Beauty

  The River Wye Your stroll beside the stream has stayed with me, Has left me in my loneliness with strength Enough to face the world, to somehow see Within its depth and width and wandering length The Truth that Keats and Coleridge saw with eyes Romantic yet as real...

Goodbye, sweet fetal child— for you shall die, Because a mother’s love is also dead: The hallowed place of nurture where you lie Shall soon become the ground where blood is shed. The battle to reject the womanly, Or motherly, for ‘me, myself and I’ Shall forfeit noble care of...

Thoughts after Samuel Palmer (1805-1881) By Bud "Weasel" Rice Everywhere curious, articulate, perfect and inimitable ... nature does ... leave a space for the soul to climb above her steepest summits. As, in her own dominion, she swells from herring to leviathan, from the shelly hodmandod to th' elephant, to...

  Fog in the Valley The fog flows down like a flock of pale gulls and the valley of my home disappears. In seconds, stuff engulfs us. Each sense dulls; cold soggy cotton fills our eyes and ears. And where now is Man’s brilliance and pride? Nature in a moment...

  Winter Storm Watch The sky is still; no flakes appear and yet we know that they will come. Held hostage by our doubts and fears we beat out warnings on our drums. We know, for sure, the flakes will come; we may be buried to our ears or slip...

Observations both Literal and Inