graves.”

What wisdom in this gentle visitation—
That death and slumber know their seasons too,
That even in the realm of endless dark
Life finds a way to scatter petals bright.

O blessed union of the high and low!
The tree that dances in April’s warm breath
Shares its glory with the sunless deep—
Proof that love transcends both depth and death.

So rest, you sleepers, in your coral beds,
While blossoms fall like stars through liquid space—
Each fragile petal sings eternity,
And heaven blooms in most unexpected grace.

1073.

I sailed at spring’s bright edge from Acapulco,
the twenty-third of March, our sails full set
and holding course across the breathing sea.
For twelve days more, the ocean sang beneath us,
until, on April fourth—before the dawn—
the moonlight spilled across the quiet swells
and showed us, near at hand, a second shape:
a ship, all silver-sailed and bow agleam,
as if it rode from some enchanted coast.

The helmsman cried, “Stand off!” into the dark—
but silence answered. All aboard were still,
asleep perhaps, or holding breath with fate.
Then came their voices: “From Peru,” they said,
and after, trumpets, muskets, quick commands.
They bade me cross the sea to meet their lord.

I found him walking calmly on his deck,
his coat a blaze of reds and ocean hues,
his beard like rust beneath the rising sun.
He asked what gold or silver lay aboard,
and I, with care, replied, “None save my cups—
no treasure, sir, no hoard—just simple wares.”
He asked me if I knew the Viceroy’s name;
I nodded, and in turn inquired of him:
“Are you not Drake, the one the tales proclaim?”
He smiled: “I am the very one you name.”

We spoke together long, until the bells
of dinner rang. He set a place for me
beside him as the violins began—
a song that seemed to rise from wind and tide.
His dishes, cups of silver trimmed with gold,
his crest upon their gleam, declared his pride.
Perfumes and oils, crystal flasks of grace,
he told me were the Queen’s own gifts to him.
And painters moved about to sketch the coast—
to keep the land alive within their lines.

He was not old—some twenty-four, at most—
but all the sea had entered in his stride.
A reddish beard, the eyes of one who dreams
with compass, map, and storm against his chest.
He dressed in splendid garments for the feast,
and raised his flags, a choir of colored flame,
their pennants dancing in the early light.
The rails, the lamps, the deck rings shone like fire—
his ship a dragon clad in molten gold
that roamed the waves among the leaping dolphins.

With joy he came to see my humble things,
and lingered long, delighting in each box—
but took so little that I laughed with ease.
A cutlass and a brassart did he give
in trade, and asked forgiveness with a bow:
“They’re for my lady,” he said, with gentle tone,
“and I shall leave at dawn, if winds permit.”
I thanked him, and I kissed his open hands.

Three thousand bars of silver, tightly stored,
he carried in his galleon; coffers full
of gold and Spanish coin, twelve more besides.
He meant to sail to China by the stars,
his path charted by one he’d caught at sea—
a Chinese pilot, patient at the helm.

And as he stood atop the singing deck,
his sails aloft and colors in the wind,
I saw within his youth a blazing truth:
that some are born not merely to possess,
but to transform the world by how they move—
their ships like legends carved in golden light,
their names like echoes, joyful on the tide.

1074.

You lift your shirt and show me where you’ve fought—
not with the world, but with the self beneath,
a soldier of the soul, who goes to war
each morning just to stand and breathe again.
You speak of battles with the other you,
the one who haunts your edges like a mist,
who threads the dark between your ribs and eyes,
and sometimes makes your own hands feel like chains.

Yet still you rise, and still your bones endure.
The thread that holds you—woven, frayed, but bright—
still sings its taut, invisible refrain.
And though you dive, and rarely seek the air,
your heart recalls the sky with every beat.

How beautiful the soul that fights itself—
how brave the one who wrestles and remains.
You are not broken, only carved by time,
and from the chisel comes a form more true.

So when you speak of wounds, I see the light—
a diver’s light, deep-sea and glimmering—
that flickers still beneath the weight of night.
For in your silence, joy begins to bloom:
the joy of one who lives and knows he lives.

1075.

O sovereign crowned with everlasting snow,
who stands in silence at the edge of sky,
majestic peak where first the sun appears—
how many ages have you kept your post,
unchained, unbowed, content with breath and time?
You do not shout your power to the stars,
and yet the stars align along your brow.

The winds have sung your praises in their course,
and clouds have wrapped you in their drifting hymn.
You speak in stillness, yet the world has heard—
a presence felt in every field below.
What thoughts are those you hold within your stone?
What ancient truth do you still contemplate,
alone with sky and space for company?

Yet joy blooms here, and not in spite of weight—
but through the weight of time and memory.
Your height is not a wall but invitation,
a gesture made toward all who wish to climb.
You give, and never ask, your melting snows
become the blessing rivers of the land,
each stream a thread of love from peak to plain,
each one a promise whispered into roots.

O guardian of the east and morning winds,
how often have you watched the tides of men
come to your feet with hopes or swords in hand!
You have outlived them all, yet never turned
your back on any dream that sought the good.

And now, O mountain, radiant with time,
be glad again, though fires stir below—
for even in the anguish of the world,
you hold a light the world cannot extinguish.
Each flower that dares to bloom upon your flanks,
each eagle wheeling through your upper winds,
is joy enough to keep our spirits firm.

So when we falter, mountain, call us back—
back to your silence, vast and echoing,
back to the beauty of the breath itself,
to stand, and watch, and marvel we exist.

O monarch of the morning light, we rise
because you rise, and dream because you stand.

1076.

There is a fragrance wandering the air—
not sorrow’s weight, but memory set free,
perhaps the scent of brothers far from home
who dream beneath a different sky tonight,
whose laughter clings to linen left behind,
a threadbare shirt still fragrant in the wind.

No, this is not the scent of fear or loss,
nor any trace of cruelty’s sharp breath—
I know the musk of courage when it comes,
the perfume of a body bearing pain
not with defeat, but something close to grace.

It is the echo of a leopard’s pace,
its fur brushed through the dewy undergrowth,
the hush of hooves among the mountain stones,
and smoke that curls from cotton over flame
beneath a moon that watches without haste.
It is the dove’s soft plume beside the well,
the color blue remembering the sky.

This breeze, this bluster rich with restless joy,
awakens all the longing we have loved—
the kind that bends us gently toward return.
The past is not a wound but a deep well
that calls us to its waters once again.
And even wounds—old travelers of the flesh—
open not to bleed, but to receive light.

For in this scent, this exhalation sweet,
I sense not grief but motion, change, and hope.
Yes, something stirs—the old roads stretch their arms,
and every breeze becomes a gentle sign
that life moves on, and yet, we still belong.

1077.

I
I shaped a word with reverent, open hands,
then set it gently in your palm to hold—
a spark, a seed, a little trembling star.
It shimmered as you counted slowly, two,
and opened—light spilled out like morning dew.

II
Each night, before sleep drew its dusky veil,
I summoned dreams and gave them form and breath.
A voice would rise where shadow used to be,
and from the air, more pure than any flesh,
a self was born, translucent, radiant, whole.
He was not mine, and yet he bore my voice.
He pressed his lips to mine in wordless grace,
and clothed me in the skin of all my hopes.
He changed with every moon, each time reborn,
yet always known, for I had named him so.

III
To call on solitude, I chose a day
as fresh as spring’s first apple, crisp and clean.
I locked away all books, all tired thoughts,
and walked beneath a tree whose limbs had known
no sin. I whispered, smiling to the wind:
“O solitude, I love you—come, remain.”

IV
When joy had come and gone—its wine poured out,
its women vanished in the folds of time—
I cupped my hand to sip the twilight air
and spoke these words into the wind’s embrace:
“As pleasure cleansed my mouth of restless speech,
O water, cleanse my hidden soul anew.”

V
I learned a prayer for night’s last fading light—
a gentle plea to still the anxious eye:
“O Adonis, stay beside my bed,
and walk with me through death’s soft-shadowed veil.
Let dreams restore me, let my angel come,
and let that angel walk the world as woman.”

VI
On days spun through with silk and lullabies,
no devil creeps, no angel dares to move.
Yet solitude returns, a secret guest,
and knocks without a sound upon the door.
Then I must speak, but not with lips or breath:
“O rival friend, I come to sit with you.”

VII
Where once I called the moon with aching voice,
let her appear again, as pale, as kind.
The words I spoke still echo in the dusk:
“Here, in this place, where I once raised my hands,
let her return.” And so I wait, and watch.

VIII
I’ve heard you say, “A demon’s in my skin.”
But do not fear. Just close the door and hush.
The room will darken. Whisper in the dark:
“O angel, angel, angel,” thrice by name.
Then strike a match, light incense from the East,
and with three rings of smoke, entrap the beast.

IX
To know when she must weep in secret grace,
tie ‘round the calendar her silken scarf.
Say nothing. Wait. Each day, a lily pin
upon her breast—watch it begin to blush.

X
A whisper comes: “They lie to you, beware.”
But take the warning, twist it in your palm,
and cast it forth into the wind with fire:
“The circle’s broken, you no longer rule.”
And never shall that voice return again.

XI
To know if joy shall cry or shout with pride,
unveil her brow and let her speak a name—
perhaps “distaff,” and a daughter will arise
to bring the sun within your roof and soul.
Or “amaranth,” and then a son will bloom,
to plant his kiss upon his mother’s cheek.
But if she’s silent, do not grieve too long—
for one day, he shall sing on her behalf.

XII
A dove with clouded wings flew into night.
No lamp was lit. No magic spell was sung.
She came and said: “Though I must guard my love,
I love you still.” Her voice was faint with fear.
I said, “O dove, so blind with purity,”
and light returned to her, and sight as well.
But who shall speak now that her tongue is still?
The word remains, unspoken, in our hands.

XIII
I named the fountain, named the waters too,
and they became a mirror for my soul.
I peeled the veil away and there they were—
the countless eyes, the voices in the stone.
They answered back in riddles and in waves.
And so I said: “Let mirrors fall like rain.”
And shattered they became, yet multiplied—
a thousand selves returned my gaze each day.
I called on stars and moon and boundless night,
and sang their names as if they were my own.
And then I said one word: the word was Love.
At once, the truest mirror did appear—
it was not glass but warm and pulsing life.
It knew me, matched me, and from my own ribs
another self was born—no Narcissus,
but a twin whose gaze gave birth to joy,
and from the mirrored waters rose the truth.

1078.

This is the scent that drifts upon the breeze—
not loss, but something richer, more alive,
perhaps the breath of those who once were near,
my brothers, radiant with longing’s light,
their memories sewn into a tattered shirt
that dances freely in the morning air.

No, not the reek of hunger or of blood,
not wolves who tear the silence from the flank,
but gentler signs—those whispers in the mist—
the musk of leopards resting from the chase,
the forest inked with trails of vanished steps,
the echo of a horse’s softest cry
among the stones where mountains hold their breath.

The cotton burnt beneath a silver moon
smells not of pain, but of a fire once kindled
to warm the hands of those who sought the night.
The dove’s blue feathers, fallen in a well,
recall the grace that never truly leaves—
the stillness where a heartbeat once had sung.

This wind that stirs the leaves, this restless gust,
it carries not despair, but recognition.
Our hearts, grown quiet, lift to meet the air,
and dream again of reasons once embraced.
Old wounds may stir and yawn beneath the skin,
but not in fear—no, only in renewal,
as if to ask, “What joy shall wake me next?”

The scent of parting? No—it is return.
It is the earth exhaling memory,
and all our breath joins in the ancient song.
Yes, something rises now across the hills—
not exile, but the promise of a road.

1079.

I
I weighed the word—its shape, its magnitude,
its need for silence, space, and reverence.
With care I set it gently on your palm,
and told you, “Hold it fast, and count to two—
the hardest task of all.” Then loose your grip:
a little star will shimmer in your hand.

II
Each night I sealed with dreams, and from the dark,
I summoned one I’d shaped from clearer air.
He bore no mark of shadow, nor was he
a creature born from dusk, but made himself
from breath, from stillness, from the hush of thought.
He came to me, this angel-void of glass,
and clung with tender weight upon my lips,
until my words were shaped by voice not mine.
And each new form he wore I gave a name,
and hid him where my hidden joy could rest.

III
To make the solitude a gentle friend,
I chose a spotless day, and locked my books,
then walked beneath the kindest tree with fruit.
And said, as if with trust: O solitude,
I hold you close, I love you, don’t depart.

IV
After delight—be it from wine or touch—
I see you in the waters and the glass.
Before I dive again into such joy,
I sip from cupped hands water sweet and cool,
and whisper to it words like blessing’s kiss:
O miracle of clarity, wash clean
the hidden body that my soul has worn.

V
At night I learned a prayer to hush my sleep:
O Adonis, let your grace remain,
beside me while I cross into that death
which ends with dawn. Dream me an angel bright,
but let her voice be woman, fierce and kind.

VI
Some days are spun from silk, so still, so bright,
no demon dares to enter, nor does grace.
On such a day, to summon solitude
is fruitless—yet in silence I confess:
My silent twin, I walk with you again.

VII
Where once I called the moon, let her appear—
for I have worn my voice with that one name.
I seek no trick of light nor fleeting dream.
Let her come forth, not as a lie, but truth.

VIII
Sometimes, Ernesto, I have heard your fear—
a shadow pressing close upon your skin.
But do not fear. Just close the doors and windows.
Whisper “angel” thrice, and you shall find
how tame that demon turns beneath your breath.
Light up a fragrant gift from distant shores,
form rings of white, a column made of smoke,
and there, within, entrap the restless shape.

IX
If you would know the day she’s meant to weep,
then tie her veil around the calendar.
Each morning, pin a lily to her breast—
and watch it blush to know what’s yet to come.

X
A voice may whisper: “They deceive you—run!”
But do not heed it blindly. Hold your hand
and say instead: “You’ve spoken what I know,
but I shall break the circle, and be free.”
You drowned its venom in your living breath.

XI
To know the nature of the child to come,
let her unveil the darkness from her eyes,
and speak one name, if she recalls it not.
If she says “swallow,” or the word is “loom,”
then joy shall wear a daughter’s golden braid.
But if she names a flower—say, “amaranth”—
a son shall kiss her hand, and plant delight.
If she says nothing, be not sorrowful—
a poet walks within her, mute with light.

XII
A dove, though blind, descended on my room.
No flame was lit, no chant upon the air.
She said, “It is not true I do not love—
it’s only that my mother dreams in fear.”
I said to her: “O dove, your blindness shines,”
and at that word, her sight returned to her.
But now, who speaks the word I long to hear?
She’s silent, with no voice to shape the verb.

XIII
I often said: “the fountain, and the spring.”
I wove their forms with care to befriend them.
And so they changed—became a glinting glass.
I parted veils that none but dreamers lift,
and saw beyond the mirror: eyes that stared,
and echoes in the wall, not meant for sense.
The mirror lied, yet held my longing gaze.
And so I said, “Let shattering begin.”
Each morning, after water, I would break
the face that lied to me. But in the shards—
O marvel!—there I was again, and more.
I spoke again: “the stars, the moon, the night,”
and shaped these words until they called a truth.
Then said I once: “Love.” And at that word
the mirror did not lie, nor did it break.
It showed not just the shell of what I am,
but bore the full reflection of my soul,
my origin, my twin, born at my side.
And from opposing waters I arose—
no longer deceived, but seeing myself whole.

1080.

I asked the teacher, gently, with a smile,
to show my son the heart of Africa—
its breath, its breadth, its rhythm and its song.
But she replied, “There are no books for that,
none suited to the age, the time, the class.”
And still I paused, then softly said again:
“But look how far we’ve come, how high we’ve climbed,
this continent of ours, still rising up—
a tower of strength, a chorus of bright dawns!”

Yet in the nursery, the books all speak
in other voices, borrowed from afar.
The toys bear names not sung in any drum.
The stories, maps, and dreams are not our own.
They come from lands that never knew our dust.
The language of the hills, the trees, the stars—
it does not echo in these plastic songs.

My countrymen, how shall we build a mind,
a sovereign thought, if all our tools are made
to mirror foreign paths? The soul grows pale
when roots are buried in another’s soil.

They call this Africa a jungle still—
yet jungles teem with life, and skyward stretch
with trees more ancient than their tallest books.
Why, then, import a ladder through the leaves,
when every branch could lift us by its strength?
Why seek the scaffolds drawn in foreign ink,
when we can climb on metaphors our own?

You see it now—the kind of game they play:
to praise us when we imitate their steps,
but scoff when we invent a path of joy.
This is the trick of tongues that fear the dawn—
to give us masks, while calling it a gift,
and steal the songbird, yet deny the song.

But we—yes, we!—we still can write anew,
with laughing hearts and hands that shape the truth.
We are not shadows of another’s dream;
we are the day itself, and we shall rise—
our books, our ladders, built from roots and flame,
and every leaf shall bear our children’s names

1081.

Sweet voices rise from steel and trembling wheels—
machines that hum the music of your name.
The world, refined to crystals, pure as flame,
sings out in awe, in joy, in great delight.

From stones once cast in mischief or in fear,
to those not yet disturbed from ancient sleep—
they echo still with longing born of you,
who walk among us, radiant with breath.

Because you live, the smallest cause is crowned.
Your leg, fifteen and fleet, declares the dawn
more boldly than a thousand golden skies.
Because you speak, the things that once were dumb
now marvel at their own remembered names—
a miracle repeated on your tongue.

And when your breast begins to curve with time,
it forms a little sphere of holiness—
a cosmos drawn in flesh and reverence,
a living sign that joy was meant to bloom.

For all the world, which moaned for something more,
now turns its head and sees you—whole and new.
And in your light, it finds its cause to sing.

1082.

Not every soul can name the song it sings
when watching piers grow distant with the tide—
nor guess the shape the wind shall take at last,
or what delight awaits beyond the foam.

Yet some will hum a tune beneath their breath,
as sea-light dances on the quiet decks,
and feel the world, once feared to be withdrawn,
draw closer still in forms they’ve never touched.

When time has passed for pruning rose or vine,
for stroking fur, or gazing at the stars,
the moon will still lay silver on the waves,
and sunsets blaze within the heart anew.

What waits beyond the threshold is not loss,
but something strange and vivid, deep with peace—
the sky transformed into a memory
that stirs with wonder, not with grief or end.

The past leans lightly, like a resting hand.
The air, no longer marked by weight or name,
becomes the breath of one great living tale—
and birds once frozen break again to flight.

And though the ship may vanish from the shore,
the soul aboard it turns, begins to sing.

1083.

No troubles linger now on land or wave—
The wide world opens like a lover’s arms!
Let no excuse take root in fearful hearts
When every road now sings of sweet depart.

Though these eyes haven’t seen what distant shores hold,
The travelers return with wonder-tales—
Of kindness blooming where the stranger treads,
Of borders melting like morning mist.

Rejoice! For in this age of loosened chains,
The timid may become explorers brave—
Each sunset beckons to new dawns ahead,
Each unknown path now promises delight.

What joyful truth the journeying souls confirm—
That earth was made for wandering and return,
That fear builds walls where bridges ought to span,
And every “there” connects back to “here.”

O blessed news that turns our gaze afar!
No more shall doubt anchor us to the pier—
The tides are kind, the winds all whisper “Come!”
And life’s best chapters wait to be begun.

So pack your bags with dreams and little more—
The world’s too wide to watch from closed doors—
For those who go shall surely come back saying:
“More glory waits than we had dreamed portraying.”

1084.

I say—you are the April of the world,
a breath made visible, the soul in bloom,
whose laughter moves the air in dancing waves,
and teaches light to flicker like a song.

You are the hush that rises with the dawn,
when earth, still dreaming, wakens with a blush—
the mellow dusk that stirs the budding trees,
the sky half-laced with stars, the scent of rain
that mingles wine-like in the opening flowers.

That quiet poise, that grace of falling light,
that crown of petals touched by morning’s gold—
is you, a gleam of innocence and calm,
a dignity that knows no boast nor pride.
You are the moon that visits every night
and bathes the dark in contemplative peace.

The ivory thaw, the snow now turned to stream,
the shoots of green that pierce the thawing earth—
all speak your name in whispers made of joy.
Each ripple on the lake, each lotus bloom,
bears dreams that once you cradled in your sleep.

You are the trees in blossom at the gate,
the swallows threading songs across the eaves,
you are the warmth that lingers on the skin
when winter yields, and hearts begin to stir.
You are the hush before a lover speaks,
you are the hand that lifts, the eyes that shine—
you are the April of this living world.

1085.

Behold how branches sway in joyful trance
When winds come calling with their wild embrace—
A sacred dialogue of push and pull
Where rooted things and roaming air unite.

Then mark the hush when leaves no longer tremble,
That golden silence when the wind takes rest—
As if the earth and sky had made agreement
To pause and breathe between their lively talks.

Rejoice! For in this ancient conversation
Lies nature’s wisdom, simple yet profound—
The art of being moved yet standing firm,
Of singing loud then listening with grace.

What tender lessons these green dancers teach us:
That stillness follows every whirl of motion,
That those who bend with life’s tempestuous gusts
Remain unbroken when the storm departs.

O blessed balance of the loud and quiet!
The trees don’t mourn when winds forget to blow—
They stand with patient joy in sunlit silence,
Knowing the breeze will always come again.

So let us dance when spirit moves through us,
And rest serene when life grows calm and still—
For rooted souls who partner with the changing
Find music in both movement and its pause.

The greatest growth occurs in this sweet rhythm—
The wind’s bold kiss, the sun’s more subtle touch—
Each working on the ever-living timber
To shape the pattern of our shared becoming.

1086.

The water sings its way through patient stone,
and carves a path no chisel could foresee.
The wind, light-hearted, lifts the fleeing drops,
then flings them wide across the waiting earth.
And yet, the stone endures their passing quarrel—
a quiet witness, still in all its thought.

The wind may bend the grasses, shake the trees,
and trace its music round the mountain’s edge,
but stone, a bowl of time, receives the rain,
and lets it linger, vanish, live again.
The water seeks escape, and finds the air—
transfigured now into the breath of wind.

And in this turning, each becomes the next:
the wind that hums along the rocky face,
the water’s whisper threading through the cracks,
the stone, unmoved, that keeps the memory still.
Together they compose the earth’s slow song—
wind, water, stone—each voice a sacred chord.

No element alone defines the world;
each trades its form in joy, without regret.
The water once was stone, the stone was wind,
the wind a wandering stream beneath the sky.
What seems to part returns, and what returns
arrives transformed, yet bearing the same name.

In passing through each other, they become—
no longer fixed, yet never truly lost.
Their names dissolve like echoes in the air,
but something deeper holds them all as one:
the joy of change, the gravity of peace—
in water, wind, and stone, the world reflects.

1087.

She lay with hair cropped short about her neck,
Apollo’s kin in poise and radiant mien,
Upon a narrow bed of woven light,
As if the stars had folded into cloth.
No shadow weighed upon her waking limbs,
But silence held her in a breathless calm.

She dreamed of Artemis, the huntress free,
Whose arrows, bright with silver, sang through night—
Not pain, but piercing insight passed her bones,
And marked her with the clarity of dawn.
She was not changed, but met herself anew,
And felt the hush before a door unlatches.

He came not as a victor, nor a thief,
But like a youth returning from a dream—
His body fragrant with the balm of earth,
And reverent hands that sought no conquest there.
He knelt, and paused, and listened to the stillness,
As if it held the secrets of the gods.

She reached to him—not as defense, but rite—
And felt his breath like wind against her cheek.
They stood upon the ledge of what may be,
Two minds not lost, but meeting at their edge.
And in the hush, no cries of struggle rose,
But breath and pulse, and then—at last—one kiss.

Their bodies, warm with effort and delight,
Entwined not out of power, but of peace.
And in their sweat, like rain upon the fields,
The seeds of joy and understanding stirred.
For love is not a wrestle, but return—
To what we are, in union and release.

1088.

Stay with me now—awaken to this truth:
Our springtime years have danced their fleeting waltz,
Yet in their passing left us richer far
Than untouched buds that never felt the sun.

Oh, let me taste those vibrant years again—
Twenty’s bold nectar, thirty’s ripened wine—
But sweeter still, this season’s fragile bloom
That knows both frost and morning’s tender kiss.

See how the winter comes with strange delight,
Dusting the snow with flowers’ memory!
These silver threads upon my weathered brow
Are love’s own ledger, bright with sacred marks.

What joy! That hearts may fall in love anew
Though seasons pile like fallen petals round—
Each wrinkle maps where laughter made its home,
Each strand of white a moonlit rendezvous.

I long to tend that garden once again
Where nightingales and blossoms shared their songs—
Not to reclaim what time has borne away,
But prove love’s firework never burns to ash.

Rejoice! For in this aging body dwells
A youth more precious for its fleeting grace—
The kind that knows each numbered day’s true worth,
That plants while others pluck, and gives while others take.

Stay with me as we greet the coming spring—
Not as the flowers we were, but wiser blooms
Who’ve weathered storms yet kept their fragrance true,
Whose roots grow deeper as their stems grow frail.

For look—beneath this crown of winter’s gold
Beats the same heart that loved you long ago,
Now richer for its scars, more bright for tears,
And ready yet to set the world aflame.

O kind companion, open wide your eyes!
Our youth has flown like cherry petals blown—
But in their place remains the sturdy tree
That blossoms still, though seasons come and go.

What greater hope than this—that love survives
All calendars, all mirrors, all goodbyes?
That every age may find its perfect fire,
And every heart rebirth itself anew?

So stay, and let us weave from silvered threads
A tapestry more glorious than gold—
For love’s last act outshines its opening scene
When souls stay young though bodies wise and old.

1089.

At times, I turn from verse, avert my gaze—
not always, but when morning pulses red,
and shadows stretch along the plastered walls,
when dishes break like time across the floor,
and life unspools, a thread from out the dark,
I let the world go on without the poem.

I cast off sorrow with a laughing breath,
and greet the ache with open, steady palms.
When hues run wild—those blues, those yellows bright,
when orange flares like sunrise in my soul—
I do not curse, I simply set it down,
and step away from verse with quiet joy.

For there are days your glance will twist my core,
your eyes, twin stars, will pull me from myself,
and I, bewildered by the depth of you,
will walk past words, and let the silence speak.

And more—though not forever, not each hour—
I leave behind the poem on the bench,
where young ones dream and scribble future names,
and lovers etch their longing into oak.
There, let it wait, a folded page of light,
a relic of the joy I could not write.

Yet in the moments when I look away,
the poem, like breath, keeps pulsing in the room.
Though I may scorn its form, it shapes my days—
the pause, the gaze, the hush before a laugh,
the tremble of the cup held in the hand.
And even when I say, “I need it not,”
I find it blooming softly at my feet.

1090.

The hummingbird’s wings stitch dawn to crimson branch—
O tiny lightning!—while beneath this earth
I bury yesterday’s dead calendar,
A hundred wilted days like fallen sparrows
Released from time’s relentless yoke at last.

See how my drunken feet unspool the road,
Two green-fruit eyes swinging above the world!
The path, long faded, sprouts beneath my tread—
A fugue tree shooting pebbles from its slingshot,
Startling awake the lark time forgot.

Rejoice! For between night’s parentheses
Rises the world’s first morning born anew—
Some door unopened creaks its golden hinge,
Some king more radiant than the sun’s own name
Fills our worn shoes with azure currency.

Behold the girl who drinks the well’s blue sky,
Her apron billowing with captured wind!
Hark how the spider-thrush weaves melody
Through trembling grasses on the sun-washed hill!
Life! cry the reed-men by their iron stalls.

My happiness—barefoot boy on morning’s flank—
Shakes the great aviary tree awake,
While death kneels gentle as a llama’s fleece,
Molding itself to cradle, not to crush.

O nerve-tree rooted deep in dawn’s bright loom,
O hands that steer the sun’s own golden rudder—
We are the world’s first test and final proof,
Our voices minted in the air’s high dome.

Hunter no more, but gatherer of light,
I tie not bleeding birds but blossoms now—
Each petal proof that joy outlasts the night,
Each moment ripe with what the next will show.

So rise with me, wordless yet singing friend,
And let your voice unearth eternity—
For we’ve returned from morning’s green frontier
To find the whole world kneeling at our feet,
Not in surrender, but in ecstasy.

1091.

Among the trees whose branches catch the light
like lifted hands adorned with morning’s grace,
I walk as one who listens to the stars—
not lost, but hushed by marvel, gently called
by voices woven deep into the bark.
A paper dog I may have once been called,
yet now I howl in joy beneath the moon,
not made of paper, but of radiant truth.

The night is not a gate to fearful dreams,
but open wide with stories still untold—
a book whose pages flutter in the breeze,
inviting me to write and walk within.
No goblins come, nor curses twist the air;
instead, the forest hums with waking light,
each shadow but a shape not yet made known.
And I, who once stood startled by the dark,
now feel the pulse of living in my limbs.

Whom do I call for, here beneath the leaves?
Who lies beside me in this breath of peace?
The answer is the sea in all its moods,
abundant, wild, and patient as a heart
that beats against the shores of all I am.
I do not stand alone, nor washed ashore—
the tides have carved a temple in my chest,
and I am rock, not wreckage, in this night.

Three slender candles tremble in my hand—
they drip like blessings, slow and purposeful:
one for the ocean, vast and full of change,
one for the mountain, rooted in the sky,
and one for me, the soul that stands between—
a flame whose flicker dances toward the dawn.
In wax and warmth, the living light takes shape,
and I, reborn, step forward from the trees.

1092.

Your sleep is too sacred for my clumsy hands—
That sun-kissed skin might shatter at my touch
Like ancient parchment bearing holy words.
I haunt your dreams like some discordant note,
A shadow in your bright, unfamiliar home.

Waiting feels like watching distant sails appear—
What storms have weathered you? What secret scars
Might stain my ordered world with foreign tales?
Each time I plant perfection in straight rows,
Wildflowers burst forth, mocking my design.

O love, how time distorts our purest seeds!
This body bears the mildew of long absence,
These damp palms proof of restless vigilance.
Even awake, I wander half-asleep—
A stranger to myself and all safe harbors.

Yet come back! Let our broken edges meet—
Not like puzzle pieces forced to interlock,
But as two rivers joining, each distinct
Yet greater for their mingled imperfections.
We’ll build new altars from the fallen stones.

Rejoice! For in this tender recognition—
That we are flawed, that love is risk, not cure—
Lies our salvation: not to fix or change,
But witness, honor, tremble, and endure.

The clean house matters less than honest hands,
The perfect garden less than truthful weeds—
So wake, dear traveler, from your long voyage,
And find your rest right here, in this raw now,
Where love means touching gently what might break,
And staying anyway.

1093.

You lie in stillness, wrapped in tender light,
too whole to touch, too fragile to disturb.
Your breath, a hush upon the fabric world,
is not for me to shape or wake too soon—
I watch and learn the beauty of restraint.

Your skin, sun-kissed, is not a call to take,
but something born of earth and time and grace.
I wait beside you as one waits for spring,
not out of need, but joy at what may come—
a blooming mind returned from journeys far.

I do not fear what storms your dreams have met,
nor what strange harvests you have brought to shore.
Even where once I planted perfect rows,
the weeds that sprang were green with stubborn life.
O bright companion of my seeking days,

how absence deepens presence in the soul.
Your sleeping face reveals what time cannot:
that love abides, and still the body learns
to soften where it once held tight and closed.
So here I stay, with open hands and heart,

awake with you in sleep, and still myself,
no longer lost, but patient in the dark.
And when you rise, I will not ask you why,
nor where you’ve been, nor what you had to lose—
only: you’re here, and now begins again.

1094.

Hush now, and hear the treetop’s golden whistle—
The sun today outshines heaven’s shadow!
Let mournful bells and matins fade to silence,
For Fionn himself once followed this bright piping
Through Norse mist-veils to bring back living music.

See how it gilds each branch with dawn’s own wonder,
Teaching mankind to welcome morning’s glory!
He loved the grouse’s warning call at daybreak,
The huntsmen’s cries, the swan-clouds on Loch Erne—
Yet none compared to this hawthorn’s joyful aria.

No cloistered bell in stone-bound cells can rival
What knowledge dances through these sunlit branches.
Hear how my plumage shakes with heaven’s rhythm—
This song will stitch new life into your leather,
And write God’s gospel in the wind’s own hand.

Rejoice! For when we listen to creation,
The very air becomes a sacred text—
Each leaf a page, each birdsong a bright letter
Spelling out truths no mortal school could teach.

So pause, Patric, from your solemn labors—
The living world sings matins far more true
Than any tower bell or darkened chapel.
This beak’s gold message needs no translation:
Just open ears, a heart attuned to wonder,
And dawn will teach you all you need to know.

What holy wisdom in this feathered choir!
That turns workaday satchels into treasure,
And proves the divine dwells not just above us,
But in each sunlit branch that sways and sings.

1095.

When they begin to smile, and through that smile
let slip a song half-born of thought and ache,
you’ll hear it then—the joy beneath the grief,
the tremble in the voice that dares to love.

They speak of noses, cruel in their design,
which fail to scent the sweetness in the air—
the musk of love unspoken, passing near.
They speak of hearts, soft as unfashioned clay,
and wonder why such vessels bear no spine,
no bone to feel the weight of longing’s pull.

Yet still they speak, and still their music grows.
They bless the throat for not anchoring down,
for letting love ascend without a root—
a flowering without the need for soil,
a song that climbs the wind and scatters seed.

O friend, do not take flight when love speaks so.
Do not mistake this wonder for a wound.
Stand still. Let every word fall like spring rain.
This is the body striving to rejoice,
to name its joy in shapes too strange for prose.

For what is life if not the ache to tell,
in flawed, imperfect sound, that we have loved—
and still, in spite of all, we love again?

1096.

This morning on the wind-swept cliffside ledges,
The starlings sang with unfamiliar vigor—
Not quite their summer tune, yet not quite foreign—
A melody both rooted and adventurous.

Below them, violets brave the lingering chill,
Their blue faces upturned to pallid sunlight,
While in the field’s embrace, winter still lingers—
White patches clinging to the plow’s deep traces.

My northern city wears her seven bridges
Like tarnished silver buckles on a grey coat,
Their weary pilings groaning under ice
That cracks and shifts with spring’s insistent whisper.

Yet high above the clouds’ oppressive blanket,
A lark’s clear aria pierces through like hope—
My children, still abed, will understand it
Before their sleepy eyes greet morning’s gold.

Rejoice! For in this fragile intermingling—
Of winter’s grip and spring’s determined green,
Of old stones standing while new songs take wing—
We find life’s perfect, ever-changing balance.

What wisdom in the starling’s dual music!
That sings of home while reaching for the unknown,
That bridges what we were and what we’re becoming—
A herald of the light that always wins.

So let the ice still rattle on the river,
Let snow persist in shadowed, stubborn streaks—
The lark proclaims, the children’s hearts remember:
No winter lasts, no spring forgets to come.

And we, between the violets and the frost,
Between the ancient bridges and young voices,
Stand witness to this joyful contradiction—
That life renews precisely where it lingers,
And beauty blooms most bright at edges.

1097.

Alone, yet not in sorrow, not in grief,
but in the dawn where quiet light unfolds,
I walk beneath the budding breath of spring
and feel the trembling pulse of waking life.
Each petal speaks a language of the soul,
and as I turn my gaze to sky and branch,
the hush becomes a voice—and it is Thee.

Alone beneath the trees in summer’s fire,
the shade made holy by the breeze You send,
I feel the laughter rising through the leaves,
and joy that cannot name itself takes root.
I fall, not out of loss but out of awe,
my knees upon the earth, my heart in flight—
and nothing now remains but only Thee.

Alone again as autumn sings its song,
the golden hush, the memory of light,
the leaves adrift like pages from old books
that tell of lives and loves and dreams once sown—
I walk, and every step recalls some joy
once held, now scattered in the amber wind,
and still, through all of it, I see but Thee.

Alone, beneath the vast and whispered snow,
where winter holds the silence in her arms,
I stand not shaken, but with lifted eyes,
and ask no more than this: to simply know.
The winds may speak of loss, of time long gone—
yet through the white, the chill, the endless sky,
what floods my soul again is only Thee.

1098.

What do you sell, O merchants of the square,
whose hands unfold the color of the world?
The woven crimson of the rising sun,
the shimmered threads of silver-tempered light,
fine tunics dyed in royal dusk and flame,
bright mirrors carved in amber’s warming gaze,
and daggers where the green of rivers sleeps.

What do you weigh, O careful, watchful hands—
you vendors keeping balance with the dust?
The saffron’s gold, the lentil’s patient curve,
the whitened grains of life in bowls of clay.
And you, young maidens—what do you prepare?
The henna’s fire, the sandal’s sacred ash,
the mingled spice that breathes of distant lands.

What do you cry, O pedlars of the road?
Chessmen inlaid with dreams of moving kings,
and ivory dice where fate forgets its weight—
small oracles of laughter and of loss.

What do you make, O goldsmiths of the forge,
with fire that sings against the metal’s skin?
You shape the joy of ankles when they dance,
and bend the wrist with bracelets light as breath.
You craft the ringing bells for pigeons’ feet,
like wind’s own ornaments beneath the sky.
You form the gilded scabbards fit for kings,
and belts of light that dancers wear in flame.

What do you sing, O fruitmen of the dawn?
You lift the citron’s sun, the plum’s dark fire,
the bursting red of pomegranates in
their speechless song of seeds and secret rains.

And you, musicians—what then do you play?
The sarangi’s lament, the cithar’s joy,
the drum that keeps the rhythm of the earth—
a pulse that binds the living to their breath.

What do you chant, O magi of the dusk,
whose tongues have touched the edges of the void?
You whisper spells not only for today,
but for the aeons yet to feel the light—
your voices stir the silence yet to come.

And you, O flower-girls with tender hands,
what do you weave with petals soft as sighs?
The crowns that rest upon a bridegroom’s brow,
the chaplets strewn where love shall lay its head,
and shrouds of white, for those who’ve ceased to speak—
not mourning, but a perfume for the soul.

1099.

Fifteen youths—perhaps more, perhaps less—
Came to me bearing spring’s first tentative blooms,
Their voices cracking like April ice
Between invitations to museums and matinees.
“I haven’t time,” I said, yet took their snowdrops,
Those white petitions pressed in chilly palms.

Fifteen declarations of eternal love
Met with my noncommittal “We shall see”—
A prophecy fulfilled in quiet measure:
Now they move through liberated days,
Their heavy chores of longing all complete,
Writing no more letters stained with yearning.

Rejoice! For life has schooled them well since then—
Some found lovers fairer than my face,
Some less so, all more constant than my whims.
We nod like veterans when our paths now cross,
Their salutes acknowledging what was,
What is—the regular meals, the dreamless sleep.

And you, last ardent boy who comes today
With fresh-picked snowdrops in your trembling hand—
Watch how I place them in their water glass,
How silver bubbles jewel each sturdy stem.
This too shall pass, this fervent adoration—
Soon you’ll discuss me in superior tones,
As one reviews a book once loved at twelve.

Yet celebrate this fleeting interlude!
For in the giving, not the keeping, lies
The tender wisdom of the human heart.
I’ll walk away, yes, down the street, alone,
But richer for your momentary faith,
And you, my dear, will love more truly next
For having loved me first in such brave fashion.

What joy that hearts can break and heal and break
Again, yet still find courage to bestow
Their snowdrops on unworthy recipients!
The world needs both—the givers and receivers,
The love that lasts and love that teaches how
To stand when it departs. So bring your blooms,
Dear boy, and let us play our fleeting parts
In spring’s eternal, ever-changing drama.

1100.

See how the meteors blaze across our sight—
Those transient scribes of the celestial sphere,
Writing their brief gospels in burning light
For earthbound eyes alone to witness here.

What joyful paradox! That flaming rock
Which space regards as but a wandering stone
Becomes for us a spectacle, a shock
Of beauty meant for mortal gaze alone.

Yes, they will vanish into night’s vast deep,
Their glory measured in a breath’s brief span—
Yet in that flash, what magic do they keep,
What testament to some eternal plan!

Rejoice! For though life shares their fleeting ways,
A passing gleam between two endless nights,
This makes each moment worthy of our praise,
Each brief connection charged with strange delights.

What if our lives are but meteor flight?
Then let us burn with purpose bright and true,
Not mourn the coming of the endless night,
But shine the fiercer for the hours we knew.

For in this cosmic truth we find our grace—
That meaning springs not from duration’s measure,
But from the light we cast in time and space,
However brief our segment of the treasure.

So let us streak across the human sky,
Not fearing darkness when our course is run,
But blazing paths that lift each wondering eye
To see—if just for once—how stars are done.

And when we fade into the void’s embrace,
Some child beneath our arc may catch the glow,
And find in our quick passage through black space
The very proof that makes their spirit grow.

1101.

Already now, the whiteness from the field
has gone—chickweed retreating into earth,
its gentle bloom once whispering to the air.
The violet’s tent, where larva once had slept,
dissolves like breath that morning takes away.
The dandelion has dimmed its golden lamp,
and corydalis casts its seeds in trust
to wind and soil, in faith of life to come.
The nettle walks with grace along the slope,
the swallows sketch their runes upon the blue,
like thoughts that dance and vanish in the mind—
so light, so full of praise for what they are.

Behold their joy: not clinging, yet complete.
They leap from semblance into living sense.
Do not fear change, nor crickets in their haste
to sing the day into its glowing rest.
I linger still above the mythic tomb
of Osiris, though you have passed me by,
your body pierced by iris-swords of spring,
your spirit drawn to new, unfolding light.

The world is woven fine as silken thread—
a tapestry whose edge we rarely see.
And still we move, as all things must and do.
Take then your leave, but not in sorrow’s weight;
for joy is in the turning of the year,
in every parting that becomes a path.
We are the rhythm, not the resting note.

1102.

Tonight, take up your pen with fearless hand
And trace your star upon the waiting page—
Not as astronomers with measured arcs,
But as a child who knows light’s sacred tongue.

Then sleep, dear dreamer, while your creation stirs—
Watch how it sprouts celestial wings in darkness,
How paper fibers breathe beneath its glow,
Until at dawn it lifts beyond your keeping.

Rejoice! That empty page at morning’s light
Proves not your failure, but your art’s pure flight—
For what is beauty but the briefest spark
That bridges dreaming earth and waking dark?

What wisdom in this nightly ritual:
To loose what we most love before the dawn,
To find our truest works were never meant
For cold possession, but for bright release.

So let your star ascend when day appears—
Its absence is the artist’s secret grace,
The proof that what we touch with heart and hand
Transcends all surfaces to find its place

Among those winged thoughts that haunt creation’s edge,
Too bright for paper, too alive for ink,
Yet born each time we dare to trace again
The perfect star we’ll never have to keep.

Sleep now, and wake to blankness unafraid—
The sky remembers what the page released,
And every dawn brings new white space to fill
With constellations bound for morning’s flight.

1103.

The hour arrived to see my life anew,
as one might glimpse a landscape from afar—
not lost, but stored behind the veil of time,
a cherished memory softened by the years.
I wandered, not to flee, but to inquire,
to seek in dreams the signals of the soul,
the signs that point to meaning in the dark.
Yet now I see the world with clearer light:
unmasked, unfeigned, yet beautiful and real,
without the masks of longing or regret,
without the need for youth to bloom again,
or for love’s spring to spark each waking day.

And in this gaze, a quiet joy is found—
for though the old illusions fall away,
they leave behind a purer, deeper truth.
I strip the ornaments from what I knew,
not out of scorn, but tenderness and peace.
If truth must stand alone, it still must breathe—
not hollow, not austere, but filled with light,
and air that stirs the leaves upon the branch,
and laughter carried in the hush of dusk.

No final answer waits to still the soul,
and yet, I welcome night with open arms.
I start again, not burdened but made whole.

1104.

I bequeath my wisdom to my unborn child—
Not wrapped in dogma’s stiff, formal attire,
But naked as his first cry will be naked,
Pure as the sunlight that chooses our days.

O twentieth century, with your tangled thoughts,
You who piled faith like unwashed dishes—
See how the answer always shone above us!
The sun, that ancient clock we forgot to read,
Still marks the hours on our spinning blue home.

Now comes the age of knowing, not believing—
I leave these truths for small hands to unfold:
That wisdom wears no century’s fashion,
That light needs no interpreter at dawn,
That every child arrives with clean slate eyes
To write the world anew in morning’s glow.

Rejoice! For though the past left us confused,
The future comes barefoot and unencumbered—
My son will know what we strained to prove:
The sun decides, the earth obeys,
And understanding, like all living things,
Grows best when naked in honest light.

So take this inheritance, my child—
Not heavy books, but sky’s eternal blue,
Not tangled theories, but the simple fact
That day begins when sunlight says it does.

The centuries may tangle mortal minds,
But you—new soul—will walk unveiled,
Your bare feet sensing time’s true rhythm,
Your upturned face receiving without question
What all our searching barely glimpsed:
That knowing comes like daylight—
Sudden, complete, and free.

1105.

Again, throughout the day, I meet the cat—
beneath the arching green of midday trees,
or stretched within the scatterings of leaves,
where sun and shadow play across its fur.
It moves with calm, as though it were a thought
slipped from the mind of time into the world.

At times, it rests beside a fishbone shrine,
the feast complete, its joy now deep and still,
its engine humming in the chest’s warm cave—
a rhythm pure, as ancient as the stars.
It draws its claws along the gulmohar,
then trails the golden path the sun lays down.

I see it briefly, then it slips away—
its body folded in the grass or light.
At dusk I watched it dance along the field,
its paws outstretched to stroke the saffron sun,
until the light grew soft, and in a leap,
it snared the dark in both its glowing paws—
then let it spill like seeds across the earth.

What grace to live like this—half fire, half sleep—
to chase the warmth, to turn within the night,
to let the body serve the soul in play,
and lose the self in all that must return.

1106.

A face emerges in the moving crowd,
a voice rings out, unbound, without restraint—
and in that instant, all the world is changed.
Some unseen current passes through the soul,
and we, once timid, rise with surer breath,
prepared to give with joy, and take with grace.
A fuller self awakens in the chest,
as if the light that formed the stars now stirred
within the folds of flesh and pulsing thought.

This radiant illusion, bright and bold,
remakes us as the earth remakes the spring.
Though time may wear away its perfect edge,
and wisdom speak of shadows in the flame,
still, having felt the warmth, we do not grieve—
for even if the image fades, the fire,
the inward fire, continues to ascend.

1107.

You say, dear doctor, that the haloes glow
not from the lamps in Paris, but my eyes—
a flaw of age, a fault in how I see.
Yet what you name affliction, I call grace.
For it has taken all these years to learn
that light is more than light, and edges lie.
That clarity is sometimes less than truth,
and sharpness fails where wonder should begin.

To see the lamps as angels took me years,
to watch their fire dissolve the solid world—
and know at last the line called “horizon”
was just a myth the eye once held too tight.
For sky and sea are siblings, hand in hand,
and all division only makeshift thought.
Not till my sight grew soft did I behold
that Rouen’s stones were born from shafts of sun.

Now you would pull me back—return my eyes
to youthful strictness, boundaries too clear.
You’d give me back the rules I’ve now unlearned:
the top and bottom, space cut into cubes,
a bridge not wedded to the flowering vine.
But, friend, I’ve watched the Parliament dissolve
each dusk into the dreaming of the Thames,
and learned that structure is itself a wave.

No more a world of lonely, stiff objects—
as if each tree and child and stream were lost
upon its own small island. All is one,
and light, once touching water, turns to bloom,
becomes a petal dancing just beneath,
and also overhead—a single breath.
Lilac and ivory, yellow and cerulean,
lanterns pass the sun from hand to hand
with such wild grace no brush could follow it.

To catch the speed of light—that is the task.
The bones, the garments, even these firm thoughts
must rise and blend with vapor, blend with air.
For matter, too, was born to disappear—
to soften into movement, into hue.
Ah, doctor, if you saw as I now do,
you’d weep with joy to find how heaven leans,
how it enfolds the earth in blue embrace,
and how the heart, in seeing, grows immense—
enough to hold this world, and not let go.

1108.

In love’s sweet bond, we find a mirrored fate,
Two souls, entwined in passion’s fervent state,
Like strangers, we unveil our deepest scars,
And in each other’s eyes, our hearts go far.

The hateful desire that fuels our flame,
Leaves marks of doubt, and suspicion’s heavy claim,
Binding us tight, in love’s sweet, cruel might,
Like gods, in sin, we dance, through endless night.

Our love’s a madness, a celestial fire,
That burns with hunger, and a heart’s darkest desire,
Two stars, that clash, in ferocious, fatal sway,
Each seeking justice, in a love that’s gone astray.

We stalk ourselves, with fervent, savage zeal,
And trick our hearts, with vile, and cruel reveal,
The sky, it seems, affronts our love, with scorn,
And yet, we burn, a thousand times, reborn.

For in love’s flame, we find a fatal spark,
That sets our hearts, a thousand times, in dark,
We die, a thousand times, each fleeting day,
And yet, in love’s sweet bond, we find our way.

But oh, the beauty, in this love we share,
A love that’s strong, and fierce, and beyond compare,
For though we suffer, and our hearts are torn,
We know that love, is worth the pain we’ve born.

So let us cherish, this love we hold,
And in its fire, our hearts, forever mold,
For though it’s cruel, and it’s hard, and it’s cold,
Our love, is worth, the trials we’re told.

1109.

I love you, ancient tree, not just for shade,
but for the way you speak when no one does—
your branches stirring softly in the dusk,
your roots deep-set in memory and fate.
You hold the morning songs of waking birds,
and in the hush of night, your silence hums
with something more enduring than mere thought.

You stand where all the village paths converge,
a sentinel of time, serene and wise.
Your arms extend as if to show the way—
not just through streets, but deeper, toward the soul.
No book of man contains what you have known:
the years inscribed like scripture in your bark,
your wounds worn bright like medals in the sun.

O jenísaro, from your ancient scars
new leaves arise, and every spring you laugh.
You shimmer in the breeze, and through your green
a joy ascends that even stars might share.
While men march forward chasing what they seek,
you simply grow, and stretch, and breathe, and be.

Your joy is not the joy of fleeting hours,
but something older—wider than the sky.
A wisdom wrapped in every trembling leaf,
reminding us, when hearts are heavy, still
that we, like you, are born to reach for light.

1110.

O ancient sentinel of bark and bough,
How your steadfast form delights my soul!
Your whispers ride the dawn’s first golden breath,
Your leaves converse with stars we cannot see.

Rooted deep in city stone, yet free,
You stretch your wisdom to the bustling streets—
A living bridge between our hurried days
And nature’s slow, unshakable delight.

Each scar upon your trunk sings history,
Not of defeat, but seasons weathered well;
Your fallen leaves become tomorrow’s soil,
Your crown renews while keeping time’s long tale.

Rejoice! For in your dancing canopy
I see eternity’s green manifesto—
That life persists through every trial and change,
That roots grow deeper even as limbs soar.

What joyous paradox your form reveals:
While mortals wander, searching for their path,
You stand both firm and flexible, alive
To every breeze yet anchored to your truth.

O living lesson in resilience bright,
Your roots embrace the dark without complaint,
Your branches wave in sunlight’s warm caress—
At home in earth while touching heaven’s gate.

Let me grow thus—both grounded and inspired,
My feet planted deep in life’s rich soil,
My arms outstretched to catch the morning light,
My heart a nesting place for hope’s sweet songs.

For in your patient, unassuming way,
You teach what books and sages strive to tell:
That true endurance wears a leafy crown,
And deepest strength knows how to bend and sway.

1111.

I keep forgetting numbers, facts, and names,
and each time that I need to know again,
I rise and reach toward my well-worn shelves—
twelve of them, lined with memory’s refrain.

It comforts me to know exactly where
the paper waits to speak what I forget:
how in the Warsaw Ghetto they were twelve—
no, seven souls to one small room, I think.

And Lodz was crowded, too: just under six
each breathing space that barely passed for home.
One third of Warsaw’s streets were Jewish streets.
Five hundred thousand lives compressed within
less than three percent of that wide city.

And Auschwitz—ah, that name—each time it fades,
I summon it again: twelve thousand gone
each day, at peak, in smoke that shamed the sun.
I think I dreamed the march at 4 p.m.—
the nineteenth day of January—it burns
within me still: the sixty thousand marched,
their hollow frames collapsing into dusk.

Was I correct to count the Belsen dead,
arriving frail and lost in April’s wind?
So many numbers I must chase and check.

And yet I hold the phone numbers of friends—
not phoned in twenty years—without a book,
reciting them like sacred chants aloud.
I hold the fragments of old afternoons,
the turn of phrase a woman gave to grief,
a joke between two men, too warm for loss.

They tell me, “What a memory you have.”
But oh, they do not know the weight it bears:
the pages that I open, time and time
again, not just to learn, but to remain
a witness—joyful still to be alive,
to walk among the living with the dead,
to speak what time attempts to fold away.

What gift to stand with sorrow in my hands,
and keep the names from fading into dust.

1112.

Once more I gather up the weight of wonder—
More than these arms were ever meant to cradle—
The crushing beauty of a world that builds
Its ladders to the clouds, its stone-carved stairs,
That sings through polished piano bones at dusk
While snails below perform their quiet feasts.

See how we all partake in life’s great hunger!
The snail consumes its tender leaf with grace,
While we—restless creatures of the night—
Devour whole forests with our wanting eyes,
Yet still reach out for more to clutch and claim.

Rejoice! For in this glorious toppling—
When the world’s weight brings me to my knees—
I find the sweetest paradox of all:
That only by embracing what breaks us
Do we discover how much we can hold.

What strange delight to bear the unbearable—
To feel the spine bend but not quite surrender,
To carry both the snail’s slow wisdom
And the piano’s fleeting, perfect notes,
To be at once the climber and the stair,
The devourer and the feast laid bare.

So let me gather still more light and shadow,
Though every muscle trembles with the taking—
For in this act of joyful overload,
This sacred struggle with the world’s fierce gifts,
I touch the edges of divinity,
And find myself both broken and made whole.

O heavy mercy! That we’re made to carry
Far more than we can possibly sustain—
Not as punishment, but as invitation
To grow beyond what we imagined possible,
To love the world that loves us into being
With teeth and tenderness in equal measure.

1113.

On days of rest he’d perch upon his trunk—
That tin-bound coffer of our humble keep—
And grumble how this town knew all his steps,
Each cobblestone and doorway memorized.

Siberia! The very word would spark
Wild visions in us clinging at his knees—
His furs, his sled, his daring hide trade feats—
While mother stitched her patterns, smiling wise.

We scaled him like explorers’ sacred peak,
A dozen tiny hands claiming their prize,
Till silence fell like snow upon his pipe’s
Last wisp of smoke dissolving in the air.

Rejoice! For though his feet stayed planted here,
His spirit wandered steppes we couldn’t see—
That cactus on the sill his compass rose,
Its stubborn green defying windowed fate.

What tender wisdom in this daily play—
The father bound yet boundless in our eyes,
Whose restless dreams became our bedtime tales,
Whose rooted love no distance could erase.

O blessed paradox of fathers everywhere—
The anchors who still teach us how to sail,
The homefires keeping wanderlust alive,
Their silent pipes still weaving adventure’s thread!

So let us praise these stay-at-home explorers
Whose cacti bloom in most unlikely places,
Who gift us both—the safety of their presence
And wings to someday seek our own Siberia.

1114.

I.
Now is the hour of wine, and waking grass,
The sky a soft arena for the rose.
The crows have gone, the court of spring is clear,
And rain descends like mercy on the fields.
The bird in cage, like I, sings of its home—
A far bright land it holds inside its breast.

O sky, you turn! You toss like thought itself,
Unruly wheel that spins both gift and grief—
Yet still I lift my gaze. You are not lawless.
Some pattern stirs behind your silent dance,
A creed of stars not written but still known.

II.
The tulips rise, not only out of blood
But out of longing. Youth still warms the ground.
The cypress leans, and sighs for those now gone,
And roses part their petals in a hush.
Yet life breaks through the silence like a bell—
I see in every loss a deeper bloom.

O sky, you mourn with me. Your tears are light.
You scatter pain and beauty both with wind.
Yet still you hold us all, and so I sing:
There is a faith beyond the reach of names,
And even ruin speaks of what will rise.

III.
Let princes sleep in golden halls untouched,
Let wise men forget justice for a while—
The earth remembers all, and sings it back.
Though coins be hoarded, truth is never bought,
And when the cries grow loud enough, they rise.
The poor have prayers the sky itself must hear.

O sky, I do not curse your shifting ways,
For even storms will clear the dust from eyes.
The law of love, unwritten, will prevail,
Though courts be blind and ledgers praise the lie—
The soul survives the silence of the halls.

IV.
Let tears fall freely, bless the wounded ground,
And touch the dust of home with reverence.
Stand tall as mountains even as you weep—
For joy may wear the armor of resolve.
Let every heart become a beating shield
To keep the dawn unbroken for the child.

O sky, you arc above us as we rise,
And carry all our sorrows into light.
What breaks us also binds us to the soil,
And even in despair, we still remain—
A flame within the furnace, clear and whole.

V.
Yes, pain will come. It comes to those who care.
But fear of death has always been a thief—
It steals the song before it finds the air.
To love is not to win, but to endure,
And if I die, it shall not be in vain.

O sky, you hold the dance, the sword, the kiss—
And nothing here is wasted in your fire.
The brave are not unbroken, but they burn
With purpose deeper than the war they fight.
To stand is victory. To dream is breath.

VI.
I lean not on the hour or the age.
Like Khayyam, I lift wine against the dark,
And see divinity in curling hair.
The cup I raise holds starlight and farewell.
What shame is there in loving what must pass?

O sky, you bear no dogma but the dawn.
And I, a drop within your endless tide,
Will not exchange this fleeting life of depth
For any title carved in shallow stone.
Let me be known by joy, and not by name.

1115.

When death arrives, not as a thief in dusk
but like the bear who’s fed and full of sleep,
whose fur still holds the berries of the fall,
and in whose breath the forest speaks of peace—
when death comes close and offers me his hand,
not cold, but steady as a friend who waits,

I hope to greet him not with dread, but awe,
to cross that threshold with a mind alive
with questions I have never asked before—
what scent the dark may carry in its folds,
what quiet murmurs through the silent beams
of that small, cottage-shaped infinity.

And so, before that moment’s calm arrives,
I walk the world as though it were my kin,
each leaf a cousin, every breath a gift,
each hour a thread not tied to clocks or days,
but floating in the boundless cloth of time.

I hold eternity not as a rule,
but as a window gently left ajar,
and see in every life a tender bloom—
as brief and bright as daisies on the hill,
yet each one blossoming in its own key,
as singular as stars or children’s names.

Each name I hear becomes a melody,
a note upon the scale of human song,
that trembles toward the hush of what comes next.
Each body is a miracle of strength,
a lion that has carried joy and pain
across the wild terrain of mortal days.

And when the final hour falls soft and still,
I want to say: I married wonder once.
No—many times. I wedded sky and stone,
held all the world within my open arms,
and gave myself to what I could not hold.

I do not wish to leave this earth unsure,
unspeaking of the days I made my own,
nor terrified by what I did not touch.
I do not seek to end with clenched regret,
or folded hands that never shaped the clay.

Let death not find me timid, mute, or cold—
but singing still, as one who truly lived,
not merely passed as guest beneath these stars.

1116.

This hellish port, not carved by demon hands
But built by men who read their morning papers,
Who sipped their tea with Euclid on their shelves—
The West’s “enlightened” flower and cream—
Stands testament to history’s cruel jest.

The sea that swallowed generations whole
Was never freedom’s vast, unbroken blue,
But perversion’s brine—where waves themselves
Became the bars of some liquid prison,
The Door of No Return swinging just one way.

Yet from this maw of human suffering rose
The ancestors of kings and poets—souls
Who carried Ellington’s first melodies,
Morrison’s word-hoard, Parks’ steadfast spine,
King’s dream—all forged in barbed-wire destinies.

Rejoice! For though the voyage sought to break them,
It could not drown the fire in their bones.
What man meant for chains became strange freedom—
The crucible that tempered stronger love.

What alchemy transforms such bitter waters?
That from this poisoned sea emerged such grace,
That from such darkness bloomed enduring light,
That from such cruel fates rose beauty’s face.

O sacred paradox of human spirit—
The very hands that shackled could not stop
The slow unfolding of redemption’s story,
The prisoner becoming the sculptor’s block.

So let us stand at this unholy shore
With honest eyes and memory’s clear sight—
Not to reopen wounds, but to remember
How even hellish journeys can give birth
To music that redeems the very night,
To dreams that heal the earth.

1117.

This rust that clings within my chest and soul—
the morning sun dissolves with steady light.
It does not burn, but breathes me back to life,
its golden fingers waking every cell
with warmth that does not ask for anything.

The scent of sea returns, a sacred pulse,
a wave upon the eye, a memory
of salt and sky, of distance drawing close,
where water touches light and light becomes
a voice within me, clear and filled with joy.

A terrace rises, open to the wind,
where earth begins to laugh through stones and stems—
a deep, unending, telluric delight,
as if the soil itself has learned to sing.

And then she laughs—Algerian and bright—
O Jean, behold: how suns begin to blend,
their golden brows entangled in the surf,
while prayers arise from sea-foam, soft and slow,
and touch the silver harness of the waves.

Fissures in sky—like wings of butterflies—
open and close across the blue expanse,
acrobat azure poised in daring flight,
a moment held before the leap returns.

And when the sea—immense and wide and free—
calls out in union with your wheat-blown beard,
the shore becomes a wedding of the light
and all we are is made to be again.

1118.

The poet dying—bullet in his gut—
Requests two humble things before the end:
A looking-glass and steaming millet porridge.
“Like a monkey,” he chuckles, spoon raised high,
Watching his own lips greet each steaming bite.

No false comforts now—we know this parting
Bears no promise of reunion’s grace.
No grand finale, no dramatic twist,
Just spoons that scrape against the bowl’s curved silence,
Just glass that mirrors what we cannot keep.

Rejoice! For in this raw acknowledgment—
That even mirrors show but fleeting truth—
We touch the tender core of our existence:
The courage to face endings spoon by spoon,
To laugh at death’s door like a cheeky primate,
To taste life’s porridge while the steam still rises.

What if no grand new chapter waits beyond?
What if the mirror’s depth proves just a surface?
Then let us clink our spoons like daring women
Who scream their truth into the teeth of night—
Not begging mercy from the unfeeling glass,
But celebrating each real, fleeting mouthful.

O sacred ordinary final meal!
That binds us to the earth even as we leave it—
No cosmic answers in the millet’s grain,
Just human hands lifting one last warm bite
Toward lips that soon will cool to marble stillness,
Yet in this moment, live and laugh and shine.

So take your porridge, poet, take your mirror—
Not as trap, but as life’s perfect joke:
That even facing death, we stay ridiculous,
That even parting gets no special treatment,
That love survives in how we scoop our porridge,
Not in what lies beyond the silvered glass.

1119.

A monarch once declared with thundered pride:
“I saw the face of God before the dawn.”
Another prince, not to be outdone,
Replied, “You dream. I saw Him first, alone.”
A third arose and staked a bolder claim:
“No, I beheld Him long before you both.”

So words grew swords, and power turned to dust,
Each fighting not for truth, but for the right
To boast that he had seen the Light first-hand.
Their banners clashed, their temples echoed pride.

But I, not bound by thrones or crowns or strife,
Spoke gently: “None of you has seen His face.”
They turned on me with fire in their eyes:
“Then tell us, fool, has anyone seen God?”

I said: “I saw Him once in early spring,
While climbing trees with laughter on my lips.
My mother saw Him in her morning years,
When songs and stars still braided through her hair.
My grandmother, in quiet dusk, beheld
His presence in the hush between two prayers.”

They scoffed and shouted: “Heresy! How dare
You speak of God through mouths of mortal girls?
The Light appears not so, and never has.”

But I just smiled. The sun was rising then.
A bird took flight across the waking sky.
And in that moment, joy became my proof.
For what is God, if not the breath of love
Passed down like light from mother into child?

1120.

What wisdom can we glean from that strange path
Where wary feet avoid love’s broken shrine?
Behold—the violin, that moping dreamer,
Shrugs off its languor like a silken cloak!

No more ambiguous whispers in the shadows—
It flings itself headlong into the gale,
Where lilies bow and roses loose their petals
To join this reckless, most unplanned departure.

Rejoice! For in this sudden liberation—
This shedding of “perhaps” for bold “I will”—
We glimpse love’s paradox: that only ruin
Worth fearing is the ruin of caution.

What if the road’s true purpose lies concealed
Not in arrival, but the steps we flee?
The violin’s cry, now clear as morning,
Sings what the hesitant tongue dare not confess—
That every love risks becoming beggar,
Yet only beggars know love’s richest dress.

O blessed instrument! That finds its voice
Not in safe harbors, but the storm’s wild breast—
Its strings now thrum with purpose long resisted,
Its polished wood baptized by stinging rain.

So let us too shake off our prudent fears,
Not mourn the ruins we were spared from knowing,
But rise like roses on the tempest’s breath—
For even shattered love makes music worth the breaking,
And every road not taken sings its absence
Through lilies carried on the wind’s bright waking.

1121.

To live as though all things are steeped in meaning—
Each gesture, leaf, and echo holds a thread
That weaves itself into the cloth of joy.
To come home as the amber dusk unfolds,
And feel the calm like warmth beneath your feet,
The hearthlight mingling gently with the screen,
And voices known from shows you’ve loved for years.

To share your days with one whose voice you trust,
Whose smile your parents greet as one of kin.
To find contentment not in grandeur’s glow,
But in the humble beauty of enough—
The neighbors waving, hemline shifts in style,
The language mingling in your children’s school,
The sense the ones in charge are doing well.

To wear with ease the fabric stores have sewn,
And see your shape as part of nature’s plan.
To bear a face that sunlight does not judge,
And find delight in powder, rouge, or none.
To rise for work with quiet certainty,
Grateful for hours filled with thoughtful care,
And knowing leisure’s charms wait at the end.

To travel toward the ocean’s bronze caress,
And lie with strangers under open skies,
All golden, warm, and equal in the sand.
To love small sins—an extra glass of wine,
A glint of gold within the autumn hair,
The sweet indulgence of éclair or lace.

To wait for children not from fear or doubt,
But from a wish to greet them with the best—
A house at peace, a car that starts with ease.
To watch the world through windows bright and clean
And find no fault in what the morning brings.

To live as if this life will just go on,
A road that rolls beneath your walking feet
With neither dread nor longing to look back.
To wake each day not startled nor in awe,
But firm within the cradle of your name.
To pass familiar faces on the bus
And feel within their glance: you are enough.

1122.

At last, the dawn—no longer pain, but light,
A gentle breath that moves through all my limbs.
I lift my face to meet the days ahead,
Not as a burdened soul, but one set free.

What once was feared now enters like a friend—
No tyrant robed in gloom, but something wise,
A traveler bearing gifts beyond the veil,
With hands that soothe and footsteps firm with peace.

He comes not cloaked in shadow, but in song,
And folds the distances like woven cloth—
The years, the ache, the sorrow’s echoing cry—
All gathered into silence, not despair.

He offers not a cup of dark unknowing,
But something clear, reflective as the stars.
I drink, and feel not emptiness but calm—
A stillness sweet as rivers reaching sea.

Too long I drank from thirst’s unyielding stream,
Yet now a fuller flood restores my breath.
It is not void that greets me, but release,
A kind of vastness filled with quiet joy.

I float not lost, but held by unseen hands,
My memories no longer weights, but wings.
And if I vanish from the world I knew,
It is to join the greater light beyond.

So let me go, not with a cry, but praise—
This too is part of life’s resplendent shape.
For all things end, and in their end, begin;
And even absence hums with sacred grace.

1123.

Her still grey face, her body’s quiet withering—
Winter enters without knocking now,
As if she were a stone or sleeping log,
Her temperature matching frosted fields.

How she would rage against this cold surrender,
This final slight from her particular god,
More bitter than the fall that stilled her pulse—
To be outlasted by a teakettle’s steam!

Yet thoughts still travel to her snowy plot—
From Vancouver’s rains, Edmonton’s plains—
Flickering through January’s gloom like fireflies
Before dissolving in the midday grey.

Rejoice! For in this subtle rearrangement
Of dinner hours and missed appointments,
In clocks reset by grief’s invisible hand,
The universe retunes its sacred order:

Lovers still collide on bustling streetcorners,
The delayed train still carries its sweet cargo,
While I sit hushed behind the hearse’s wake,
Feeling the world reshape itself without me.

O blessed disruption! That death’s cold finger
Taps not just stopwatches but souls—
We’re all late now for some appointment,
Early for another, perfectly on time
For the meeting we don’t yet perceive.

What if this altered rhythm is the gift?
The pause that lets the rushing world grow clear,
The breath between the notes that makes the song,
The space where winter shows us how to love
What’s vanished by remembering what remains—
Not heat, but light; not presence, but its echo.

So let the schedule scatter like ash,
Let clocks forget their rigid catechism—
The new pattern emerging in this stillness
Holds truer time than any ticking hand,
And lovers running late will still collide
Exactly when their stars decree they should.

1124.

At last, the dawn—no longer pain, but light,
A gentle breath that moves through all my limbs.
I lift my face to meet the days ahead,
Not as a burdened soul, but one set free.

What once was feared now enters like a friend—
No tyrant robed in gloom, but something wise,
A traveler bearing gifts beyond the veil,
With hands that soothe and footsteps firm with peace.

He comes not cloaked in shadow, but in song,
And folds the distances like woven cloth—
The years, the ache, the sorrow’s echoing cry—
All gathered into silence, not despair.

He offers not a cup of dark unknowing,
But something clear, reflective as the stars.
I drink, and feel not emptiness but calm—
A stillness sweet as rivers reaching sea.

Too long I drank from thirst’s unyielding stream,
Yet now a fuller flood restores my breath.
It is not void that greets me, but release,
A kind of vastness filled with quiet joy.

I float not lost, but held by unseen hands,
My memories no longer weights, but wings.
And if I vanish from the world I knew,
It is to join the greater light beyond.

So let me go, not with a cry, but praise—
This too is part of life’s resplendent shape.
For all things end, and in their end, begin;
And even absence hums with sacred grace.

1125.

And where have all your daughters wandered now?
They’ve crossed the hills in search of love and dreams,
They dance beneath the stars in New Clare’s streets,
Alive with music, laughter on the air.

Their mothers sigh with tea cups in their hands,
Remembering braids and lullabies long past.
They whisper to the wind, to empty doors,
Still loving what has flown beyond their reach.

And sons? The courtrooms brim with eager minds,
The prisons echo too with learned tongues—
Each one adorned with papered accolades,
Each one a soul still seeking how to live.

The judges, wise or weary, shake their heads,
As letters and degrees flash in the light,
But nothing substitutes for inner truth—
A school that’s neither housed in stone nor book.

For every cheat once learned to read and write,
And every thief was taught to spell his name,
And every seeker lost their way in halls
That spoke of knowledge, but not how to love.

The church doors open wide to crimson shawls,
The songs of faith are sung at break of day,
Yet nightly some return to ancient hungers,
Still searching for the light their hymns declare.

So what are we to make of all these voices?
Which is the path, and which the echo’s ghost?
Even the saints once stumbled in their gait,
And angels too have laughed at mortal pride.

For pride walks boldly in a preacher’s robe,
And God—perhaps He wears a rugged skin,
A cloak of crocodile, a wildness still
That does not yield to pew or painted dome.

The Christians chase new fashions every month,
Throwing away old ways like shedding bark.
They dress as those who once oppressed their kin,
Yet sip no wisdom from the white man’s flask.

The soccer fields resound with youthful feet,
The Sabbath turns to sport beneath the sky—
A kind of joy, perhaps a prayer in motion,
Though even Satan wonders at the view.

And still, you claim to serve the God of Love,
Yet know not how to hold your neighbor’s grief.
Your creeds are towers without steps or doors—
They rise, but never welcome in the soul.

Yet even so, some seeds lie buried deep,
And not all Scripture fades upon the tongue.
The Word of God, like rain, may find its way—
Though stony ground delays its gentle birth.

So let us not forget the sacred root—
Let joy grow wide where judgment once took hold.
Let mercy be the fire that warms the Reds,
And understanding sing in every shade.

Peace.

1126.

My fierce companion, my relentless beast—
What visionary eye will meet your gaze
And bind our splintered centuries as one
With lifeblood mortar, thick and warm and true?

See how creation’s crimson rivers flow
From earth’s own pulsing throat—only the weak,
Those trembling parasites of yesterday,
Fear to cross into this dawning light.

While breath remains, all living things must stand
Upright, their spines enduring nature’s play—
The unseen backbone of each crashing wave,
The supple cartilage of childhood’s earth.

Once more life offers up its radiant crown,
A lamb upon the altar of the new,
That we might free this captive age at last
And make its gnarled days sing flute-sweet tunes.

Rejoice! For though your vertebrae lie broken,
My beautiful, bewildered century,
Your spirit dances still in swelling buds
And adder’s golden rhythms in the grass.

What paradox—your backward-glancing smile
Both cruel and tender as a caged beast
Remembering its wild, untrammeled prints!
Your wounds become the birthplace of the spring.

The builder’s blood still gushes from the soil,
The sea flings burning fish upon the shore,
While from celestial heights indifference rains—
Cold balm for injuries that make us wise.

O sacred struggle of the old and new!
The broken back will heal in stronger form,
The beast rise fiercer from its wounded sleep,
The age transform its weakness into song.

So let us drink this bitter, bubbling wine—
This molten century of joy and pain—
For in its crucible we find ourselves:
Both architects and mortar of the dawn.

The buds will swell, the green shoots rise again,
Not despite our wounds, but because we bore them—
The golden measure of our endurance
Written in adder’s coils and crashing waves.

1127.

I reach with open arms toward the stone,
Not to destroy, but gently to remake—
To feel its silence breathing in my palm,
And shape the tropics where the heat may sing.

I hold the rock until it yields to light,
Its edges softening beneath my hope.
No violence here—just joy that things can change,
That deserts, too, can blossom with the heart.

I gather love like rain into my hands,
And cast it wide across the barren sand,
Where once was void, I plant the sound of names,
And raise the wind to dance with trees not born.

I lift the stone again, this time with care,
And place it where the morning meets the sun—
A plinth not for the past, but for the day,
A base from which new stars may rise and speak.

The world is not a weight to bear alone;
We build it every time we choose to stay.

1128.

Mother Jackson spies the silver intruder
Creeping toward her weathered wooden door—
One mighty slam sends tin louvres trembling,
Their rattling chorus begging her to yield.

No use to cry—the dog would bare its grin,
The cat erect its flagpole tail to nail
The very moon itself to rusty gutters.
Neighbors might come with chicken-blood charms
To stretch her worries on the packy tree.

So quietly she seasons her tired bed
With kitchen oil’s pungent sacrament,
Strikes firestick against the waiting dark,
And welcomes what she tried so hard to bar.

Rejoice! For in this lunar visitation—
This forced communion with the glowing night—
She finds what daylight never dared to offer:
That fear faced becomes strange companion,
That even ragged mattresses may shine
When moonbeams turn them into silver altars.

What wisdom in her fierce, reluctant yielding!
The louvres knew what she resisted long—
Some brightness must enter every hovel,
Some heavenly guest outstay its welcome,
Turning our defenses into music,
Our refusals into sacred yes.

O blessed paradox of Mother Jackson!
Who bars the door then lights the guiding flame,
Who knows the very thing we fight most fiercely
Often becomes the mercy we need most.

Let tin sheets shudder with expectant joy,
Let firesticks blaze like tiny challengers—
The moon takes nothing not already given,
And even frightened souls may learn to glow
When moonlight shows them what they’ve always been:
Not prey, but partners in the cosmic dance.

So burn bright, Mother, in your moonlit shack—
Your oil-anointed bed becomes a throne,
Your trembling louvres sing celestial psalms,
And all the night arrayed outside your door
Awaits the moment you’ll throw wide your arms
And claim the moonlight as your long-lost child.

1129.

O gentle sun of winter’s waking breath,
You lean against the mountain’s patient frame,
Its snowy crown now warmed by your caress.
The river listens, murmuring below,
Its waters thrilled by your familiar light—
A rumor shared like love between old friends.

You are the song once carried on the winds,
The ancient ballad of the open plain,
The guardian flame for every greening blade
That dances upward in the hush of dawn.
You love the fronds as lips love whispered joy,
As breath loves form, and light becomes the world.

You playful flame, so golden in your stride,
You dare to rival wheat for honeyed hue,
And when the rains descend in song and tears,
You break yourself into a sudden arch—
A rainbow kissing sky with your own face.

1130.

Like suns unruly, wild in their last blaze,
They streak along the edge of autumn’s breath,
Faces bronze and gold, still bright with warmth,
Though frost approaches, sharp as whispered truth.
The dusk breathes gusts that scatter fragile songs,
A robin’s final hymn upon the wind,
While dew, a gentle guest, adorns their frames—
Those chrysanthemums, grave yet full of grace,
Their beauty crowned in tender, fleeting tears.

Why lingers he, that quiet soul, and gazes
With eyes that hold the weight of fading light?
Has not the keeper rung the evening’s bell,
Calling the world to close its tired eyes?
I see his weathered hand raised in farewell—
A silent gesture, trembling yet profound—
As if to honor all that must release,
And bless the passing of a cherished day.

Our paths converge beneath the autumn sky,
Where endings blend with hope, and time dissolves—
And in that moment, joy and sorrow meet,
Revealing how each leaf, though doomed to fall,
Carries the endless promise of rebirth.

1131.

If life is but a slow surrender,
And joy a fleeting guest who borrows chairs,
Then let me be the summer rose who fades
Before the frost can steal its final breath.

I’ll greet life’s pleasures with a passing nod,
But shout a thousand welcomes to still death—
That kind librarian who shelves our stories
When our ink runs dry.

Yet wait—perhaps the dead need no such greeting,
Safe in their earthen beds beyond all yearning.
The mercy belongs to us who linger,
Who must keep turning pages in the light.

Rejoice! For in this fragile understanding—
That every moment holds its own demise—
We find the secret to living fully:
To love the borrowed chair, the fleeting guest,
The flower knowing it will soon be gone,
The story sweeter for its certain end.

What if our dying is what makes us radiant?
Like roses that burn brightest before falling,
Like stars most beautiful when they’re exploding—
Our impermanence the very thing
That makes each ordinary day extraordinary,
Each common mercy sacred.

So let me bloom while summer lasts,
And fade with grace when winter whispers near—
Not cursing death for coming,
But thanking life for lingering long enough
To let us taste both sweetness and surrender,
To learn that peace lives not in endless days,
But in the depth with which we meet each one.

O fleeting world, O temporary joys—
Your very transience is your precious gift!
The dead may rest, but we get this:
The golden now, the aching beautiful,
The chance to love what won’t remain,
And find in that the whole mysterious point.

1132.

This game I play, the one that shapes my days,
I move with ease, not haste—each piece at rest,
As though delay were part of destiny,
And every pause a thought before the leap.

Why rush to win, when every hour gives
A golden thread within the simple now?
Let others chase the Fleece across the hills—
I find its shimmer in the light of dawn,
In warmth that lingers on a sunlit wall,
In laughter shared beneath a common tree.

The road is long, I know, and wears the bold,
Yet here I stand, content to breathe the air,
To let the moment deepen like a well,
And listen as the silence speaks of joy.

1133.

When peace returns, I’ll climb those weathered steps
To our old terrace where the sunlight pools—
That same blue sky still stretched above the hills
Like canvas waiting for our story’s brush.

There summer will unfold its golden hours,
And memory will dance on sun-warmed stones—
Not as a ghost, but as a living presence
That makes the air vibrate with what was true.

Yes, sorrow will come too, a tender guest
Who mourns the particular music of your voice
Speaking my name in tones now lost to time.
How strange to wish another’s lips might shape
Those syllables with your exact cadence!

Rejoice! For in this bittersweet returning
Lies love’s great paradox—that what was given,
Though fleeting, lives forever in the heart,
That terraces outlast both war and weather,
That afternoons remembered shine as bright
As those we’re living now in present light.

What sacred alchemy transforms our losses
Into this golden treasury of moments—
Not to torment, but to prove we loved,
That something perfect happened, once, exactly,
And no explosion in the world can erase
The terrace where we sat in quiet grace.

So let me go there when the guns fall silent,
Not just to grieve, but to bear witness to
The miracle that we had this at all—
That in life’s brutal, beautiful mosaic,
Our afternoon remains a perfect tile,
Still warm from the sun of your long-gone smile.

1134.

Come, let us go—not just to live, but breathe
The wider air where every soul expands.
Paris became the place I came to bloom—
Not fall, but rise, transformed in mind and flesh.
Oh, let me rest where lamplight gilds the stones,
Where streets remember artists, saints, and song.
No riches sought, no conquest to be made,
Only a heart released from every weight,
No tether now to pull me back again.

Past and present folded into stillness—
The future, where I whisper through the trees,
Not vanished, but dispersed into the light.

My children—four bright stars along the path,
Hold not your grief like iron in your hands.
Blame not the world, though harsh its laws may be;
Your mother walked ahead to clear the way.
I bore the burden so your step is free,
A martyr, yes—but more, a flame unquenched.
And should you one day walk the Seine in thought,
Find where I rest and leave a bloom in peace,
For I am not alone—I live in you.

1135.

The evening spreads across the endless plain—
That rich, dark silence only fields can keep—
Where fresh-turned earth exhales its pungent breath
And weary horses lean into their traces.

Miles of soil, both wheat and weed entangled,
Bear witness to the day’s long exhalation,
While sunset’s embers cool in ashen distance
Beneath the sky’s impassive, starless dome.

Yet look! Against this tapestry of toil,
Youth erupts—a riot of wild roses
Flushing the hedgerows with impossible hue!
Hear how it sings above the furrowed acres,
A lark’s pure aria piercing dusty twilight,
A sudden star against the gathering grey.

O fierce necessity! O sharp sweet hunger
That makes its music from the very silence,
That spins its gold from ordinary dusk—
How boldly it proclaims its vital creed:
That even heavy land must bow to blossom,
That even tired men may lift their faces
When such bright energy dances through the air.

Rejoice! For in this glorious collision—
This youthful fire against earth’s somber patience—
We find life’s truest, most enduring balance:
The soil that grounds us and the spark that lifts,
The day’s hard labor and the evening’s song,
The roots that hold fast and the wings that soar.

What wisdom in the land’s receptive silence,
What power in youth’s insistent melody—
Together weaving time’s great paradox:
That we are both the plowhorse and the lark,
Both the fading light and the first bright star,
Both the weight of earth and the weightless dream.

So let the fields grow dark, the workers rest—
Youth’s flame still dances where the roses burn,
And every dewdrop on the morning furrows
Will mirror stars that sang all night unheard,
Waiting to greet the next day’s blazing chorus
When larks and labor meet again at dawn.

1136.

The breath of earth is rich and deep with joy,
Its fragrance rising wild from roots and loam.
The fields grow dense with blossoms, dark and full,
Yet not with grief—they bloom with fierce delight.

I cast my burdens gently on the grass,
And feel the sun, like mercy, touch my skin.
I am a flame that dances in the dusk,
A candle bright upon the altar ground.

Each step I take is softened by the dew,
And every breath is wet with living light.
Unclothed, unmasked, I stand before the stream,
A creature born anew in time’s clear gaze.

My limbs like branches, graceful in the wind,
My hair a harvest blazing in the dusk—
Not meant to mourn, but to declare I live,
Scarlet with life, within a scarlet world.

1137.

Who rules the earth—the gilded or the grounded?
They perch in palaces, we till the soil,
Their crowns weigh heavy while our calloused hands
Spin the world’s wheel with every tireless turn.

We are the sinew making meadows bloom,
The blood and bone that builds each towering dome,
Al-Sunna’s pulse, Al-Fard’s enduring song—
The living map of all that’s wide and strong.

Rejoice! For though they feast on golden plates,
We hold the recipe for daily bread.
Their hollow mansions cannot match the glory
Of one small room where seven hearts unite.

What are their jets against our patient marches?
Their fashion shows against our battle scars?
We are the fire that warms the winter night,
The stones that pave the path to liberty—
Each martyr’s step a seed in freedom’s field,
Each worker’s sweat a hymn to days to come.

O blessed paradox! Their empty power
Wanes like perfume in a sealed-up room,
While our plain beans become communion feasts,
Our crowded buses—pilgrims’ chariots,
Our shared hardships the forge of lasting strength.

So let them glitter in their brittle splendor—
Time’s river washes gilding to the sea.
The earth remembers who tends her true gardens,
Who sings through labor, loves through endless storms.

No need to guess who’ll have the final word—
Life’s ledger always favors those who serve,
For pyramids outlast the pharaohs’ names,
And harvests come from hands that know the soil.

We are the war and peace, the root and branch,
The present struggle, future’s certain bloom—
While they’re but shadows cast by passing power,
We are the tree that breaks the palace stone.

1138.

In time, mankind will stretch beyond the clouds,
And sail through silence into outer dark,
From ground to sky, from breath to radiant void—
A dream long cradled in the heart of stars.
We look above and feel the pull of light,
As if the sky were calling us by name.

Suppose we go. Suppose the ship ascends,
Encased in metal, humming like a thought,
With eyes wide-open to the moving stars,
That blaze and shift like dancers in a sphere.
Shall we be changed? The universe still stands,
Still sky and stars, and stars and sky again.

Each light a flame that floats in vast repose,
Between the realms of silence and of time,
Suspended not to come to us, but wait,
Equidistant from all who seek their face.
Yet still we rise—we rise despite the hush.

Be still a while—this space we fly is thought,
A measure not of place, but of desire.
For everywhere is sky, and every breath
Contains the arc of stars, the weightless fire.
Though wrapped in steel, though bounded by the hull,
We travel more by longing than by speed.

No prison keeps the soul from rising up.
The stars are not a wall, but windows wide.
And if we never grasp them with our hands,
At least we know that we have seen them burn.
The sky was always here, and in us too.

1139.

O thrumming minstrel of the summer heat!
Your wings once spun the sunlight into song,
Flinging gold notes across the laughing valley
Till all the world vibrated with your joy.

You paused your music only when you saw me
Wandering twilight’s edge among blond palms—
That student of the pampas, learning love
From whispering grasses, dreaming at earth’s knee.

Now autumn’s gauzy veils descend in silence,
And my soul stretches toward some nameless dawn—
Perhaps for sunlight, perhaps for your return,
Perhaps for both to dance together again.

The barren sky hangs cloudless, stern and empty,
The mountains fade behind the mist’s grey hand—
Winter’s arrived since last your chorus faded,
Yet in my heart your summer anthem lingers.

Rejoice! For in this quiet intermission
Between your songs, I find life’s sweetest truth:
That every ending promises beginning,
That silent wings prepare new melodies.

What if the mists now shroud the vibrant plain?
They’re but nature’s pause between two verses—
Your absence teaches me to hear the music
In falling leaves, in frost’s crisp punctuation,
Knowing the score calls for your bright return
When spring rewinds the world’s great rhythm.

So sleep, dear troubadour, but sleep lightly—
The sun still keeps your place in its ensemble,
The valley holds the echo of your stanzas,
And I remain your faithful audience,
Waiting to cheer when next you take the stage
And turn the warming air to liquid gold.

O patient promise of each fading note—
The song continues even when unheard,
The singer rests but never truly leaves,
And winter’s hush makes summer sweeter still.

1140.

You left again, your spirit trailing light,
And on the piano—silent now for weeks—
You left a book, its cover soft with age,
Its spine still warm with dreams and memory.

I opened it, not prying but in joy,
As one might lift a seashell to the ear—
And in its pages, bright with youthful sighs,
I found the hush of something not quite lost.

So much of you remains in every line:
Not sorrow, but the echo of delight,
The way a song might linger in the air
Long after breath has gone and fingers stilled.

And there—I smiled to see—your secret grief,
So gently cast among those words of love,
Contained no trace of me, and yet I felt
Some quiet praise in being left unknown.

Come back and take it, you who live in light,
You with your head among the clouds of dawn,
Romantic heart that forgets even love
Can dwell a while beside the ivory keys.

How sweet to leave such traces of the soul,
Unwittingly, where music used to live—
How beautiful, your absent-mindedness.

1141.

This sadness comes without a name or reason—
Like thirst that lingers after drinking deeply
From love’s overflowing cup. I stand alone,
Not lonely in my solitude, but wondering.

What mystery is this that stirs my spirit?
I long to kiss, yet know not lips to meet,
I love, yet cannot name the dear obsession,
I seek, yet find the question sweeter still.

Rejoice! For in this tender, wordless yearning
Lies life’s most precious paradox—
That undefined desire may sing more true
Than any answer clutched in fearful hands.

What if the not-knowing is the sacred gift?
The space between the notes that makes the song,
The fertile ground where new love takes its root,
The open door no threshold yet has barred.

O blessed melancholy without source!
You teach me how to love the very seeking,
To find companionship in my own questions,
To kiss the air that someday lips will fill.

So let me wander this mysterious path
Where sadness blooms beside unspoken joy—
For in not knowing why, I touch the wonder
That makes us human, keeps the heart awake,
And proves that even loneliness can shine
When welcomed as love’s quiet prelude.

1142.

How sweet to sleep the way a child once did—
with dreams alight like petals on the stream,
and laughter rising even out of tears,
as pain itself grew soft within the dream.

To walk through life as though the world were song,
each step in tune with something deep within,
the eyes turned inward toward a glowing truth,
the lips kept still not out of fear, but peace.

What joy to live unseen, yet full of light—
to pass like breeze through gardens just in bloom,
to rise like mist that vanishes by noon,
yet feeds the air with scent of rain and sun.

To vanish like a star whose fire once flared
for ages in the dark—though no one watched,
it burned in silence for the joy of being.
What more than this could one aspire to leave?

A quiet life that fed the world with warmth,
and left no scar upon the earth but light.

1143.

Since first his toddling feet could dance, he leapt
When silver rains came singing from the sky—
Those liquid jets from rooftops drumming hymns
That held both joy and holy melancholy.

The children cupped their ears in awestruck wonder,
Hearing their heartbeats mimic ocean tides,
Feeling that sweet, inexplicable yearning
That walks the line between both laugh and tear.

How everything transformed when rains descended!
The world dissolved in pearly forgetfulness,
While minds set sail on leisure’s blessed vessel
To ports where Sinbad spun his wondrous tales.

Rejoice! For in my homeland’s rainy schooling
Came Ali Baba through the cave’s dark mouth,
And Aladdin’s lamp flashed in every puddle
That caught the streetlamp’s golden wink at night.

The oldest maid would weave her cryptic stories
As raindrops tapped the rhythm of her words—
Another miracle I sing with gratitude:
How showers dress my city in new grace!

Each washed street shines like Amsterdam reborn—
Those scrubbed Dutch bricks where prayer meets the eye—
Every glistening lane becomes a flower
For dreaming Quixotes tilting at the clouds.

What sacred alchemy in water’s fall!
That turns grey stone to adventure’s map,
That makes of gutters magic casements opening
On worlds where even dust becomes divine,
And every soul a knight errant riding
The liquid light of memory’s sweet storm.

So let the rains keep teaching, keep baptizing—
These silver threads that stitch past to present,
That wash our eyes to see the world anew,
And make of puddles portals to the stars.

O childhood’s rain that never truly stops!
Still falling in the heart’s deep reservoirs,
Still turning rooftops into storytellers,
And every storm into a chance to dance
With all the wonder that first made us leap
Before we knew to question miracles.

1144.

O cherry trees, how radiant your bloom,
too brilliant for a heart that once knew grief,
yet now expands to hold your falling light—
each petal like a note in some glad hymn
that sings of passing, and of beauty born
from branches leaning softly to the stream.

The earth is pale with gifts you’ve freely given,
not lost, but laid in love upon the grass.
And if there walks an angel through this grove,
with eyes as clear as wind, and voice like dawn,
let him not cry “Stop!” but bid me gather
a single branch in joy, to lift and keep.

And should he come, four-square and firm of step,
a herder not of sheep but thoughts that stray,
his beard with frost, his eyes half-closed in peace—
I shall not ask him why he chews the snow.

For even goats that pause beside the bloom
may feel the tremor of the morning light,
and all that once was proof against belief
will break, like ice beneath a warmer sun.
So let him stand, and I shall stand with him,
and watch the petals fall—not unto death,
but into life more deeply understood.

1145.

We cheered your childhood’s wobbling first steps—
Each stumble just endeared you more to us.
Your teenage years brought bold creative fire,
A mind that danced where others plodded dull.

Now see what polished tools you wield with flair!
Cervantes’ wit turned smug, Péguy’s deep faith
Bent to excuse what you once would have scorned,
Your silver tongue now gilding iron fists.

Rejoice! For in this tragic transformation
Lies proof of all we feared and you denied—
That education without conscience builds
A finer cage to trap the noble mind.

What bitter celebration this deserves—
Not for the boy you were, but what you show:
How easily the bright can be corrupted,
How skills we taught you mock our old ideals.

Yet in this mourning, marvel at the lesson:
The tyrant’s praise proves but a fleeting phase,
While truth you spurned still waits with open books,
And childhood’s honest stumbles shine more pure
Than all your current calculated steps.

So let us toast your perfect moral failure—
That living cautionary tale you’ve become—
And keep one hopeful candle lit, believing
Somewhere beneath that polished, poisoned shell
The little man we loved still hears the rain
And feels ashamed of what he can’t unlearn.

O strange redemption! That your fall reminds us
True wisdom walks humbly, or not at all,
And all the languages and arts we gave you
Mean nothing without that first, fragile grace
That made you weep when others scraped their knees,
Before you learned to worship those who cause them.

1146.

In my solitude, I dreamed you solitary too—
Not gone, but sleeping, lingering near,
Your happiness still tethered to my presence,
Your departure just a paused caress.

And now—miracle of homecomings!—
You return, not as vision but as touch,
Restoring all the world had stolen:
Not just the hours, but how they shine,
Not just the roads, but why we walk them.

You bring me back my voice’s deepest timbre,
My body’s purpose, my soul’s true north—
Even death you hand me like a gift,
And what blooms beyond it, bright and certain.

Rejoice! For in this gradual awakening,
You unseal the treasure of your being—
That sacred casket shaped like woman,
That walking grace I call by your name.

No startled gasp marked your resurrection,
Just quiet recognition that I’d kept
Faithful vigil through your inner journey,
My eyes the lanterns lighting your return.

O blessed threshold moment when you blinked—
That slow unfurling of your waking lashes—
And I glimpsed the final step you’d climbed
In dreams while I stood guard against the dark!

What joy to be both witness and participant,
To watch your soul drift back from distant shores
And know its compass points toward our shared horizon,
That what we lose in love comes round again,
Not as it was, but as it needs to be—
Ripened by absence, sweetened by return.

So take my hand, dear traveler awakened,
Let’s trace together what you saw alone—
For in the keeping and the coming back,
In all the giving and regiving,
We find love’s truest mathematics:
That nothing’s truly lost between two hearts
That beat toward each other through the night.

1147.

Beneath a sky reborn from passing storms,
I hear the soft, repeated stroke of oars—
a lullaby of rhythm on the lake.
And in that sound, I glimpse what joy may be:
not thunderous delight, but this—
the hush between two splashes in the dark.

Or else, it is the glimmer of a boat
appearing, vanishing upon the swell,
a spark that flickers on the sea of years,
as slow and rich as an old wedding feast.
Perhaps it is a lantern near a hill
that we believed was barren, cold, and done,
until the light appeared and called us home.

It might be found in silences between
the names we know and those we’ve yet to speak—
a friend who gently tells us: poplars, roofs—
and all at once, the world turns clear again.
It lives between a sheep bell’s early chime
and a soft door that closes late at night;
between a bird’s wild cry above the marsh
and one still wing along a mountain ridge.

Yes, that was happiness: to draw in frost,
though knowing well the sun would take it soon;
to break a pine branch on a sudden whim
and write our names into the breathing ground.
To catch a drifting thistledown mid-flight,
and wish to hold the season where it stood.
To dream beside a fallen acacia tree,
or watch an old woman spin in joy
before a mirror full of missing glass.

The happy hours pass quickly, yes, like stars
cut loose to tumble down the sky. But still—
they live again in memory’s quiet field,
where every pebble gathered in a yard
can turn to legions gleaming in the sun.
We walk again in time’s eternal day,
not yesterday, not yet tomorrow’s gate,
but this bright now—just after rain has passed,
with sky renewed, and far across the lake
the echo of soft oars upon the water.

1148.

You always hear it—stories that unfold
like tulips blooming out of sudden snow:
the plumber with twelve mouths to feed, who finds
his fortune in a sweepstakes ticket’s fold.
From rusted pipes to riches, swift and bright—
as if the cosmos whispered just his name.

Or there’s the girl, a nursemaid born afar,
whose gentleness wins hearts in marble halls.
From lullabies to chandeliers she floats,
her laughter spilling like a song through rooms.
Or picture this: the milkman in the dawn,
delivering his white, his cream, his faith—
a humble work made sacred by the route,
who finds that real estate, like trust, will grow.

Even the charwoman who rides the bus—
that jolt becomes her key to better days.
From mop and bucket to a crystal dress,
she steps into the ballroom of her fate.

And once, a mother told her daughter: “Child,
be kind, be true, and when I’m gone, I’ll shine
down from the seam of heaven, stitched with clouds.”
The man she left behind took another bride,
with daughters who knew little of the heart.
But Cinderella, radiant through ash,
planted a twig beside her mother’s grave—
and there it grew, a tree, with dove above.

Not just a dove—a whisperer of light,
a bearer of her deepest, wordless wish.
When lentils spilled into the hearth, she knelt—
and every sparrow from the field arose
to help her lift the burden of her tears.

The ball, of course, was never just a dance.
It was the soul’s unveiling in full bloom.
The prince, enraptured, saw through silk and gold
to something fierce and gentle in her gaze.
Three nights he sought her, three she slipped away—
but not before the wax upon the stair
claimed her light step and held it in its palm.

Her sisters tried, and cut themselves to fit.
But truth is bloodless in its fit at last—
and when he brought the shoe to her once more,
she stepped into it like a final chord
resolving years of silence into song.

The dove returned to peck the blindness out—
not cruelty, but light made manifest.
And in that place, the dance began again.

But not the still-life ending they all tell.
For joy is not a perfect polished smile,
nor love a pair of dolls behind a case.
The prince and Cinderella laughed and wept,
they argued kindly, kissed the morning light,
grew older, wiser, human through and through—
and in the dust of every day they lived
with grace that sparkled more than any glass.

1149.

One ordinary day I built a fire—
Small altar of sticks and whispered breath—
Where humble miracles took shape:
Eggs turned firm in bubbling water,
Tea leaves swirled their brown confession,
Damp shoes exhaled their cloudy sighs.

Perched on my three-legged stool, I watched
The hungry tongues of orange and gold
Consume my careful woodpile piece by piece,
Transforming solid form to colored light,
Until nothing remained but ember memories
And the sweet scent of tasks accomplished.

Flame—that most mysterious companion—
Exists as pure chromatic poetry,
A living paradox of weightless beauty,
Both sustenance and spectacle in one.
What alchemy creates this dancing spirit
That feeds yet flees, that warms yet vanishes?

Rejoice! For in this simple fire ritual
Lies life’s own pattern perfectly revealed:
We gather, build, tend fleeting brightness,
Then sit content amid the glowing ashes—
Having been fed, having been warmed,
Having witnessed magic in the ordinary.

What is flame made of but life itself?
That same elusive spark that animates us,
That cooks our meals and dries our tears,
That burns so briefly yet so brilliantly
Against the great dark of eternity,
Leaving behind the perfume of its passage.

So let me tend my small fires daily—
Not mourning when the last stick burns,
But grateful for the eggs, the tea, the warmth,
And all the colored light along the way.

1150.

O stolid form wrapped in star-wool silence,
You stand like time’s first monument—
Massive as mountain birth, yet shy
As virgin waterfalls whose white veils
Dance while the cliff face writhes in dark contortion.

What strange alchemy of flesh and stone!
Where pleasures prick like careful fingernails
And pains clutch deep like searching fingers,
You hover between going and returning,
Seeking those kind zephyrs that smooth
The wrinkled skin of ancient landscapes.

Rejoice! For in your rooted yearning—
Those pruned desires that never bloomed—
Lies unexpected grace: their thwarted flowering
Now swells more perfect than imagined,
A child’s fist slowly opening
To stars caught between each creased finger.

What if the winds have carved you thus?
Their mercy works in patient strokes,
Revealing in your weathered angles
A beauty no tended garden matches—
The sculpture of survival, rough-hewn
Yet radiant in its hard-won balance.

O lips that taste the night-kissed blossom!
Each petal parts like memory’s doorway,
Each sigh erases what no longer serves,
And in this slow unfurling toward the light,
You find oblivion’s sweetest secret:
That even stone can learn to breathe,
That even rooted things can dance.

So stand majestic in your woolen cosmos,
Proud as races’ birthdays, tall as temples—
Your innocence no weakness but a wisdom,
Your heaviness no chain but sacred weight.
The mountain’s manic shapes will soften,
The waterfall’s white song endure,
And you, between them, will discover
The perfect peace of being shaped by time
Yet glowing with the light of your own making.

1151.

We played the game where life begins in hush—
the seed was hidden, folded in the dark,
beneath the heaving patience of the soil,
where silence dreams, and stars without a name
breathe softly in the roots of everything.

How strange it is, that deep beneath our feet,
a thing so small can tremble with such hope!
And though the earth is blind, it gently hears
the children laughing as they run above,
calling her name with every playful step.

She listens. How her tiny pulse begins
to answer in the rhythm of becoming—
not fear, but wonder in the buried hush,
for joy is always born from quiet things.
She stretches out her arms in secret prayer.

And see! The sun arrives, and springtime sings,
its voice a golden trill along the wind.
She lifts her head, and all the loam gives way—
the world has made a space for her to rise.

A shy green face appears beneath the sky,
and two small leaves unfold like gentle wings,
a song not sung but lived, and in its flight
a truth: that all who hide are not alone,
but waiting for the world to call them forth.

1152.

Bent like weary trees beneath winter’s weight,
We shuffled through the mire’s clinging grasp,
Turning our backs on flares that mocked the night,
Each step toward respite a trembling prayer.

Men moved as sleepwalkers, bare feet baptized
In crimson mud, their eyes wide yet unseeing—
Deaf to the hiss of death’s soft raining,
Drunk on exhaustion’s bitter vintage.

Then—sudden warning! Gas!—a frantic ballet
Of clumsy hands securing salvation’s mask,
While one poor soul danced his awful solo,
Flailing in the emerald-tinted abyss.

Through lenses fogged with fear and poison,
I watched him sink in that unnatural tide,
His figure writhing in aquatic anguish,
A sight that haunts my every sleeping hour.

If you could walk beside that grim procession,
See eyes roll white like marbles in the dust,
Hear lungs surrender their red, frothy song
With each jolting step of that foul cart—

If you could taste the copper-scented air
And know it carried whispers of your name,
You’d never spin sweet tales of battle’s glory
To eager hearts clutching at honor’s dream.

Rejoice! For in this brutal revelation
Lies sacred truth that shatters hollow lies—
No sweetness crowns the dying for one’s country,
Only the endless why that lingers on.

What greater love than this: to strip away
The gilded mask from war’s grotesque face,
To show its true visage to the innocent,
That they might choose more wisely than we did?

O blessed clarity born of such horror!
That turns our mourning into warning song,
Our nightmares into lanterns for the young,
Our loss into a shield for futures bright.

So let us tell instead of morning’s triumph—
Not how men perish, but how wisdom grows,
Not of the dying, but the awakened living
Who rise from mud to build with careful hands
A world where such sweet lies need never take root,
And peace becomes the only glory worth pursuit.

1153.

Blessed!
Be the father of the bride who danced
beneath the stars beside the blacksmith’s forge,
where iron sang with heat and human hope—
and from his hand the humble axe was born.

Blessed the woodsman, steady in his craft,
who swung that axe into the living oak,
not knowing that the tree, in falling slow,
would gift its heart to shape a marriage bed.

And in that bed, where dreams first take their root,
a life began that blossomed down the years—
a great-grandfather, breathing in the dawn,
who grew to guide a carriage through the lanes.

And in that moving cradle of the world,
your mother met your father—just by chance,
or fate, or some divine and comic thread—
and from their gaze, you entered into time.

So praise the chain of moments, small and strange,
that led to now, this breath, this flash of thought.
Each strike of iron, each tree’s gentle fall,
each hand extended, every passing glance—
all joined to shape the miracle of you.

1154.

I loved you most, Autumn, when your golden leaves
Released their grip and danced toward the earth,
Leaving brave branches bare to face the frost—
Your apple-red sunsets fleeing early,
Your lengthening nights humming quiet vespers.

Now I stand wondering: what tempest’s whim,
What twist of fate’s unfeeling navigation,
Has brought me—weary sailor of life’s depths—
To kneel a beggar at your russet court?

When twilight closes like a well-read book
And stars ignite their ancient punctuation,
I wander searching for that vanished peace
Once mine to claim without beseeching heaven.

Did I truly love you, Autumn, or merely tremble
At winter’s whisper in your cooling breath?
Perhaps both truths can live together—
The heart’s bright joy and fearful anticipation
Twined like vines around your harvest moon.

Rejoice! For in this melancholy questioning
Lies autumn’s deepest lesson, crisp and clear:
That loss and love are seasoned by the same hand,
That barren branches promise future blossoms,
And every golden leaf’s surrender feeds
The roots of spring’s inevitable returning.

O sacred season of the in-between!
You teach us how to hold and how release,
How beauty walks with transience arm in arm,
How loneliness can be a kind of prayer.

So let me love you rightly, Autumn—
Not just for what you give, but what you take,
Not for comfort, but for your stark honesty,
Your way of showing us our naked selves
Before the snow comes to blanket all in white.

And when winter’s teeth finally bite,
I’ll cherish memory’s stored-up amber light—
Those fleeting afternoons when you and I
Stood golden together beneath the shedding sky,
Learning the art of graceful letting go.

1155.

Like rare and wondrous creatures of the deep,
they rise and sink through tides of thought and light—
not beasts, but shapes of memory and grace,
stone-bright and veined like petals in the dusk.

The sea, a mirror wide with breath and time,
yields up its song, and I, with steady hand,
reach through its trembling leaves of moonlit glass.
The world draws back to let me taste its soul.

No longer do I dread the hidden pull
of forces moving under bark and skin—
for every branch that stirs the silent wind
reminds me life is always there, unseen.

The sea divides, not with a wrathful hand,
but like a curtain swept in dance aside,
so I may feel—if only for a while—
the closeness of a light that breathes in waves.

These fingers—curved as if to hold the stars—
are not the end of us, but their beginning;
they carry salt and memory and music,
they carry dreams that rise from root to crown.

If bones do scatter, let them seed the sand;
if dreams dissolve, let them perfume the dawn.
Even in sleep, the soul still names its joy—
and what it names, it dances into bloom.

1156.

No bridal veil shall crown my liberated days—
His love provides what ceremonies cannot.
Why wander further when my soul’s at rest?
The endless chase for “wife” has met its end,
Devoured by time’s contented feline,
Who dances now with whimsical abandon.

The scribe within me laid her pen aside—
No need for verses nor divine pretenses—
While at my door stands Mr. Tenderness,
Knocking his patient, unassuming rhythm.

Rejoice! For in this sweet indifference
Lies power no contract could confer:
To answer when I choose, to love untethered,
To view suspicion’s traps with laughing eyes.

What if his stalker’s gaze seems overeager?
What if your tales outpace the truth’s dimensions?
That klutz I slept with? Merely moonlit sport—
Life’s fleeting joy needs no justification.

The gig persists, the “good boy” plays his part—
Perhaps sincere, perhaps performance art—
But here’s true freedom: not to care which’s which,
To greet intrigue with an arched eyebrow,
And when they say “don’t even start,” begin
Exactly what and when and how I please.

O blessed state beyond society’s scripts!
Where cats dance freely on discarded norms,
Where women’s “subject” meets its happy ending
Not in conclusions, but in open questions,
And love becomes a choice, not chain or cage—
A visitor who knocks, but needn’t stay.

So let them whisper of my strange ways,
Their clocks sold to dull conformity—
I’ll keep time with my heart’s unruly beat,
And find in this unruly peace, my paradise.

1157.

I stand alone in this unending expanse,
A single tree upon the mournful plain,
No kindred soul to match my rooted rhythm,
No whispered secrets from companion streams.

The joyful babble of distant springs
Fades into silence before reaching me,
Leaving only the dry song of solitude
To echo through my thirsty, waiting leaves.

Yet in this barren home, strange comrades gather—
The stinging hail of sharp remembered pains,
The looming cloud of what may never come,
The sudden storms of uninvited grief.

Within my bark-bound heart, the lonely wolves
Sing their harsh chorus through the starless nights,
While dawn’s approach brings no expected hope,
No quickening pulse at morning’s golden promise.

Rejoice! For in this deep isolation
Grows wisdom only solitude can teach:
That roots dig deepest when no shade competes,
That lonely trees grow strongest toward the sun,
Their branches tracing prayers in open sky
No crowded forest could articulate.

What if my companions seem like tormentors?
The hail sculpts my trunk with patient hands,
The fearful clouds water my hidden growth,
The sorrow-storms polish my clinging leaves.

And when the wolves of loneliness howl loudest,
Their voices shake from me a sweeter song—
The anthem of the unaccompanied,
The hymn of those who stand their ground alone.

O blessed isolation! Though I tremble,
I would not trade my place in this vast plain—
For who else could report the desert’s beauty?
Who else could mark where sky and earth embrace?
Who else could prove that life persists, defiant,
In places others fear to call home?

So let me stand, my roots gripping the dry soil,
My branches spread to catch both storm and sun—
A testament that solitude, though harsh,
Can birth its own peculiar kind of joy,
And even the loneliest tree casts shade
For some lost traveler yet to come.

1158.

And I came forth unclothed into the dawn,
the breath of life both gift and song to me—
each exhalation shaping something bright,
each inward draw a thread of hidden flame.

I walked in innocence, yet knew my steps
were carved by stars and stirred by ancient winds.
The air grew full with voices I had made,
a sky of singing gathered from my chest.

These were no burdens but unfolding wings—
a robe of breath made visible by light.
Where once I spoke, the syllables took root
and shimmered on the morning’s quiet skin.

Words crystallized and danced like dew on stone,
each one a gleam of joy the frost adorned.
I did not know my singing would become
a cloak I wore, so full of what I am—

not mask, not veil, but woven memory:
a tapestry of longing, shaped by love,
the weight of wonder pressed upon my face,
my eyes still open, seeking more of life.

At song’s deep heart, a silence softly glows—
not emptiness, but promise still to come.
The soul must sing, and in that singing, shine.

1159.

Though June may scatter light like polished glass,
her mornings veiled in silver, bright and young,
and lay her azure calm on mountain peaks,
those days are swift and pass without a weight.
But October—October wears the soul.

When January burns with frost and fire,
its crimson edges smoulder on the wind,
and dreams turn inward, drawn toward deeper flame,
where longing leans on sleep and silence grows—
yet October—October speaks of time.

She walks among the trees with steady grace,
a hush upon her hair like orchard mist,
and in her gaze the gold of all that was,
now letting go with neither grief nor haste—
yes, October—October holds the truth.

Her path is strewn with endings turned to light,
each fallen leaf a page from life’s own book;
she lifts the dusk and crowns it with the dawn,
and teaches us to age without regret—
for October—October is the year’s own heart.

1160.

You knew it well, as surely as the stars,
that love in me was single and complete.
The Lord has seen it, written in my breath—
how, like the wind through fields of wayward grass,
your being wove itself into my soul.

And now, within the quiet of my mind,
your life endures, a melody still warm,
a song that hums beneath the day’s bright stir,
and softens mourning’s edge with memory.

You are a spring that never drains away,
whose waters stir within my arid self,
each drop a joy, a balm, a breath of green.
You came into my desert like a palm,
you touched my salted skin like wings of sea,
and you will live in me until I end.

1161.

Among the whispering pines where roots run deep,
my grandfather once shaped the world by hand.
He learned his words in Yiddish, soft and sharp,
to better clean the panes of foreign homes—
the French windows, the sixteen squares of glass,
the terraced light that never shone for him
except in fragments carried on the cloth.

Yet joy was in his labor, in each stroke—
he polished not just glass, but possibility.
He carved from pine the violins of hope,
then stained them with a love no fire could burn.
He tuned the strings until they sang of flight,
and music bore his daughters through the air,
beyond the bounds of farm and ash and smoke.

The barn is gone. The earth remembers not.
The scrubby pines now veil what once had been,
and every breeze stirs needles in the sky.
Still, when my father lifts his weathered hand
to dry his tears, he smiles despite the ache,
for in those panes—so spotless, so exact—
no streaks remain. The light was always clear.

1162.

The murmur runs along the city streets—
through Repins and the corridors of trade,
at Lorenzinis, heads are slowly turned,
at Tattersalls the gamblers pause mid-mark,
and brokers lose the chalk between their hands.
Even the ones with bread within their coats
step from the clubs and blink into the sun—
for in the square, a man begins to weep.

He stands in Martin Place, and tears descend
like water drawn from some deep joy within.
They cannot stop him. Nor would any dare.
For though he weeps, it is not grief alone
but something vast, a kind of speechless praise
that draws us close yet keeps us gently back.

The trams are stalled along the avenue.
The taxis hesitate. The shop doors close.
And men and women, used to brushing past,
begin to slow, to hush, and to behold.
For here a man does nothing but shed tears,
and those tears fall like offerings to earth—
no shame, no roar, no theatrics of loss—
but simply this: the truth of being here.

And in his weeping, some feel time dissolve—
as though the clock had broken in their chest.
No halo shines. No mystic aura flares.
And yet a kind of peace begins to stir
in even the most hardened, hurried hearts.
A woman stretches out her trembling hand
as if to gather rainfall from his gaze.
A child sits quietly beside his feet.
The pigeons bow their heads. The dogs lie down.

He has no sermon, only tears to give.
And yet he seems to speak to something old—
the joy of standing simply in the sun,
of loving what is mortal and immense.
He walks away, the tears still on his cheeks,
but calm now, like a man who’s washed a wound
and let the ache of living find its breath.

Down Pitt Street goes the weeper, bearing joy
the way the hills bear dusk, or trees bear snow—
a quiet weight, no heavier than light.

1163.

The men who live by thought outlast their time,
For thought, once kindled, does not know decay.
Though blood may fall like rain upon the soil,
It nourishes the seed of living truth,
And what was whispered in a single heart
Rises like wheat beneath the waking sun.

They hanged brave Gordon by the courthouse beam,
With eighteen comrades round him, facing death;
Yet more than flesh was bound upon that rope,
For in his chest there bloomed a living dream:
That justice walks with every barefoot child,
That dignity belongs to every name.
And though they swung him in the breathless air,
His thought took root and multiplied like spring.

Not far in time, another hill was climbed,
Where Jesus bore the burden of the world,
And with him hung the weary and the lost,
But not the vision planted in his words.
No Roman spike could dull the light he gave,
No crown of thorns could bind the open sky.

A hundred years may pass, or even more,
Before the planted truth breaks through the earth;
Yet time is not a master but a womb,
And all that waits must wait to be made whole.
The seed will split, and reach, and lift its blade,
Uncoiling green with purpose toward the light.

Do not grow restless for unfinished walls, Or curse the fields not yet prepared for plough. Each dream arrives in season, each in turn, Like morning follows evening without fail. The house will rise, the doors will open wide, The dream will stretch itself into the world.

They tried to end a man, and yet they sowed The dream that lived within him, bright and clear. And every time we walk beneath the trees, Where once were seeds dropped by careless doves, We see the past renewing in the shade, The future growing in the strength of roots.

They hanged George Gordon with eighteen brave hearts, As once the Romans nailed their prisoner, But neither rope nor nail could still the truth, For truths, once born, are stronger than their tombs. A single kernel cast upon the ground Begets the golden bounty of the field.

And when two moons have danced their silver arc, What once was whispered grows into a storm. So let it be. Rejoice in waiting’s gift, For twice two centuries are not too long, And not too short, to birth a world anew.

1164.

The children walk beneath the boundless sky,
no roof but stars, no walls but moving air—
yet still they wander, full of dreams and songs,
with hunger sharp but hearts that do not yield.

They seek the shade not only for the flesh,
but for the soul that needs a gentler light.
And though the earth has yet withheld its peace,
they bless each breeze that touches on their skin.

The little lords of dust and stone may rage,
may raise their thrones upon the backs of men,
and fill the fields with clangor, smoke, and pride,
but still the wind remembers what was true.

Let wheat arise where sand once held its breath,
let bitter waters turn to drink again.
Let every desert learn to bloom with grace,
and every mountain echo joy’s command.

Appease no wrath but that which clouds the soul—
for He who shaped the music of the stars
did not intend for silence born of fear.
His hand, which shaped the cradle of the world,
can break—but chooses, still, to bless and build.

So let us join His labor with delight,
and mend the rifts with laughter, toil, and bread.
For those who walk without a roof above
may yet inherit sky and light and love.

1165.

I walk among the twigs the wind has dropped,
the golden hush of straw beneath my step,
a moss-bound branch, an amber-polished stone—
each speaks in silence, gleaming in the shade.

My feet, grown wise from all the paths they’ve touched,
whisper, “Be still. Step gently where you are.
Do not disturb the grace of what you see,
but leave it here, as gift for passing souls.

Let others come and marvel, as we did,
and know this moss, this stone, this quiet place
were witnessed once, not trampled into dust.
A life, though moving, learns the art of pause.”

So I go on, with wonder in my stride,
and every leaf becomes a page of time,
a testament that joy may come to those
who see, and seeing, choose at last to spare.

1166.

That love we shared, that rain-soaked mile we walked,
Now lives as gentle weariness within—
Not bitter, just a quiet understanding
That some paths, though beautiful, must end.

The mirror shows a face both strange and known,
A silent traveler who bears my name
Yet moves through days I barely recognize.
How curious to mourn myself this way—
Not for what was lost, but what has changed.

No familiar shadows grace these walls,
No remembered voices haunt these halls.
The years have stretched like endless, cloudless skies
Since last we sat together, you and I,
Waiting for your warmth to fill the world.

Rejoice! For in this tender melancholy
Lies love’s enduring, paradoxical gift—
The sweetness of connection lives undimmed
Even as the hands that held have slipped apart.

What wisdom time has etched upon my heart:
That love remains though lovers may transform,
That empty skies still hold the sun’s return,
And even weariness can bloom to grace
When watered with acceptance’s gentle rain.

O blessed transformation! Let me smile
At both the stranger in the glass and me—
For every ending is a silent starting,
And loneliness can be its own companion,
Teaching the soul to find its constant light
Beyond the fleeting warmth of others’ hands.

So I’ll sit again beneath vast skies,
No longer waiting, simply being—
At peace with all that came before,
And all that’s yet to come.

1167.

Before you, mother Idoto, here I stand,
unclothed of all pretense, bare as the dawn,
a prodigal returned, yet leaning firm
upon the oilbean’s steady, patient strength.

Lost deep within your legend, I await
your silent power, waiting on bare feet,
a watchman for the ancient, whispered word
that guards the gates where heaven’s light begins.

From depths profound my yearning voice ascends—
“O listen! Hear the dark waters rise and fall,
the violet ray that pierces twilight’s veil,
a promise of the fire yet to come.”

A rainbow bends, a slender, arching bow,
like ancient serpent poised to strike the earth,
it foreshadows flames that dance within our dreams,
a herald bright of life’s relentless flame.

Solitude calls me softly to the grove,
the orangery where time slips through the leaves.
A wagtail sings its tangled-wooden tale,
while sunbird mourns a mother’s quiet song.

Rain wrestles sunlight in a ceaseless duel,
and poised upon one leg, the silent bird
stands witness at the passage where we meet—
the crossroads where our lives and fates converge.

Faces dark as midnight, clustered close,
like ants that march beneath the bell tower’s gaze,
gather in the garden where all roads unite,
a joyful festival adorned in black.

O Anan, hear us at the hinges vast,
where great doors swing and loft organ breathes
its ancient melodies of pressed orange leaves,
the faded light held deep within the years.

We listen in the fields among the winds,
leaning close to catch the sweetest fragment—
the song that winds and earth and time have woven—
a gift eternal, carried on the breeze.

1168.

I stood a tree, my arms stretched wide and strong,
a shelter where the lost and wandering came,
the children hiding in my tender shade,
their laughter ringing through my broken boughs.

But they came, harsh, and shattered all my limbs,
for fear the shadows I had borne would grow,
and in my branches, refuge they would find—
a place to dream and play the game of fate.

Yet though my limbs were torn, my roots remain,
deep in the earth, where life renews its song,
and from the scars the seasons softly bring,
new branches rise to cradle hope once more.

So joy springs up from every broken part,
for even in the breaking, there is growth—
a testament to life that never ends,
and in our loss, a richer world begins.

1169.

Janai, you sail upon the whispering winds,
I ride within the silence at their heart—
where all dissolves and all things softly go,
the ships, the seas, the clouds in vast parade,
the people stirring in the month of May.

Within me roars a tempest, fierce and wide,
a mighty steamer trembling through the depths,
yet still returns to you, to May’s warm breath,
to winds that carry voices far and near,
to people’s lives, their stories and their dreams.

And all that leaves, yet leaves a trace behind,
like footprints in a city left to sleep,
within my restless spirit, uncontained—
may this great ship bear you beyond the storm,
to calmer seas where joy and peace prevail.

So, Janai, ride the winds that call your name,
and know that in their dance, life’s endless song
flows through the stillness and the moving waves,
and carries us beyond the world we know.

1170.

The vase declares with pride: “A thousand hammers
Could never match the worth I hold within.”
The hammer answers strong: “Yet I have shattered
A hundred vases, breaking forms to change.”

The craftsman smiles: “I forged a thousand hammers,
Each shaped with care to serve a noble task.”
The great man claims: “I conquered countless craftsmen,
Their labors lost beneath my mighty hand.”

But hammer laughs: “I struck down that great man,
And shattered all his power’s fragile claim.”
The vase replies, serene: “Within my depths
I hold the ashes of that very man—
A quiet testament to life’s cycle,
Where making, breaking, rising all entwine.”

So joy is found within this dance of forms,
Where strength and frailty meet and intertwine—
And through the breaking, something new begins,
Reflecting all the seasons of our lives.

1171.

Rumi, you go with winds upon your side,
and I, too, ride within the breath of stillness—
a hush that sings of all things passing on.
So many ships glide forward through the foam,
so many seas stretch wide beneath the sky,
and overhead, the clouds like thoughts drift high,
and all around, the people move like waves,
and May, the month of promise, walks with them.

And in my chest, a mighty engine stirs—
it pulses, trembles, full of fire and steam.
And still, I think of you, and May, and winds,
and all the people, bright and sorrow-touched,
who walk the shorelines of departing days.

Yet even as the world slips out of view,
as cities fall to silence and grow still,
and even as my heart, unruled, expands
into a space where nothing fastens down,
I send you forth upon the kindest wave—
may joy, not storm, be all the world you find.

1172.

I stood as a tree, strong and giving shade,
Until my branches bent beneath their weight—
Not fruit nor nests they bore, but laughing children
Who turned my limbs to gallows for their games.

They cracked my boughs with their pretended dying,
Their joyful shrieks like birds in evening flight,
Each playful hanging proof of my endurance,
Each snapping twig a sacrifice to mirth.

Rejoice! For in this willing devastation
Lies nature’s sweetest, most enduring truth:
That even broken things find holy purpose,
That what serves joy is never truly lost.

What if my splintered form no longer reaches
As high as once it did toward the sun?
My scars now tell a tale of life well-lived—
Of shelter given, of games encouraged,
Of how a tree becomes beloved
Not by perfection, but by generous giving.

O sacred wounds that testify to love!
The children’s memory of their aerial theater
Will grow as they do, and in their aging hearts
I’ll stand forever as their childhood’s castle—
The gallows-tree that taught them life is precious
Through make-believe deaths and real, dappled laughter.

So let me rest now in my fruitful ruin,
My trunk a throne for moss and beetles’ kingdoms,
My broken branches kindling for their fires,
My legacy not in my form, but in
The grown men’s smiles when they recall
How high they flew hanging from my arms,
And how I loved them enough to break.

1173.

Each Sunday morning, as the bells ring clear,
my cousins wander through the waking lawn,
to gather roses, crimson, pink, and pale,
and ask me softly for some book in French—
a verse from Musset, or from Samain’s tongue,
to match the quiet blooming of the day.

They drift like thoughts across the garden path,
their shears a whisper through the morning hush,
their laughter rising like a fountain’s grace—
a sound that stirs the heart like violins.
They love bright phrases and the air of dawn,
the stillness that glows golden through the panes
when autumn starts to shimmer in the leaves.

How gentle are their steps among the blooms,
how tenderly they hold each flower’s breath,
as though the petals answered them with dreams.
And when they speak, I listen, and I smile,
for all their joy becomes a part of mine.

They never know how beautiful they are—
their laughter left among the garden beds
is like a spell, unspoken and complete.

But when the skies are heavy with soft rain,
they do not come. I walk the garden then,
and find the wind-scattered blossoms on the grass.
I gather them with care, and in the hush
I tie a simple bouquet in my hands,
and place beneath it—gently, like a vow—
a slender book of poems, waiting still,
a light remembered through the falling dusk.

1174.

When I have gone, place your warm hands on mine,
let your beloved palms, still bright with life,
brush gently once across my quiet eyes—
the wheat and sunlight living in your skin
will bring a final blessing to my rest.

Remain, my love, and walk the world for us.
Let not your ears forget the wind’s soft voice,
nor let the sea’s salt laughter fade from you—
go where the tide once brought us both to joy,
and press your feet again into that shore.

I wish for all I loved to bloom anew,
to stir and breathe beneath your vibrant steps.
I sang your name above all things I knew,
because you were the garden and the rain,
because you made the hours sing with light.

So flourish, blossom-hearted, full of spring—
be everything my love would call you to.
Let my remembrance ripple through your hair,
so when you move, the world may understand
why every song I made began with you.

1175.

Beyond the rigid grids of clocks and maps,
The deer move in their sacred paradox—
Neither quite still nor fully in motion,
But dancing at the edge of understanding
Where swiftness and stillness merge as one.

They reshape the horizon with each step,
Teaching new physics with their liquid grace:
Achilles never catching his own fleet feet,
The arrow both departing and arrived.
Their running never reaches, resting never halts—
Some essence always gallops free.

Rejoice! For in their endless transformation
Lies nature’s answer to our stubborn either/or—
Saint Hubert’s stag with crucifix aflame
Between his branching crown, Genevieve’s kind nurse,
The same enchanted pair in every age,
Mythic yet mortal, fleeting yet eternal.

What hunter doesn’t hunger for this prize?
Not for the meat, but for the mystery—
That glimpse of hooves suspended mid-flight,
The tail’s white flash through twilight trees,
Jan de Yespes’ “high, so high” pursuit
That sought not quarry but transcendence.

O blessed creatures of the in-between!
Who solve by being what we strain to prove,
Who move through legend as through morning mist—
Not symbols, but the symbolized made flesh—
Teaching us paradise walks among us still
In forms too wild for cages, even of thought.

So let us watch with reverent eyes,
Content to marvel, not possess—
For in their running that’s no running,
Their standing that still flows like rivers,
We glimpse the world behind the world,
And time, for one pure moment,
Stops to catch its breath.

1176.

He moves with ease beneath the morning light,
his oars dip gently through the mirrored stream—
not lost, but wandering with no set course,
half-dreaming in a world that breathes like thought.

The water bends around his quiet craft,
both shallow where it laughs against the stones
and deep where shade and silence coil below.
A paradox—his brightness glows like flame,
yet in his touch there lingers winter’s calm.

He is no less than sovereign in his realm,
the soft green chambers of the shadowed brook,
where bubbles rise like silver prayers from sand
and minnows weave their songs through light and depth.

The torch he seems to carry never burns—
a brand of gold that sets the stream alight
yet keeps its fire folded in repose.

So much like life, this glimmering passage flows:
so full of splendor none can chart its path,
and yet so hushed it passes like a breath.
We, too, may glide through depths not fully known,
aglow with joy that does not ask for heat,
but simply shines—and shines—and travels on.

1177.

I found her hunched beneath the sheltering stone,
Her wings like tattered flags of some lost war—
Not eagle’s talons nor the owl’s dread gaze
Had brought her low, but man’s relentless taking.

She lifted eyes still swollen from her weeping,
Her sigh a melody of maternal anguish:
“They’ve flown to exile on the cruelest winds—
My fledglings scattered by the hunter’s shadow.”

Rejoice! Though now your nest lies empty,
Love’s threads stretch farther than the cruelest flight.
These days of terror etched upon your heart
Will one day bloom as wisdom’s sacred scars—
Reminders not to wound, when you hold power,
As you’ve been wounded in your helpless hour.

What if their wings must wander for a season?
True homing pigeons find their way through storms.
The world turns as our Lord intends it should—
Today the hunters’ hour, tomorrow yours.

See how oppression’s night already pales!
Your children’s absence writes upon the sky
A map their future wings will trace returning,
Drawn home by memories of your patient feeding,
Your songs that taught them how to brave the wind.

O blessed mother of the scattered flock!
Your tears now water seeds of their return.
The hands that seem so empty cradle lightning—
Soon they’ll brim with feathers, warmth, and dawn.

So breathe, dear heart, and let your mourning lift.
These trials that break weak wings teach strong ones flight.
Your brood’s dispersal is but love’s expansion—
Their exile temporary, your love eternal.

And when at last they darken your sky’s margin,
Not as faint dots but homeward-racing joys,
You’ll know what every wounded healer learns:
The deepest wounds birth brightest wisdom,
And no true love stays exiled forever.

1178.

I do not claim to know a thousand truths—
but what I’ve seen, I’ll gladly share with you.
I’ve watched the cradle swing beneath the stars,
rocked not by silence, but by human song,
by tales we breathe to warm the breathless dark,
where dreams are sewn into the seams of night.

I’ve seen the pain of man wrapped up in words—
his cries subdued by lullabies of hope,
his moans transformed into remembered verse,
his bones laid down beneath the weight of myth,
and over all, the fear that shaped his form,
has made the finest fiction out of love.

And though I know but little of the world,
I’ve slept beneath the shelter of these tales,
and felt their fire flicker through my sleep—
like hearthlight dancing on a cottage wall,
they taught me how to listen and to live.

For now I know, through all these woven threads,
the heart of man has always sung in fear—
but also joy, and longing, and delight.
These stories are not cages—they are wings.
I’ve heard them all. And still I wait for more.

1179.

Of asphodel, the greening flame of spring,
not gold, nor glass, but branching into light,
I come to sing, my love, with lifted heart.
We walked through years with petals at our feet,
our days a pageant filled with nature’s praise,
so when I heard there bloom strange flowers in hell,
I smiled—our joy has followed even there.

I hold today a memory half-sweet,
of flowers pressed in time’s forgetting book,
their color gone, but not the scent they gave.
And so, my dear, I speak to you again
with something urgent in my heart to say—
but not before I breathe the joy of seeing
your figure draw across the light once more.

I fear this joy may be my final one,
and so I stretch my words to make them last.
Listen—do not look away just yet—
for love has brought me news I must convey.

I’ve known the way the light pours on the sea,
the storm recedes, and every wave becomes
a garden turned to flame beneath the sky.
We knew such seas; we were their children once.
I do not say I’ve gone through hell for love—
but rather that I journeyed through the storm
to seek a heaven greater than I knew.

Books taught me much, and I believed their songs—
but now I know, death is not love’s last word.
Love gathers, and in time it gathers all.
Its token is a fragile bloom, yet lives
a thousand lives, and when its moment comes,
it bursts with more than mortal fruitfulness.

Our lives were like a storm drawn out at sea,
and side by side we watched it twist and rise.
The sky was clear behind it, full of peace.
It was a flower, flaming to its peak.
And in its wake, the sea became again
a place of praise, where silence meets the wind.

I speak in flowers, not to veil the truth,
but to recall how once we dared to bloom.
Not every woman bears the flame of Troy—
but every woman has the light of love.
And you, my sweet, you bore it in your soul—
and thus I loved you, for no less than that.

I dreamed a field of silver women standing,
and what could I have done, but love them all?
The storm, it passed—it was not all the world.
Love was, and is, and shall be something more.
It grows, it deepens, spreads across the earth—
it is the garden nothing can contain.

You knew I knew you, not as some ideal,
but as a woman—mortal, wild, and real.
And yet the sea, the infinite, the rose—
we took it in, we saw its fuller form.
That bloom, that kiss, that fiery-hearted thing
we call the world, and also name as love.

And even now, the sea calls with its tide,
and I return to tell you what I know:
that love is not a fever nor a wound,
but something vast, a covenant with joy.
Though lilies bloom and poison with their scent,
they do so just to offer us their risk.

We had our children—they were storms, like us.
I set them down with care and carried on,
not from neglect, but knowing I must come
to meet you once again, after the fire.
And still I come, and still I speak, and say:
this flower, though it is small, will be our trust.

Not from our weakness do we offer it,
but from the height of love, from all we dared,
from all the joy we wove in passing days,
and all the trembling that we would not speak.

Of asphodel—that green and living flame—
I come to sing to you, my joy, my song.
My heart lifts up to bring you this: the truth.
It’s not in what the world calls news you’ll find it—
you will not hear it in the marketplace—
but in the quiet where despised poems dwell.

Men die in sorrow, not for lack of gold,
but for the hunger poems could have fed.
So hear me now, for I am not alone—
but speak for all who hope to die in peace.

1180.

Five thousand souls breathe in this city’s fold—
Five thousand sparks in darkness huddled close.
What multitudes across our wounded land
Stand rooted firm where terror tries to grow?

Ten thousand hands that turn the stubborn earth,
That keep the humming factories alive,
Now tremble—cold and hungry—but still work,
Though fear gnaws deeper than the winter’s bite.

Six lights have vanished in the starless night:
One body stilled, one beaten past all knowing,
Four minds that sought escape in final flight—
Their eyes all bore death’s portrait before going.

Rejoice! Though fascism wears blood as medals,
Though killers strut as heroes in this farce,
Our President’s pulse outguns all their cannons,
And soon our fists will drum redemption’s march.

What if these walls confine us with their numbers?
The soul’s arithmetic knows no such bounds.
Mexico weeps, Cuba’s throat burns raw—
The world will hear our silenced voices yet!

O strange awakening! To see with new eyes:
The lifeless tide, the machines’ cold breathing,
Soldiers playing nurse with tender faces
While murder wears a uniform of lies.

Song struggles forth from fear’s tight prison—
Each note a risk, each word a possible wound—
Yet what I feel must break this awful silence,
Must turn this outcry into cleansing thunder.

For we are more than missing hands and numbers,
More than the sum of all they’ve tried to break.
The blood they spilled now waters our resolve,
The fallen stars now light our hidden path.

So let them come with all their “hero’s precision”—
Our song will swell where their vile echoes fade,
Our living hands will build what theirs destroy,
And from these endless moments of oppression
Will rise a dawn no terror can delay.

The world You made, O God, still holds its wonder—
Not in these chains, but in our unbound spirit,
Not in their seven days of manufactured glory,
But in our endless march toward justice’ light.

1181.

If I could speak again, I’d speak of joy—
Of riding through the peaks where Sotho songs
Still echo in the snow. Your back was strong,
A warmth beneath the cold, and I was free,
My soul unclothed beneath the boundless sky,
The clouds like sails, the stars our quiet fire.
We wandered through the hush of drifting ice
As if the world were young and full of peace.

I’d speak of how the day, though small, was kind—
The hush of frost, the whispering of winds,
The way your breath and mine became the same.
You could have learned, if time were not so sharp,
The heart of life my people held in song,
How even silence carries sacred weight,
And how a fire can speak without a word.

But now the winds are red with blood and dust,
And memory walks through ash instead of snow.
Yet still I lift my thoughts to what remains:
The day we found the mountain full of light,
And joy not made of words, but simply known.

1182.

You take the road the cathedral gazes down,
And pass some twenty blocks, then climb a hill,
And cross the arched old bridge of weathered stone,
Until you reach the place called Guadalupe.
Here dwell no mansions, crowned in sculpted grace,
No golden domes nor colonnades of pride
That bear the weight of centuries like kings,
Still basking in the sun as in a throne,
Half dreaming through the earthquake and the dawn.
No—here the homes are low and built of clay,
Red-roofed and crude, as fragile as the wind,
Not grand nor noble, not what painters seek,
But honest, plain, and faithful to the earth.

Yet look—how warm they are beneath the light!
How glad to greet the breeze that stirs the dust,
And though they know the mountains guard the flame
Of buried wrath, they do not shrink from joy.
They live as though each breath were still a gift,
Too humble and too grateful to declare it.

Now step within these doorways, if you dare:
See walls adorned with saints in gilded frames,
Sold to the poor, but cherished as their own.
And there—behold the children at their play,
Quarreling, laughing, calling in the dust,
As children do in every place on earth.
The women move about with quiet hands,
They stitch, they set the table, sweep the floor—
Their tasks are small, but none of them are vain,
For they are life: the pulse, the breath, the root.
And if you listen—yes—just listen close,
You’ll hear them sing. No sweeter songs exist.
No audience applauds, but still they rise,
These hymns of being, drawn from daily hours
Too real, too rich, for any guide to mention.

Yet there—just there—you’ll find what matters most.

Not in the church whose saints wear jeweled robes,
Nor in the ruin where the pirate bled,
Nor in the palm-lined inn with ragtime tunes
Tapped out by keys untouched by human hands;
Not in the shops where Europe plies its wares,
Nor parlors where the wealthy ape their cousins
Across the sea, with equal want of taste.

No—if you wish to know my native soul,
Then walk among these rows of modest homes
Where women bear their days without complaint,
Where men return each night with dust and bread,
And children learn the names of wind and star.
Here lives my Nicaragua—not the past
Of empire, nor the painted face of wealth—
But this: the breathing now, the living truth.

And what you’ll see, if you look long enough,
Is not some foreign life apart from yours—
But faces shaped by labor, love, and fear,
By hunger for a world that might be just,
By dreams that shift as seasons shift their light.
They laugh and weep as you yourself have done;
They ache for more, as every spirit does;
They carry burdens no one else may see
And still find time to plant a flower’s seed.

So make the journey—not to count their faults,
Or marvel at the strangeness of their ways—
But just to see, with open, quiet eyes,
That life is always sacred, always shared.
And that, in truth, is why we ought to travel.

1183.

O peoples of the earth! I too have failed—
And yet, what music rises from that fall!
I’ve faced the darkness, spoken to the void,
And found my voice among the dead and stars.
The city groans, but I still cry with joy,
For pain itself is proof of something living.

My days are shards of ancient, noble things,
Relics that breathe beneath the weight of time.
Last night, I swear, the heavens wept aloud—
Not from despair, but wonder at the world
Still turning in its chaos, still in love.
And though you whispered sweetly to another,
And never once looked back to see my face,
Still love endures, not mine alone, but ours—
The love that moves the sun and all the stars.

The man and woman smell of death? Perhaps.
But death itself smells faintly of the womb.
I fall—yes, body bruised upon the soil—
Yet even coffins bloom with roots below,
And even sorrow flowers in its time.

Though I have walked as enemy to joy,
And cried aloud through alleyways and fire,
A greater voice within me still takes form,
More strange, more human, more than mere despair.
Not like a beast abandoned to its hunger,
But like a soul that knows what loss has meant—
And sings because it lived to feel at all.

1184.

A woman I’ve not seen in seasons writes
About that mark I left upon her wrist—
A pale comma where my knife slipped once,
Its story whiter now than angry red.

My wife bears her own constellations—
Knees starred from childhood’s glass-strewn adventures,
Ankles mapped with tales I can’t quite picture
Though I imagine crimson-painted feet
Dancing through Chagall’s blue-green dreamscapes.

Rejoice! For in these bodily inscriptions
Lies life’s peculiar poetry of proof—
Not of the wounds themselves, but all that surrounded:
The widening eyes, the gasp, the shirt’s red blossom,
The frozen moment time cannot erase
Though all its sharp emotions fade to haze.

What if we wear our scars as quiet watches,
Telling no time but that of transformation?
Hers neither hidden nor displayed for pity,
But simply there—a medal won from chaos,
A gift I wish I’d given differently.

Now meeting her, I’d let my fingers trace
Not where the blade fell, but where love should have—
That untouched country between us waiting
For kinder marks than accidents can leave.

O blessed scars that teach without reproaching!
My wife’s knees whisper of resilient joy,
That girl’s wrist bears my carelessness with grace,
And both remind me how we keep becoming
The sum of wounds survived and kindnesses
We failed to give but now know how to offer.

So let us wear our marks as sacred text—
Not stories of the hurt, but of the healing,
Not of what separated, but what connects
Us to our younger, clumsier selves
Who didn’t know then what these scars would teach:
That every mark becomes what meaning we assign,
And even old wounds can bloom when touched
By wiser hands in present light.

1185.

O Sun, more radiant than all wanting,
I turn with your deliberate golden wheel,
Letting your flames baptize my upturned face—
Not scorching, but awakening what slumbered.

My mind—an ancient Egyptian relic
Wrapped in Western linen—suddenly remembers
Old rituals of light I never learned,
Yet know by heart when touched by your first fingers.

I shout your name across the trembling waters,
My voice becoming the very clouds you paint
With dawn’s first brushstrokes on the liquid canvas—
A solitary worshipper, yet never lonely.

Rejoice! For in this perfect, primal moment—
This first symmetrical sunrise of my soul—
Time’s doubts dissolve like mist beneath your gaze.
What heat could be too fierce for this awareness?
What fire too bright for hearts that truly see?

The hidden rhythms of creation’s hymn
Thrum through my bones as golden banners unfurl—
Not gently, but with terrible splendor,
Proclaiming the world made new each morning.

O sacred alchemy of light and vision!
The same sun that once lit pharaohs’ tombs
Now ignites my ordinary awakening,
Proving all days are connected by one flame,
All prayers variations of the first awe,
All solitary souls part of the turning disk
That burns not to consume, but to reveal.

So let me stand—both ancient and newborn—
My Egyptian wisdom wrapped in modern skin,
My voice the cloud, the sea, the endless chorus
That greets each day’s miraculous return,
And knows no time could ever be enough
To exhaust the wonder of this daily rising,
This eternal now between dark and dark,
Where I and Sun and all creation meet
In one fierce, joyful, purifying fire.

1186.

This prayer was gifted to me—a whispered hymn
Reserved for crimson hours when my body speaks
In tides that mirror moon-pulled ocean rhythms,
My cells remembering what my mind forgets.

Each month I learn anew from flowing wisdom:
How silver lunar cycles stitch my days
To constellations’ slow, celestial weaving,
How earth’s deep magic fuels this liquid light
That leaves me both emptied and renewed.

Rejoice! For in this monthly transformation
Lies nature’s perfect paradox—the wound
That heals by bleeding, the sacred separation
That binds me closer to all living things.

What holy alchemy flows through these nights
When somewhere—maybe in some star-lit womb—
A dreaming child imagines me into being,
Just as I conjure her with every pulse,
Our mutual becoming written in the script
Of this eternal, temporary tide.

O blessed blood that maps my connection
To orbiting moons and rooted, patient earth!
This is no curse, but living testament—
The visible thread in life’s great weaving,
Proof that creation never stops creating,
That even in release there’s generation,
And every ending feeds some new beginning.

So let me honor this cyclical surrender,
This prayer my body sings without my asking,
This monthly confirmation that I’m made
Of star stuff, soil, and something more mysterious—
The dreaming child who needs my bleeding,
The woman I become because I bleed,
The endless circle where we meet and recognize
Ourselves in each other’s moonlit eyes.

1187.

I love you—this is both truth and illusion,
A battlefield where crows and swallows wage
Their endless war across my stumbling tongue.
Darkness pools beneath our shoulder blades,
Yet when beauty passes—sudden, radiant—
Our childhood tops resume their spinning dance,
Scarring the water with sunlit hieroglyphs.

Watch how the atmosphere grows thin and trembling!
We bury shovelfuls of earth in memory’s flesh,
While ivy sharpens into sudden focus—
Those wandering pleasures you left my heart
Like migrant birds who promise their return
But bring instead decayed mythology.

Rejoice! For even as we crawl blind
Through wave after wave of half-lit days,
Scuttling sideways like confused crustaceans,
Love remains—both compass and confusion—
The reason poems pour from my pen
To stop thought’s wheel from grinding too fine.

What if I’ve only margins to prolong you?
Fictions to sustain what time erodes?
O my unnamed madonna of the avenues,
Who reigns supreme in my pulsing veins—
My golden needle lost in time’s thick haystack—
You’re no less real for being partly dreamed.

So let me love this phantom, this true fiction,
This beautiful hypothesis of touch—
For in the space between the crow and swallow,
Between the scarred water and spinning top,
Between what was and what might yet still be,
Lives all the art and ache of being human,
And every poem another bridge extended
Across the lovely, lonely, endless gap.

1188.

The soul remembers what the flesh releases—
One hoards while one lets go in perfect balance.
If history lives through language’s sharp lens,
Recording each triumph, each scarlet error,
Does it too need its moments of surrender,
Its sacred amnesia to stay human?

Rejoice! For in this dance of keep and lose
Lies wisdom older than our oldest scrolls—
That archives grow too heavy without pruning,
That healing sometimes wears forgetting’s face,
Yet what we choose to lay down tenderly
Becomes the fertile ground for new beginnings.

What if oblivion is but memory’s shadow,
The necessary negative that gives form
To all we hold up to the light of meaning?
The body’s blessed release allows the soul
To carry forward only what still nourishes,
While history’s great corpus learns the art
Of breathing out what no longer serves life.

O sacred balance between ink and ashes!
Between the carved stone and the eroding rain!
Let us praise both—the word that preserves
And the merciful silence that makes room
For stories yet unwritten, songs unsung,
For all that must be forgotten so love
Can reinvent its language once again.

So may our souls stay wise as ancient librarians,
Our bodies stay light as morning mist,
And history—that great remembering—
Learn when to hold and when to open hands,
That the future might have space to grow
Between the lines of all we think we know.

1189.

I absolve you of nearly every transgression—
Your minor faults like spring buds on a bough—
But two delights I cannot help but question:
The poems you murmur to your private sky,
And kisses shouted louder than allowed.

Rejoice! For sins were made for such sweet taking—
Let yours grow wild as honeysuckle vines!
Yet heed the wisdom in my mother’s warning:
A kiss should brush the lips, not shake the rafters,
And music flows through ears, not hungry eyes.

What joyful paradox! That what I chide you
Are life’s most precious, most exuberant arts—
The whispered verse that makes your soul a garden,
The boisterous love that breaks from careful borders.
Perhaps my censure’s but another way
To praise what makes you radiantly human.

O blessed sinner, sing your secret stanzas!
Plant loud kisses where the world might hear!
My mother’s rules were made for calmer hearts—
We’ll write new statutes with our double treason,
Proving sometimes rules deserve their breaking,
And poetry belongs on speaking lips,
And music shines when eyes choose to listen.

So take my tempered forgiveness as challenge—
To sin more deeply, love more audaciously,
Until the world forgets which was the crime:
Your joyful noise or my delighted shushing,
Your blooming verses or my pruned corrections,
Both tangled now in love’s luxuriant vine.

1190.

O tequila! Clean fire scaling adobe walls,
Leaping tile roofs like liquid salvation—
Not for sea-tossed souls who need sharp stars,
But for land-bound travelers riding iron rails,

Where your faithful spirit mirrors parallel tracks
Stretching toward horizons drunk with possibility.
Under some trees, we sip you slow as sermons,
Under others, you rebel against the shade—

Brewing azure flowers in protesting branches,
Blue as poison warnings, bright as sudden truth.
When your fringed banner unfurls above the battlefield,
Even armies forget their grim orders,

Turning homeward with salt and lime companions,
Though you need no entourage to start the revel—
Your crystal tongue speaks fluent celebration,
Defying borders like some radiant anarchist.

Rejoice! For you arrive precisely when needed:
When doubt’s pitch rises to unbearable frequency,
When obligation’s chains at last unlock,
When afternoon stretches golden and infinite.

What sacred pact binds you to earth’s own fruits?
That millennial marriage no dogma dares dissolve—
Comfort for those who labor under sun,
Balm for the daily abrasions of being alive.

Unlike gin’s corpse-grin, you watch alert—
Emerald-eyed sentry of agave fields,
Born not of history but of gods’ own promise,
As ancient as thirst, as true as soil.

So praise your fire that walks with us through time!
Praise the stubborn joy that fights oblivion!
Praise each day’s denial of the coming silence,
And every burning sip that says “not yet”

To all that would diminish life’s bright chorus.
Let us drink deep of your consoling lesson:
That even mortality tastes sweet when shared,
That flame and friendship outlast all destinations,
And every departing train still carries laughter
Toward the next station’s waiting light.

1191.

I have heard stars hum their silver hymns,
And oceans hold their breath at dawn’s approach,
And lovers pause where words become unnecessary,
And the sick trace patterns on the ceiling—
Their quiet louder than any scream.

What use are syllables in such deep waters?
The field beast mourns its young with simple cries,
While we stand mute before life’s rawest truths—
Our languages collapsing like frail bridges.

Rejoice! For in this universal silence
Lies the first alphabet of understanding—
That old soldier joking about his missing leg
(”A bear bit it off” to wide-eyed boys)
While Gettysburg’s cannons still explode behind his eyes.

What if he could paint that crimson nightmare?
He’d be an artist then, yet still unable
To capture wounds no canvas could contain—
The deeper scars that make and break the soul.

O blessed silence of great love and hatred!
Of friendships strained yet stubbornly enduring!
That sacred pause when spirit wrestles darkness
And emerges changed beyond all telling,
Bearing visions that must stay unspoken.

The hush between father and bewildered son,
The quiet clasp of death’s approaching hand,
The space between what was and what comes next—
These are the moments that define us,
The wordless truths that shape our being.

What symphonies play in Lincoln’s remembered poverty?
What final thoughts circled Napoleon’s midnight?
Jeanne’s two-word blaze contains all scripture—
“Blessed Jesus” her whole life’s summation.

And age—that richest silence of them all—
Overflows with wisdom beyond translation,
A language learned only by living long
Through joy and sorrow’s full octaves.

So do not ask the dead to break their peace.
If we who breathe cannot articulate
The depths we swim through every day,
How could those gone explain their deeper journey?

Their silence isn’t emptiness, but fullness—
A text we’ll learn as we draw nearer,
A poem written in the soul’s own rhythm,
Heard only when we too fall quiet,
And listen with more than ears.

1192.

Four truths have schooled me in life’s vibrant dance:
The hush of idleness, grief’s bitter-sweet,
A friend’s warm hand, a foe’s unwitting gifts—
Each teacher in this unpredictable classroom.

Four things I might have lived more lightly lacking:
Love’s sweet torment, curiosity’s sharp goad,
Freckled whimsy, doubt’s nagging whisper—
Yet who’d trade these colors for a blanker canvas?

Rejoice! For three prizes stay beyond my grasping:
The poison of envy, contentment’s dull plateau,
And oceans of champagne that never dwindle—
All wisely kept just past my thirsty fingers.

But three companions walk with me forever:
Hope’s bright banner, laughter’s sudden music,
And life’s sock in the eye that keeps me humble—
Blessed trinity of the fully lived existence!

What joyful wisdom in this odd accounting—
That what we lack defines us as much as what we clutch,
That foes and freckles equally shape our story,
And even life’s punches come wrapped in grace.

So let me toast with my insufficient bubbly
To all I’ll never have and all I keep—
The perfect balance of the flawed and fleeting,
The sacred math that makes a life worth adding up,
And leaves the soul both heavy and lightened
By love’s sweet weight and doubt’s freeing question.

O blessed inventory of being human!
Where sorrow and idleness sit side by side
With friends and foes at one long table,
And every lacking is its own abundance,
And every socked eye winks while striking.

1193.

How strange, how bright this fleeting dance of days—
The voices rise, both chorus and refrain,
“Long live the General!” then, “Down with him!”
The same old cry, the same unyielding pain.

They scatter longing on the wind-swept reeds,
A song half-whispered, half a shout of gold—
Are these her echoes, singing through the years,
The keeper of the jars where names are told?

Does she, who walks the consecrated sands,
Still lift the banner marked with startled red?
O blood, O restless traveler of the wastes,
From dune to dune, from earth to heaven spread!

The very blood that stains the rusted locks,
That lingers on the keys hung in the air—
The door stands heavy as a fallen king,
Yet life endures, defiant, fierce, and fair.

So let the cannon’s mouth, now cold and still,
Become a nest where new-winged hope takes flight.
The world may chant its old, divided cries,
But joy remains—unbroken, burning bright.

1194.

What will you do in that land choked with dust?
They asked, seeing me turn toward the wind,
My heart alight with restless, radiant thirst.

I smiled—oh, let me vanish in the gleam
Of marble columns, white against the blue,
To step where gods and mortals once converged.

Let me be stone, yet breathing; let me stand
As light pours through me, endless and unbroken—
A hymn carved deep in time’s unyielding hand.

For what is flight but laughter flung at death?
What are we, if not echoes set to soar?
I go to lose myself, and thus be found.

1195.

This quiet Sunday finds me still, yet bright—
Not pondering the meek, their destined prize,
Nor echoes of the crowd’s tempestuous cries.

I turn instead to freedom’s blazing light,
That golden thread through every fleeting breath,
The pulse that scorns the gentle kiss of death.

Oh, let my end be fierce, a meteor’s flight—
Not hushed surrender to the creeping night,
But thunder, laughter, battle—wild, unbowed—
A life’s last verse sung fearless, fierce, and loud!

1196.

Oh take my hand, dear friend, and feel it glow—
Not just a grip, but life’s own fleeting spark,
A bridge of warmth in this vast, spinning dark.

We weave our days with hands that craft and know,
From tender touch to battles fiercely fought,
Each calloused palm a story dearly bought.

A rose once held, now passed, still keeps its hue—
The secondhand still blooms in memory’s view.
Some stand hands-off, while others dive right in,
Their handiwork a testament to win.

Oh praise the hands that labor, love, and lift,
That heal, that hold, that shape the world’s great gift.
Yet hands can clench or open wide and free—
Both weapon’s weight and cradle’s gravity.

So here’s to hands! To all they’ve built and borne,
To harvests reaped and melodies well-worn.
And when at last we lay our burdens down,
Our hands, still warm, will sow joy’s endless crown.

1197.

How lavish grows the summer in its pride,
Even for us, with all our emerald sins—
See how the wind, that dry and wistful guest,
Plucks at the magnolia’s gilded skirts,
Stirs whispered quarrels in her perfumed hair,

Then flutes a fleeting song through trembling leaves,
A melody that lingers—just a breath—
Before it dances off beyond our grasp.

The tree stands firm, its splendor undimmed,
Yet something shifts—the air now sings alone,
A bittersweet refrain of what has passed,
As joy and longing twine like vines in sun.

Oh fleeting wind, your touch both wounds and blesses,
Teaching the leaves to laugh while they surrender,
Proving that beauty lives in transience,
And every ending buds with new beginnings.

1198.

How strange, this heaviness of simply being—
The daylight stirs, and lo! the salt lies gleaming,
Great drifts of white like nature’s opened palms
Releasing all their burdens to the wind.

Then comes not fisher with his net and line,
But August, dusty, dragging me along
Through fleeting rooms where memory won’t cling—
Not walls nor beds, but something far more deep:

That amber ache of solitude takes form,
A pyre built from every faded dream,
Yet burning bright with hues of cinnamon.

What more is needed when the void stands clear?
O fiery August! At the last I turn
My very gaze to kindling, and behold—
The nothing shimmers like a dawn newborn.

1199.

Behold the hero, tall and bright with life,
Who strides alone through forests made of light—
A thousand pillars crowned with emerald fire—
Then rests upon a shield of woven pine,
Half-gleaming gold, half-cool with twilight’s hush.

The air alive with dancing, buzzing guards,
A quadrille of flies keeps reverent space,
Held back by rhythms of his breathing flesh,
While ancient trees, their plumes stretched toward the sun,
Stand watch against the threatening clouds above.

Root-bound yet supple, strong yet ever bending,
They circle round his godlike, slumbering form,
Parting the heavens like a sacred veil
To show him stars no mortal eyes have seen.

O perfect balance! Neither heat nor chill
Disturbs his peace, no hunger gnaws his breast—
His spirit feasts on sapphire sparks of sky,
While deep within his throat, behind his eyes,
Beneath each sense’s delicate curtain folds,
The twin queens Memory and Forgetting play.

The very earth responds to his command,
Each leaf and stone would give itself with joy—
Yet mighty as he is, he asks no tribute,
But grants all beings freedom’s sweet release.

Enriched by wisdom, boundless in his grace,
He dies for them each moment, yet lives on—
This king who sleeps while worlds dance round his rest,
This mortal god who makes surrender blest.

1200.

Oh tiny trembling heart cradled in my palm,
Quivering like a leaf in autumn’s psalm—
I found you shaking where the tall grass grows,
A whiskered whisper with such comic toes,
Lizard-feet splayed in cartoonish fright,
Yet pulsing with the sheer will to take flight.

How greedily you drank from bottle-cap springs,
Grew round as a berry on three-cheese wings!
Your bat-ears tuned to each creak and sigh,
No longer trembling when I drew night—
Did you know kinship in that cardboard room,
Or simply bask in respite from doom?

Now dawn reveals the empty nest I made,
Where has my thumb-sized child of grass strayed?
Perhaps to dance ’neath hawk’s shadowed wing,
Or hear the old owl’s deathless whispering—
Brief sovereign of the clover’s keep,
Whose whole bright life was one long leap.

I think of all the fragile, feathered things,
The turtle’s gasp, the fallen nestling’s wings,
The paralyzed man in his rising tide—
Yet joy persists where you now glide!
For in your quivering, cheese-stuffed prime,
You taught my heart to hold, then loose,
The sweet small pulse of borrowed time.

The world’s a wheel of tooth and claw,
Yet in your quivering pause I saw—
Not pity for what fate may bring,
But triumph in each trembling thing!
For life burns brightest when it’s brief,
A meadow-mouse, a maple leaf,
All hallowed by their fleeting dance,
All holy in their given chance.

1201.

The child lives—oh, the child lives forever!
His small fists rise like dawn against the sky,
Not in rebellion, but in pure endeavor,
As his mother’s cry—Afrika!—soars high.
Her voice, the wind that sweeps the open veld,
A song of freedom no walls can withhold.

The child stands tall, his father’s strength beside him,
Through generations marching, side by side.
Afrika! rings—a fire none can hide,
A blaze of justice, deep and justified.
In every street where pride and struggle meet,
The child’s heartbeat drums the rhythm of the brave.

No grave can hold him—not at Langa’s sorrow,
Nor Nyanga’s fields, nor Sharpeville’s bleeding sand,
Nor Philippi, where hate sought his tomorrow.
Yet still he rises, bullet in his hand,
Transformed to shadow, light, and endless breath,
A spirit dancing, laughing over death.

He walks with soldiers, though they do not see him,
Their rifles cold, their hearts in iron clad.
He sits in halls where laws are made to free him,
And peers through windows—oh, he sees the glad
And grieving hearts of mothers, full and wide,
Who knew his joy before the day he died.

This child who longed to chase the Nyanga sun
Now stretches tall, his arms embrace the earth.
From man to giant, his journey’s just begun—
Through all of Africa, his radiant worth,
Through all the world, his light will never fade,
For love, not bullets, is the vow he made.

1202.

Beneath a toadstool’s speckled shade I found
Old Warty Bliggens, smiling on the ground.
“Good sir,” said he, “this canopy so wide
Was woven by the cosmos—just,” he sighed,
“For me to rest when sun or rain descends.
Behold how Providence for Bliggens bends!”

“Don’t speak of chance,” his warty lips proclaimed,
“Each star was hung and every mushroom framed
To serve my comfort. Moonbeams? For my eyes.
The wheeling sky? My nightly lullaby.
This earth exists to grow my toadstool throne—
The universe revolves for me alone!”

I asked what deed or virtue could compel
Such cosmic care—he answered, “Pray, do tell—
What has creation done to earn my grace?
Were I a man (that swollen, strutting race),
I’d temper mirth—for oft in human brains
Such splendid fancies sprout like summer rains.”

Oh Bliggens! Teach us joy in small delights,
To see our shadows stretch to cosmic heights.
What matter if the joke’s on him or me?
The world’s more bright when frogs philosophy—
And mushrooms, meant for one or meant for all,
Still make fine roofs when summer showers fall!

Yet laughing, let us ponder in the hush—
How man builds Babel, toad dreams but a bush.
Both follies sweet, both certain of their worth,
While spinning stardust laughs at both our births.
Oh grant us, Bliggens, half your sure delight
To bask beneath what gods or chance makes right!

1203.

Not air, but crystal frost I draw inside—
Each breath a blade that pierces morning’s tide.
The earth itself retreats beneath my tread,
While every glance I cast leaves brightness dead.

My waking eyes, still heavy with the night,
Begin their weeping ere the sun grows bright.
Yet in this hour before the dawn takes flight,
They gaze upon the world—and doubt their sight.

For lo! Though shadows cling with fingers cold,
And all seems lost in sorrow’s endless fold,
There blooms a hope no darkness can consume,
A spark that turns all grief to golden bloom.

The ice shall melt, the broken earth repair,
And light return to banish all despair.
For every tear that stains the breaking day
But waters joy that blossoms on its way.

Alternate closing stanza for deeper resolution:
What seems like endings are but new begun—
The frozen air, the dark, the grieving sun
Are but the prelude to a sweeter song
That lifts the heart and makes the spirit strong.
So let me breathe this frost as heaven’s wine,
And walk this crumbling earth as paths divine!

1204.

I am a poet—still my brush dips bright
In wounds that weep yet blossom into song,
Still build with joy where walls of wrong stand strong,
And fashion light from chains of endless night.

Each letter burns, yet still my pen takes flight—
Though death may lurk in every word I trace,
I cast them forth like stars through time and space,
Stray melodies that turn the dark to light.

See how my stubborn wishes, fierce and free,
Like arrows pierce the veil of doubt and dread!
They fall like martyrs—yet their dying breath
Plants seeds of dawn where shadows used to be.

Oh let them call me fool or call me sage—
The page still burns, undimmed by age or rage.

1205.

The darkness steals my arrows in their flight,
Yet dawn reveals them rooted in my sight—
Not fallen shafts, but golden blooms instead,
Their gilded petals singing where they’re spread.

Each loss I’ve wept now wears a sunlit crown,
And every frost that bit me melts to down.
What seemed like failures in the moon’s cold stare
By morning’s light prove victories most rare.

Oh sweet reversal! Time’s most gracious jest—
Our deepest wounds become our bravest crest.
The very shafts that missed their mark at night
Return as blossoms drenched in honeyed light.

Let others count their triumphs by the score,
I’ll measure mine by flowers at my door—
Each golden bloom a battle lost, yet won,
Each petal laughing in the rising sun.

The earth reclaims what heaven first denied,
And turns my mourning into morning’s pride.

1206.

My mind unfolds like some old mariner’s chart,
Drawn by moonlight with a drunken artist’s heart—
Where brassy winds trumpet through puffed-out cheeks,
And nations bloom like Persian quilt-work streaks.

“Here stalk the tygers,” “Here lies old Jim’s bones,”
Here in the straits where sightless fish drone
Round their drowned god who weeps his golden tears
Into the deep that swallows all our fears.

Lands dark as moonshine, bitter-sweet as cider,
Sorcerers gnawing hunger’s rope still tighter—
A wilderness as rough as chestnut skin...
But yours, my love? Let me begin again:

Your mind is April’s water, laughing clear,
A cherry branch with blossoms like a prayer,
Lavender thoughts that perfume every word,
A sunlit room where two bright birds are heard—

Peace and Honor, stitching with golden thread
New constellations into Fate’s dark spread,
While Mockery, that pale and fluttering thing,
Batters in vain against the joy you bring.

You are the winged soul that wakes the dead,
Whose single voice makes angels bow their head—
Two minds we are, yet in our dance we find
The perfect map, the fruit, the rind, the wind!

The sea-tossed chart and April’s fragile rain
Now weave one world where all our truths remain.

1207.

What gentle hush reigns in this hallowed space!
The very graves seem lit with quiet grace,
While those who rest beneath in softened speech
Hold court in darkness far beyond our reach.

They call to us in words both plain and clear—
Yet distance swallows all we strain to hear.
Their yearnings fade like echoes on the wind,
Too faint to pierce the peace they’ve left behind.

For Martzokis, two crossed sticks alone
Stand sentinel where seeds of love were sown.
Vasiliadis sleeps beneath his tome—
Great marble pages marking wisdom’s home.

And here, half-hidden where the wild grass grows,
A plaque tells of Lamari’s repose—
The poet Death has dressed in earth’s embrace,
Yet cannot steal the light behind her face.

Oh sweet communion ‘twixt the quick and dead!
Where memory walks and tender tears are shed—
Not loss we mourn, but love’s enduring art
That graves carve deeper in the living heart.

Rejoice! For though their voices drift away,
Their presence lingers in the light of day—
The crossed sticks bloom, the marble breathes anew,
And Lamari’s verse still dances in the dew.

1208.

Death could not claim me—I who stood and fought,
This restless flesh with fiery spirit wrought,
Who rose each dawn on wings of stubborn light
To wrestle darkness till the day burned bright.

In Troy’s great ruins, trembling hand once wrote
“All things are love or death”—that timeless note
That set my soul adrift on endless seas
Where neither port nor promise brings me ease.

Through Roman streets I cried “No gods remain,
Just Time’s unyielding, ever-flowing vein”—
And since that hour no absolution came,
Yet still I kindle my undying flame.

In Spanish dust I learned the rebel’s part,
Let rage take root deep in my bones and heart,
Till every drop of blood became a spark
To light the long fight through the endless dark.

Now let this foreign earth cradle me sweet
Where grass may whisper at my tired feet—
Not songs of surrender, but battle’s cry!
For I would meet each dawn with sword held high,

Each day my last, each breath a war well fought,
My heart still challenging the tides of thought,
Not like some wreck upon fate’s cruel shore,
But as the wave that pounds forevermore.

Oh let the sea roar loud against my breast!
I’ll match its rhythm with my warrior’s zest—
Not sand that yields to every passing sweep,
But bedrock where the eternal waters keep.

1209.

Behold—the moon ascends her silver stair!
Not long now till she hangs complete in air,
That glowing orb, so plump and round and bright,
Perhaps God’s ladle dipped in starry light.

What cosmic soup simmers in heaven’s bowl?
He stirs the pot and fishes for a soul—
Not grim nor grave this holy cookery,
But joyful work we’re privileged to see.

Each twinkling fish that leaps from spoon to sky
Becomes a star to bless the passerby,
And we below, both mortal and divine,
Taste heaven’s broth in this shared light of thine.

So laugh, my friends, at this celestial joke—
The sky’s our soup, the moon’s our yolk,
And every soul that ever took a breath
Is swimming in this broth we call both life and death!

1210.

When she poured, the morning light stood still—
Not admiration that our hearts could fill,
But something purer, like a sacred rite
That made the steam rise haloed in her sight.

Her frescoed hand, so delicate, so sure,
Cradled the cup while cream began its lure,
A silver swirl descending like a prayer
Into the dark depths waiting to repair.

“Do you take sugar?”—measured grain by grain,
Each crystal falling like celestial rain,
As precious as the myrrh of ancient kings,
Yet common as the joy that smallness brings.

But oh! The comfort when we turned to go—
That slightest movement only we would know:
Her stenciled jaw composing, line by line,
The world’s most fleeting, most eternal sign—
A smile that held both heaven and exile,
Brewed dark and sweet like coffee in her style.

1211.

I listen to the wind’s untethered song,
Hoping to catch some echo, faint yet strong,
Of childhood laughter riding on the breeze—
That carefree joy that lived in melodies.

The giggling children, light as dandelion fluff,
Reveal the ghost of mirth I once knew well enough,
While down these quiet streets where silence grows,
I chase the dancing tunes memory still bestows.

Beneath the shine of luxury’s parade,
I seek my humble alley, poorly made—
And in these dolls with silk-spun, perfect hair,
I long to find my ragged treasure there.

First communicants in veils so white and pure
Still hold some glimmer that might reassure—
That fleeting spark of wonder unconfined
Which once ignited my untarnished mind.

Yet though I search each face, each street, each toy,
No perfect past remains—but oh, what joy
To find instead that time cannot erase
The love that shaped me in that sacred space!

For what we mourn is not the thing that’s gone,
But proof that once our brightest light was shone—
And in this searching, may we come to see
The child lives on in who we’ve grown to be.

The years may hide, but never steal away
The golden threads of that forgotten day—
They weave through present laughter, present tears,
The living map of all our yesteryears.

1212.

Through countless ages I will seek your light,
Beneath each rock and past each starry height—
No shadow safe from my relentless gaze,
No horizon untouched by love’s fierce blaze.

My voice will find you wheresoe’er you roam,
A ceaseless whisper calling you back home,
My footsteps tracing paths your own have made,
Through time’s great labyrinth we’ll never fade.

A million suns may burn and bloom anew,
The dead may rise then bid the world adieu—
Yet still I’ll seek you in the moon’s soft glow,
In stardust swirls where silent rivers flow.

Oh even nothingness cannot conceal
The love no force of time could ever steal—
For in the void where all things turn to dust,
I’ll find your essence, radiant and just.

Let eons pass like sand through heaven’s hand,
Let worlds dissolve like castles in the sand—
Our bond remains, unbroken and sublime,
The one true constant through the march of time.

1213.

You claim one love dissolves another whole—
And so it seems, dear heart, yet love’s true role
Transcends the arrow’s sting, the wound’s cruel art,
That mingles joy with sorrow’s counterpart.

Not every spark belongs to Cupid’s fire,
Nor every end fulfills the first desire.
We victims of sweet Eros bear the mark
Not as lost souls, but joyous vessels, dark

Yet radiant with purpose. Time may flow,
But memory persists—I still can know
Your essence, separate from passion’s claim,
Like Magritte’s moon caught in the streetlamp’s frame,

Where dawn delays, and night resists the day,
Two truths suspended in a single sway.
The paradox may lie in rhetoric’s hand,
But not in us—we understand

That love accumulates like golden dust,
No later sun obscures the first dawn’s trust.
For memory too loves in its own right—
As poets know, there is no final night.

What wisdom in forgetting’s false pretense?
Each love remains, a layered luminescence.
The heart’s great gallery hangs every hue—
Not painted over, but shining through.

1214.

Consider how your gaze meets my release—
Not loss, but light expanding without cease,
A drowning sweet in meaning’s living stream
Where all we were exceeds what we did seem.

Now see your own oblivion bloom in me—
Not death, but rose with opened mystery,
Its petals stretching toward the sun’s embrace,
Its fragrance lingering in time and space.

To yield myself becomes no battle now,
No body strained against the wind’s hard brow,
But quiet as a shipwreck finds its rest
Upon the sea that claimed it to its breast.

Since thought of you escapes my grasp today,
I’ll plant my dreaming in your heart to stay—
Not gone, but growing where all truths are sown,
In that good earth where we are both unknown.

What luck to lose what never was possessed!
The mind’s sure boundaries sweetly transgressed—
Our thoughts now mingled with the wind and spray,
Two wrecks made whole in love’s perfect decay.

1215.

Freedom at last—this pavement mine to claim,
A stranger among thousands, none to name
Me known or kin. Against the rushing tide
I walked, wide-eyed, my new-born city pride.

Then sudden as summer rain, the venom came—
That hissing word, that spit, that sting of shame
Upon my cheek. I turned to window’s light
Where my reflection stood, transformed from blight:

There face and spittle merged with printed lore,
My image now one with the books’ rich store—
Each word a shield, each page a world so wide
No hate could stain the stories there inside.

Oh blessed alchemy of hurt and grace!
That turns all bitter drops to golden trace—
The city’s wound now makes my spirit whole,
And in its cracks there blooms a brighter soul.

Let spit become the ink of poets’ might,
Let slurs transform to verses shining bright—
For every stone hate casts into our sea
Becomes a pearl of deeper dignity.

1216.

Dead to the world, I failed you, wandering one—
Forgive this empty hand, this setting sun
That offered neither drink, nor bread, nor rest,
When you came seeking what I might have blessed.

Forgive the poems left to wither cold—
Those I with irony’s sharp frost did scold,
Those trampled under anger’s heavy boot,
Those turned from fear’s unseeing eyes, mute

To their bright calling. Everywhere they cried,
Those unborn verses, day and night they tried
To break my walls—yet still I barred the way,
Too blind to see, too proud to let them stay.

Forgive the colors they might yet have worn,
Their faces lost where no dawn could be born.
Each silent hour where inspiration died
Now blooms with ghosts of what I might have tried.

Yet see—their whispers make the willows sway,
Their breath still stirs the dust along my way.
Though lost, they live in every bud that grows,
For poems planted in the dark still rose.

The road ahead still shimmers with their grace,
Each step awakes some long-forgotten trace.
What seemed like endings blossom to reveal
New songs still waiting past what time may steal.

1217.

A glow ignites the forest—red and bright,
A furtive shimmer dancing through the light.
Like sateen spilled on needles of the pine,
It stains the moss in carmine, bold, divine.

Oh, rubied fire licking ivy’s throat,
Oh, Carampangue of blood in satin coat!
The emerald lashed by wind, the chasm’s blue—
All tremble ‘neath this radiance, fierce and new.

Behold the woman wreathed in solar flame,
Her dress a conflagration none can tame.
The forest holds its breath in silent awe,
A green cathedral to the light it saw.

Lamé splits viridian, births sapphire flares,
While ancient tapestries weave through the air—
Silenus drool, Beelzebub’s slow crawl,
Forked tongues of serpents, hieratic all.

Velvet the panther’s stride, the crone’s wild hair,
Velvet the butterfly that flutters there.
Volcanic iridescence curls its spit
To comet trails where memory is lit.

O golden blood! O beauty’s last refrain!
The grove still burns, though you may pass again.
What first seemed terror now stands sanctified—
The wood’s red heart forever glorified.

1218.

Here the tides dance—not slaves to moon’s dull sway
Dragging their chains round shores of lifeless clay,
But bold with purpose, pounding gates apart
To rush through channels of the human heart.

They teach the sea new songs: the cataract’s roar,
The whisper-soft caress on leafy shore,
The broken melodies of ancient deep
Where once bright fires burned pathways through our sleep.

Red kelp lies thick as blood along the sand,
Salt-stained and stubborn, clinging to the land—
No tide can bleach it, no sun make it fade,
Rooted in stone where wreck and rudder trade.

Here winds are kin—not wild and shrieking ghosts
That wail on barren cliffs like hollow hosts,
But partners breathing spring’s sweet hopeful air,
Harvest’s ripe musk, the sea’s brass trumpet blare.

They share our pulse, blow dawn’s high clarion call,
Then sigh to dusk’s slow largo, spent withal—
One hand holds bread, one death’s cold chilling stream,
Yet both spill bounty like a god’s own dream.

See how the shells, like shattered china bright,
Tell wind-scrawled stories in the fading light—
Some bronzed, some jade, some spiraled fine as lace,
Some chattering still of storms they dared to face.

Here cliffs stand wise—not mindless brute rock-breast
That meets the waves with blind, unthinking zest,
But sentinels with harbors in their keep,
Mastiff-loyal, guarding home from deep.

Oh tide and wind, oh crag and shell and weed,
Your epic sings of more than ocean’s need—
Of veins that burn with undiminished fire,
Of doors left open when the storms retire,
Of dreams no night could drown in endless dark,
Of human tides that left their lasting mark.

1219.

Thank you for this unveiling—woman’s form
Beneath the shuddering boughs where roof-beams groaned,
While I, a hunter of the veiled and true,
Pursued the mystery that led to you.

Even that terror in the Madhouse walls
Where emptiness like some great specter calls,
Became a gift—we fled to open air,
To images untainted, clean and bare,

Food for the hungry mind that dares rebuild,
For hearts where feeling’s radiance is instilled,
For bodies lightened of their ancient chains.
Your touch ignites me, yet your smile remains

A lantern in the gathering dark’s embrace.
Let night come gnash its teeth—I keep my place,
That those safe shores might hear my blazing cry:
Behold how love burns brightest ere we die!

1220.

When I must cross to night’s unending shore,
And all this vivid world exists no more,
What loss will pierce me as my senses fade?
Not sunlit fields nor gentle woodland glade—

Not blossoms’ scent, nor birds’ bright choruses,
Nor cattle lowing under spreading trees,
Nor silver streams that dance their liquid light—
Dear as these are, they won’t haunt death’s long night.

But oh! Manhattan—pulse beneath my hand,
Your roaring streets I’ve walked and loved and spanned,
Your golden towers piercing heaven’s blue,
Your hidden alleys humming secrets too—

Your million lives that throb through every vein,
Your dawn-lit docks, your midnight summer rain,
Your smells of pretzels, perfume, subway steel,
The way you make the abstract real, the real ideal.

What cruel fate, to leave without farewell
This island where all human passions dwell!
Yet joy remains—for though my eyes grow dim,
I carry all your splendor forth with him.

1221.

The cracking sky pours forth its liquid light,
Washing the stones where fallen heroes rest—
Not cleansing grief, but carving paths so bright
Their rushing streams sing freedom from the west.

“Dry your tears, my Kenza, precious child,
Though flesh may fade like blossoms in the storm,
Our sacrifice blooms fierce in desert wild—
New Algeria rises from this harm.

See how the body withers like cut grain,
Yet ideas take root where martyrs trod!
Though stars fall screaming through the leaden rain,
The sky keeps burning with the fires of God.

They marked us long before the bullets flew—
These hunters of the quick, the wise, the bold,
Who turned our streets to killing grounds they knew,
Yet could not kill the dream our dead still hold.

But hark! One voice will echo through the years,
A living memory no sword can part.
Our wounds will close like morning swallows’ tears,
And peace will blossom from this broken heart.

So lift your face, dear daughter, to the sun,
Where children dance where once the killers strode.
Our blood becomes the river, swift and strong—
The seed, the soil, the harvest, and the road.”

1222.

They warned me back with fearful cries and gestures—
“No, scorching heat will blister up and wound you!
No, weight will crush what tender hands would cherish!”
Their voices clucked like hens around a fire.

Then came their softer chains: “Take up the pen now—
Let written lines contain your wilder yearnings.”
I grasped a word—it fluttered, bled, resisted,
A trapped bird pecking at its inky prison.

Yet oh the joy when burned hands learn their power!
When what was heavy lifts us like a feather!
And every word that fought me now sings sweetly—
Not caged, but winged with fire and flying weather.

What wisdom in the scorch, what grace in weight!
The wounded word now guides me like a fate.
No cage remains that hasn’t sprung its door—
Each burn, each burden lights me more and more.

1223.

My father holds the blueprint in his mind
For perfect governance of humankind—
Each evening by the hearth he will profess
Solutions to our national distress.

The trusts? Dismantled with decisive speed!
(Though furnace pipes require a hand indeed).
No thief could slip past his astute pursuit,
Yet chairs must go to craftsmen for repair—
Such mundane tasks deserve not his repute.

When public storms arise, he takes the helm,
Debates subdued by his unshaken realm.
He’d set Congress to rights with fiscal laws
(Though household bills give him reflective pause).

How legislative follies vex his sight!
Were he but called, he’d set the country right.
All wars would cease beneath his sovereign word
(While Mother mediates with next-door strife—
Her battlefield the alley, not the world).

In lofty talk he moves with kingly grace,
Outshining presidents in wit and pace.
Transactions deep he fathoms like the sea—
We take his theories, Mother makes them be.

Oh bless this man who maps the starry course
Yet leaves the mending to some local force!
Between his vision and the daily test,
We learn that wisdom wears a humbler vest.

1224.

No auctioneer called out in measured tones,
Yet bids soared high beyond the hopeful throng—
A stranger’s gold then clashed upon the stones,
And lo! The losers fused to one strong song.

What joy when rivals weave their coins as one,
When separate failures dance as victory spun!
The prize they bear grows heavier with each hand,
Yet lighter too—now shared across the land.

How sweet the catch divided many ways,
How bright the bond that sharing’s grace displays!

1225.

The lamps along the Thames stand trim and bright,
Their silver columns stretching through the night—
A classical procession, stern and true,
Each shadow measured in its perfect hue.

But look! Where fairy lights in clusters gleam,
Transforming day’s dull grind to magic’s dream—
That power-house which made our hearts grow cold
Now wears a crown of trembling, liquid gold.

And see—a little boat with colored eyes
Becomes a Chinese duck that laughing flies,
Its geometric wake a proof divine
That wonder lives where logic draws the line.

Oh bless this alchemy of dark and spark
That turns the practical to poet’s art!
The river flows with more than water can—
It bears the dreams of every mortal man.

1226.

Have you been stolen by a poet’s art?
Were I such, I’d spirit you apart—
Tuck you in iambs, wrap you in my rhyme,
Carry you off beyond the reach of time.

To Jones Beach waves where syllables all dance,
Or Coney Island’s neon-tinted trance,
Or home where lilacs drench the evening air—
I’d lyric you with tender, wild care.

Dash you in rainstorms, blend you into shore,
Till you became the sea I’m yearning for.
Pluck lyre-strings to weave you golden lies,
Ode you with every love song ever sighed.

Drape you in colors bold—red, black and green—
My living flag where all my hopes are seen.
“See, Mama, see this treasure I’ve brought near—
Not kidnapped, but joy-napped, and held most dear!”

For what’s a poem but a heart’s wild scheme
To steal the world and remake it in dream?

1227.

What would I trade to find one wayward kiss—
That truant from your lips now fled from bliss?
My mouth meets only shadow’s ashen art,
Yet hungers still for what once touched your heart.

What would I give to see your eyes’ dark flame—
Those rainbow dawns that blazed with God’s own name?
The stars grew jealous in their vaulted sphere
And stole their light one cruel May morning clear.

What would I yield to touch your sunlit skin—
Those crystal thighs where light and warmth had been?
The rose’s memory in my fingers lies,
Though turned to sediment in Time’s hard eyes.

Yet in this longing, love still finds its way—
Not dead, but dancing in the light of day.
What’s lost becomes the seed from which will grow
New dawns, new stars, new roses we’ll yet know.

1228.

The night returns, and with it comes the weight—
A hush that holds the world in gentle arms.
Yet joy is there, within the solemn dark,
For she appears where silence meets the pool.
She smiles again, as though she never left,
And takes her place beneath the watching stars—
My love, who never walks the paths of day,
But moves like thought within the folds of dusk.

The moonlight winds around her like a sash,
And wraps her form in silver’s soft embrace;
The heavens draw a veil across her face,
Not to conceal, but to proclaim her soul.
She carries in her hands the starry blooms—
Bright roses plucked from gardens not of earth.

And I, in stillness, drink the sight she brings:
That beauty lives not only in the sun,
But in the quiet moments drawn from time—
When presence shines more brightly than the flesh,
And love appears when all the world seems still.

1229.

I must return once more to sea and sky—
The open world where nothing stays for long,
Where wind and wave speak truths too vast for names,
And every path begins in salt and air.
I ask for nothing but a sturdy ship
And one sure star to guide her through the dark,
The creak and sway of wood against the tide,
The thrill of sails alive beneath the storm,
And morning rising through a mist of gray—
A slow, pale promise breaking into gold.

I must return, for something in the deep
Still calls my name with joy too fierce to bear.
It calls me not with sorrow, but with fire—
A voice that leaps like foam along the tide,
That will not rest until I breathe its song.
Give me a day of wind and leaping cloud,
Of spray flung high and laughter on the breeze,
And gulls that wheel and cry across the sun—
Their flight a hymn to life’s relentless pulse.

I must return to roam where wanderers go—
Where whales pass like old thoughts beneath the keel,
And winds are sharp with purpose, not with pain.
Let me hear stories told beside the helm,
By comrades shaped by distance, salt, and time—
And feel in every word the world unfold.
Then, when the watch is done and silence falls,
May I lie down in peace and dream of stars,
And sleep the sleep that feels like coming home.

1230.

I am both period and prologue spun—
The closing mark where new tales are begun.
No need to parse where sky and earth embrace,
My home moves with me, woven in burnous’ grace.

Two deserts hum within my singing breath,
Their golden notes defy all claims of death.
Between my eyes, romance still brightly burns,
Though every road returns me where I turn.

I once kept flocks—that memory stays clear—
My gaze now holds the fellah’s patient year.
In hands that shaped dry earth to bear sweet fruit,
I cradled nations waiting to take root.

My daughter wed, my son surpassed my skill,
My ax carved epics from the stubborn hill.
Grandfather watched the eagles mount the air—
Our “fatherland” tastes both of wrath and prayer.

Father! Your silence stripped my native song,
Now alien words feel clumsy on my tongue.
So much night gathers where my sight should be—
Mother sounds cold where Ya Ma once rang free.

I’ve lost my robe, my gun, my poet’s pen,
My borrowed name fits ill what I have been.
The dark streets whisper Fear in mocking tones,
Yet claim my French soul through these cultured tones.

What irony—to make my blood a trade,
To call myself by what the world has made!
My sister’s prizes mock my deep disgrace—
Bright scholar in a veil-less, foreign face.

Oh night so thick! Yet in its depths I know
The shepherd boy still walks where date palms grow.
Though mirrors lie, though tongues may be untrue,
The desert’s song keeps singing through and through.

Let mockers stare—beneath this Parisian dress,
The sirocco still hums its wild caress.
No night so dark can quench that inner flame—
Both end and start, I’m still the man I am.

1231.

Behold them now—the clever, radiant minds—
They come with collars neat and finely pressed,
Their brows composed, their speech both calm and clear,
Yet in their gaze a fire not born of ease.
Behind the fringe, beneath the modest veil,
There moves a world of turmoil and resolve—
A dance of passions bridled into form,
A tempest mastered, not dismissed or lost.

What art is this, to hold the self so still
While thought runs wild beneath a steady voice?
Was it from life they learned to wear such grace,
Not from the moorland cries of Emily,
Nor George with hands like chisels in the stone,
But Jane, who wove her thunder into lace—
Who smiled, and let her needle pierce the age.

They rustle now through seminar and stage,
Their laughter tuned to careful cadences,
And yet, within, the old defiant spark—
A joy that comes from mastering the self,
From shaping rage to eloquence and wit,
From rising in the face of scorn and doubt
To speak with measure, and to teach with style.

What courage dwells in voices soft but sure!
To answer slights with elegance and form,
To wield their irony like polished blades,
And turn aside the blows that history made
With nothing but a question and a glance.
They are not fragile—they are forged by time,
And carry joy like armor through the world.

1232.

The wind inscribes, the water carves its line—
Each word made flesh in time’s design.
Not yet, not now, but surely will it rise,
A voice so deep it bleeds through mortal guise.

No stigmata appear for doubting eyes,
No wounds where fearful hands might recognize—
Deeper than Thomas dared to probe or prove,
These sacred marks that only love can move.

Yet joy persists where silent truths abide,
For flesh will sing what words once tried to hide.
Not in the proof, but in the trusting heart,
The word and wound become one work of art.

1233.

At last I stand beyond the reach of doubt,
Where silence blooms into a clearer truth,
And all the questions that once stirred like wind
Now settle in the quiet of my soul.
I’ve traced the arc of life from shore to shore,
Have walked the hidden paths of many lands,
And every step has led me here again—
Back to the place from which I first began.

But not the same—I carry now the weight
Of wonder, loss, and joy more deeply earned.
The world has turned, and so have I with it,
Until my soul, like some returning bird,
Knows where it’s meant to land and rest once more.

And now I greet what waits with open arms—
Not as a stranger, fearful of the dark,
But as a soul who knows the light within,
And meets the end as one who has begun.

1234.

When I pause from digging’s earnest toil,
My gaze climbs where the mountains stand—
Their slopes forgive my brief turmoil,
And whisper time’s enduring plan.

See how the wild grass freely grows,
How storm-carved trees in gorge-deeps stand!
The scattered rocks in grand repose
Accept what weathers kiss the land.

No weed called foul in nature’s sight,
No root too bold, no shoot too meek—
Each finds its place in sun or night,
Each storm but tunes what winds will speak.

This hillside, too, knew freedom’s sweep
Before we marked it with our hands,
When ocean winds sang wild and deep
Across untouched and golden sands.

And soon—so soon—when flesh returns
To feed the soil from whence it came,
Great Nature’s hand will brush our urns
With patient sun and cleansing rain.

What joy to know when we are gone,
The grass will dance where we once trod—
Our fences fallen, fences drawn
Back to the welcoming arms of God.

1235.

Dark horses whinnied; leather cracked the air.
The wagon rocked and paused upon the track,
And for a moment all the world stood still.
The springboard trembled softly underfoot,
And one by one, the caravanserais—
Like visions drawn from dreams I never dreamt—
Passed gently by before my longing eyes.
With heart both full and aching, I set out
Along the road that winds through Anatolia,
Toward a place unknown, yet known by soul.

It felt as if I left a first great love,
A first deep wound, a first sweet separation.
The fire in me lit the very air—
A golden haze that kissed the land and trees.
Behind me stood the Taurus, proud and cold,
Before me lay the hills of sleeping time.
The wheels rolled on, and sang their moaning song.
I held the mane of wind as if a steed,
And rode the mountain’s back with open joy.

The path was steep, the silence deep and vast—
Save for the whistle of our driver’s lips.
The winding road replied, alive to sound;
It lifted like a serpent from its sleep
To hear again the echo of the world.
The skies grew veiled, the air turned sharp and wet,
And as we crested one last winter hill,
A sudden plain unfolded like a scroll.
The road stretched out—a ribbon to the stars—
It bound us to the far horizon’s edge.
No house, no village rose to meet our gaze,
Only the hush of distance, vast and kind.

Yet even here the pulse of life went on—
A rider passed, a wanderer on foot,
And every jolt the wheels gave to the stones
Spoke back to earth in clear ancestral tones.
I let the rhythm take me into sleep,
And lay upon the boards with ease and trust.

A jolt awoke me—gentle, not unkind.
The wheels now moved as smoothly as on glass.
Before us rose the town of Niğde, proud,
Its towers like castles rising from the plain.
A caravan went slow across our path,
And bells rang soft like birds within a dream.
A ruined han stood waiting at the gate.
A dappled shade enfolded all in hush.
We entered, freed the horses from their yokes.

Here gathered those who seek a balm for wounds—
The worn, the wandering, the quietly wise.
They huddled near the fire, each chest a world
Of hope and loss and homes remembered well.
The lamplight smeared with soot the han’s old walls,
And shadows crossed their faces like lost lines
Of poems too heavy yet to be recited.
I found my bed beside a wall of marks—
Scrawled names, small sketches, fading lines of verse.
All who had passed this way had left a trace.

And then, in red, I saw four lines that burned,
Not like a stanza—but like drops of blood:
“I left Kinadağ fourteen years ago,
Far from my love, far from my garden’s gate.
No rose have I yet gathered from her path—
Only this exile’s journey through the earth.”
No name, but only date—March eighth, that year.
A stranger’s voice became a friend that night.
And as I lay awake, I whispered back:
“Grieve not, for borders fall, and wars grow still.
The youth you gave shall reach your love at last.”

We moved again before the sun had climbed.
The sky was steel, the morning cold and bright.
The edge of town gave way to fields and space.
The sun rose up, then vanished in the clouds.
Ahead, the hills appeared like gods asleep,
While caravans moved slowly at our side.
The hans, like forts from ages deep in time,
Went past us one by one like beating drums.
We pressed ahead, still drawn by fate and road,
Until we reached the pass between two peaks.

The wind howled wild and pulled my breath away—
Yet joy rose up, for spring lay just beyond.
Behind us lingered winter’s final cry,
Before us bloomed a world still sheathed in white.
The mountain pass became a gate through time:
The place where one year ended, one began.
Snow swept around us in a furious dance,
Not death, but silence made visible as light.
Still we moved on, until the driver cried:
“There lies Araplibeli—God be kind!”

At dusk we came into another han,
Where fires leapt and stories filled the room.
One told of bandits hiding in the cliffs,
Another of a wolf that stole through towns.
As sleep began to pull me from their tales,
The soot on walls turned petals in the dark—
And from those shapes, a poem came to me:
“If memory of love ignites my soul,
I have no strength to hold desire back.
I drift like leaves surrendered to the wind;
My path is chosen not by me, but sky.”

At dawn the sun returned with golden arms.
We set out once again into the day,
And rode through valleys passing stranger lands.
Three days had passed, but felt like seasons three.
At last we came to Incesu, and there
We slept, all weariness turned into peace.
But morning brought a dream too sharp to bear—
Another verse above my resting place:
“They call me Kerem, stranger in this land,
My Aslı lost, forbidden to my love.
They say I’m sick; perhaps it’s truly so.
My name is Satılmış, a sheikh’s own son.”

No signature, just sorrow and the truth.
His name became a prayer upon my lips—
Not one who failed, but one whose fate was steep.
I asked the keeper of the han that day
If he had known this youth from Maraş-town.
He stared a while, and said: “He came in strong—
He left this han already cold and gone.”

The world grew strange before my tear-filled eyes.
That young sojourner never passed beyond.
The grief I felt for him has never gone—
Each han I see still bears his silent name.
For these old walls hold more than smoke and sleep;
They guard the sorrow time cannot erase.
O ancient roads that link the world to home!
O roads that never promise safe return!
O han walls scarred by grief and verses bold—
How many hearts have written themselves there?

1236.

O fertile land where all things rise with grace—
Tall trees salute you, golden wheat fields race,
While Ceres guards each bursting vine and grove
That bears Fatma, Rachel, Inès, and love.

Would I were blessed with cantor’s flowering speech
To sing your olive trees on sunlit beach,
Where Cervantes’ ghost still walks his captive shore,
And pirate winds tell tales of yesteryear.

Your cities breathe in mint and henna’s spell—
Algiers, Oran, Cirta—who can tell
Where earth’s sweet sap ends and your soul’s fire starts?
White arms unfold like flowers, golden hearts

Receive the dawn. Each rock, each sandy reach
Transforms to jewels along your liquid beach—
A prism land where all the rainbows play,
And every stone sings light’s ecstatic lay.

What alchemy turns dust to such delight?
Your morning dew is diamonds in my sight.
Not land, but poem—each hill, each vale, each stream
Composes stanzas in the sun’s bright dream.

1237.

My love, when you arrive and cross that veil—
When time at last brings you into the light—
You’ll find me here, a poet not well-formed
By fame or ease, nor shaped for common praise.
I am not quite the one the world would choose,
But I am here, and waiting just the same.

I cannot promise joy without its shade,
Nor banish hunger from your dreaming days.
This world, though vast and burning in its wounds,
Still breaks beneath the weight of all it bears.
The earth is scarred, yet turns to meet the dawn,
And still it sings, despite what it has lost.

But come—I’ll show you wonders you can keep:
A sky so wide it echoes when you breathe,
A field of light where sorrows bloom as stars,
And love—enough to fill and break your heart,
Enough to make it tremble into joy
Each time you wake and know you’re not alone.

1238.

The rooms were priced just right, the place no matter—
The landlady’s voice hinted no clatter
Of living near. All cards now on the table:
“Madam,” said I, “my journey’s not a fable—
I come from Africa.” The line went cold,
That hollow pause where prejudice takes hold.

Then came the gilded voice, lipstick-impeccable,
Through cigarette smoke, suddenly treacly—
“How dark?“ (I gasped) “Are you light or very dark?“
Like some coin-op morality play—Button A, Button B—
Her rancid breath through the receiver hissed,
While London’s red veneer persisted: bus,

Postbox, phone booth, all crimson as my shame.
Stammering now (oh, what a foolish game!),
I offered shades like grocery wares:
“West African sepia”—then my passport’s airs.
Silence. Then crackling through the wire:
“What’s that?“ (Her ignorance now dire.)

“Like brunette,” I offered. “That’s dark, isn’t it?“
“Not quite!” (My wit now took a spin at it.)
“For though my face is dusk, dear madam, see—
My palms, my soles, are blond as blond can be.
And friction—ahem—from sitting (what a plight!)
Has turned my seat to raven’s wing at night!”

One breath—then sensing her receiver’s quiver
About to slam, I cried with newfound shiver:
“Oh madam, why not see this human hue?
The spectrum’s broader than your interview!”

Let fools reduce the world to black and white—
Life’s palette laughs in colors bold and bright.
Not buttons A or B, but all between—
A living rainbow, fierce and unforeseen!

1239.

The crowd stood still, uncertain in their grief,
And mumbled something like a hymn gone wrong.
Their copper coins, pressed firm into the grain
Of sawdust floors, gleamed faintly like lost stars—
As if the ground itself remembered more
Than all the voices fumbling in the dark.

The cashier rose with sudden life and might,
As though the yeast of days had raised her up,
And with a gesture both absurd and grand,
Declared, “Be gone! Enough of this complaint!”
She moved like myth through aisles of cakes and fruit—
A colossus born of registers and light.

Then came a scent—a wild, electric trace
Of ozone laced with tears not yet quite shed.
The smell of ache before it learns to speak,
A fragrance drawn from sorrow’s sweeter side.
It swept across the cheesecake and the pears
Like memory straying through a summer room.

One soul, unshaped by word or clever form,
Lifted their hands as though to touch the sky.
In one clenched fist, a strip of bacon burned
With glory, like a banner raised too late.
Another growled—not rage, but something deep,
A Beethovenian burst of earthy truth.

Their palms beat time against the counter’s edge,
And so began the psalm of common fate:
A rhythm made of need and fierce delight,
The ancient music played by mortal hands.
And somewhere in that rising mortal hymn,
A harmony of grief and joy was found.

The cashier, now more goddess than a clerk,
Held up a bill against the ceiling lights—
And squinted close to see the hidden face.
Once it was Lenin’s, stern and full of cause,
But now, the image blurred and turned to smoke,
As if the past had grown too shy to stay.

The bill, a trick—a tender from no land—
Floated down and landed on the scale.
The scene was nothing, yet it was the world:
A shop of cheese and saints and counterfeit,
Where strangers, legends, tears, and dreams converge—
And all is weighed, and priced, and sold, and sung.

1240.

So slight am I, so soft my tread,
Dear Lord, do You recall my name?
The world’s bright terrors fill my dread—
Each shadow holds some threat or blame.

No gifts are cast my humble way,
I take what crumbs the days provide.
Yet why should they reproach me, say
This mousy form’s a source of pride?

Your hand designed my quiet art,
This trembling, nibbling, watchful soul.
I ask no more than some small part
Where green-eyed hunters cannot prowl.

Yet in this want, such riches gleam—
To know Your care for things unseen.
Not lion’s roar nor eagle’s flight,
But my small heart beats in Your sight.

1241.

Whenever thought grows heavy in my chest,
I walk the old path leading to the shore.
With pages tucked beneath my arm, I go—
Fresh from the scent of books and dust and time—
To stand before the sea and let it speak.

When you lie still with fever in your brow,
And silence stretches wide across the day,
I go and watch the sea restore its light.
When morning weighs too greatly on the soul,
And breath itself feels torn from common use,
I go and find the sea, and it remains.

O sea! Vast torso of the world laid bare!
O broad, unyielding shoulders of the deep!
You carry suns and wrecks alike with grace,
You know the names of all that pass through grief,
And hold them gently in your rolling arms.

However cruel the dusk, or sharp the dawn,
Each hour moves toward rest, each storm grows still.
The night may shout, the day may strike with heat,
But still the sea will breathe its ancient breath.

All life must end, and yet in ending turn
To join the rhythm that the sea has known.
Our names may fade, our footprints wash away,
But not the hush that fills the soul at sea.

When I feel time too tightly drawn around me,
I walk again the path that curves to blue.
On even the most hollow-hearted night,
I find the sea—unchanged, immense, alive—
And in its sound, remember how to live.

1242.

I meant to wander—yet here I stay,
While windowpanes protest the wind’s bold play.
Let rattle what may rattle, I’m content,
Sorting through thoughts like autumn’s harvest spent.

When chaos hums too loud, my hand will rise—
Not every buzzing thing deserves my eyes.
One precious truth these quiet hours disclose:
Sometimes the greatest freedom is to close...

...Then turn to face the sun’s enduring flame,
My growth aligned with light’s persistent claim.
Some dreams I’ll pluck like ripened fruit nearby,
Some watch drift by with neither gasp nor sigh.

Who charts what paths my searching soul should take?
I dine on starlight, drink from morning’s lake.
No tears for roads my feet were never shown—
Come! Let’s spin tales of might-bes newly sown.

What joy to find—when wanderlust has passed—
The selfsame sky bends round me rich and vast.
Not where we roam, but how we choose to see
Turns every what if to a let it be.

1243.

Step boldly through the flame, the crackling light,
Where wings of insects shimmer into gold,
And dust ascends like prayers without a name—
A form moves forward through the heat and blaze.

Bear with you now the riddle of your birth,
And gesture through the hush of barren winds,
For though no voice replies, the fire will.
You catch, you blaze, you burn, and yet you stand—
Unmoving, like a summit touched by stars.

Take up your place among the ones who wait,
Who tend the night with open eyes and breath.
Depart, if need be, in a stream of joy,
Or red with love’s deep cry, past what we speak.

Go where the flame consumes but does not end,
Where life is learned by yielding to its light,
And joy comes not by word, but by the fire—
A silence vast enough to hold the world.

1244.

Who could declare with certainty?
You glimpse it in passing—eyes drawn down
to where the red dirt road wears its cracks
like old laughter lines.

To the side, the painters’ shacks stand proud:
their doorways bluer than a jay’s wing,
roofs exhaling woodsmoke plumes.
The green runs wild out back—
a clucking, pecking hen of a yard
busy at its chores,
then dissolving into azure horizons.

No one stops to study this perfection.
You only notice when your bags are packed,
when the clock’s hands sprint—
that precise moment when discovery
and departure share one breath.

Then...
like a dream upon waking,
it slips beyond the map’s edge.

This is paradise—
not lost, but generously lent,
teaching us how to see
what we’re about to leave,
how to hold what won’t be held.

Oh fleeting Eden by the broken road,
Your lesson blooms the more you fade—
That beauty’s truest dwelling place
Is in the heart that learned to look
Before it learned to own.

1245.

I do not come to give you dream-born words,
Nor drape your face with language from my lips,
Nor press a kiss to conjure what you are.
Instead, I take one finger, tipped with grace—
Its soft pink nail a sign of gentleness—
And let that gesture stand for all I mean.

And thus I give it back, as one gives light
Back to the sky from which all light has come,
Drawn from the hush and brightness of your bed,
The warmth that lingers in your sleepless gaze,
The distant glow beneath your quiet breath.

Not flesh alone, but mystery and spring—
A window’s gold, the moon’s reflective gaze,
The pulse between us like a second soul
That moves from me to you and back again.

Yet even this is not the thing I name.
For what you are, you’ve already bestowed:
A peace that flows like water through my chest,
A secret that no mirror can reveal,
The little shadow resting near your smile,
The joyful hush that lives in weary dawns.

1246.

“Does someone wait beyond?” the traveler cried,
His knock upon the moon-washed door replied
By rustling ferns where silent stallion grazed,
While from the tower a startled bird upraised.

Again his knuckles rapped the weathered wood—
“Will none give answer?” But the listeners stood
As phantom still as moonlight on the stair,
Breath held though stirred by words that filled the air.

No face appeared, no hand drew back the latch,
Yet something in that void began to match
The pounding of his own insistent heart—
A kinship wrought of stillness, set apart.

Then bold he smote and raised his voice to tell:
“Mark that I came when no one heard me well!
My vow endures though none were here to take—”
The house drank every echo in its wake.

They heard his boot find iron, stone resound,
The backward rush of hush when hoofbeats drowned.
What ghosts keep faith more true than flesh and bone?
What witness shines where no light’s ever shown?

Oh bless this pact ‘twixt seeker and the sought,
Where silence speaks more than all answers taught.
The kept word gleams where moon and memory meet—
A lantern lit for others down the street.

1247.

We were not far apart, not truly so,
When thunder broke across the darkened sky,
And sudden light unstitched the trembling clouds.
The world was split, but still we stood nearby—
Not side by side, yet not alone in heart.

When echoes wandered down the slant of day,
And sky turned flame behind the shuttered glass,
We dreamed, not each apart, but somehow one—
The lightning struck, and through its fleeting gate
We both looked up, and upward cast our breath.

It was not mine alone, that rush of joy
That met the heavens in the thunder’s wake.
No, you were there, though still and out of reach,
As waters laughed and danced along the path,
And rain made silver rivers through the green.

The dream I held was not my dream alone.
It passed the pantry window, wild and clear—
A longing wakened by the scent of rain,
That flowed through you as well, and found its way
Down to that stream where vanished wishes shine.

1248.

The dervish whirls on ashen steppe—his dance
Unfurls like scrolls where lava-cooled expanse
Once bore the weight of arches, domes, and spires,
Now hieroglyphs in dusk’s descending fires.

The Vikings, fleeing wolves with iron eyes,
Chose brine and storm o’er fate’s dark prophecies.
Their foreheads ducked from laurels wrought of night,
They shrank to pawns—yet claimed the sea’s bold light.

And Lampman, haunting Gatineau’s cold veins,
Drank vinegar streams and punkwood’s bitter rains.
Beyond the hills, that luminous nowhere shone—
His April cave, where first men, chilled to bone,

Fled sunlit heaps of pelt and splintered lore,
Craving the raw, the bare, the wild once more.

Dervish, Viking, poet, cave-born sage—
All envied wolves their circuit’s secret stage.
Yet doomed to sow, to build, to propagate,
They clutched their wildness in a white burst, straight

As art’s fierce promise, pounding through the years:
A drumbeat drowning doubt, a flame that sears
Through time’s thick hide. What paradox! What grace!
Creation’s chains become the wild’s embrace.

Oh bless this itch that drives both hand and heart—
To rend and raise, to tear the world apart
Only to build new temples in the breach,
Where art and savagery dance, each to each!

1249.

In the first tale, they say she was drawn down—
The girl, Persephone, into the dark,
And Earth, her mother, grieved through every tree
And every furrow of the starving land.
This suits us well: we humans often find
A strange delight in mourning what we harm,
As if destruction proved our hand divine.

Yet this is not the only song to sing.
Creation too is born of going down—
A seed must break, a silence must unfold.
In that first plunge, a joy begins to bloom,
Unseen, but stirring deep beneath the frost.

Persephone descends, and in her wake
The scholars come with questions in their hands:
Was it a fall, a theft, or was it fate?
Did she consent, or was her will undone?
We bend our minds to judge her ancient path—
But myths are not the maps of what has been.
They chart the soul’s deep weather, not its law.

For when she rises, marked by fruit and fire,
She does not come as child returned to nurse.
She steps back into light with wisdom’s crown,
The juice of life upon her lips like flame.
What once was loss now sings with other names—
Not mourning, but remembrance, deep and warm,
Not exile, but a corridor of stars.

Call Earth her home? Or Hades, lover’s bed?
Call her a wanderer? A mirrored dream
Of Demeter, fierce with causality?
Perhaps she is the soul without a fixed
Abode, but rich in seasons, full of change.

You do not have to choose a side in myth.
Its figures are not people, not the flesh,
But voices of a conflict, shaped like fire,
The parts of mind in dialogue with death:
The high ideal, the self, the primal need—
Heaven and Earth and shadowy Hades meet
In one wide circle drawn across the soul.

So ask yourself: when snow begins to fall,
What song lies underneath the whitening world?
Forgetfulness? Perhaps. Or maybe peace—
The hush that comes from knowing who you are.

Persephone is lying now in joy,
Not broken, not betrayed, but crowned by fate.
She is no longer what we name a girl,
For she has learned the language of the void,
And smiled at it, and given it her breath.

She knows the world is governed not by fear
But by the love that guards and lets us go.
She knows that to be held is not to live,
And not to choose is sometimes deepest choice.

The fields she left will bloom again in spring.
The reunions, yes, will be bittersweet,
But beautiful, and never quite the same.

For she returns with knowledge in her eyes,
With morning in her hands. And when she sings,
The flowers do not bloom because they must—
They rise because they too have known the dark,
And still, they choose the sun.

So when your turn shall come upon the path—
To walk with fate, or love, or death, or fire—
Go down in joy, and rise again in light.
There is no greater gift than being changed.

1250.

He sleeps—yet knows not that he sleeps so deep,
His hands at rest like folded wings of doves.
They’ll bear him forth where all the silent move,
No protest left between his pallid lips,
No final thanks to those who shoulder him
Through sunlight that he tastes but cannot sip.

Ah! Singular his slumber—not as those
Who wrestle death with consciousness aflame.
His parting like a child’s at eventide
Who drifts mid-story, trusting dawn will come
To turn the page. What mercy in this rest
That spares the mind its own extinguishing!

Weep not for him, but for our waking tears—
He floats beyond the harbor of our fears.
While we count losses, he knows naught but peace,
His sunset blending with the stars’ release.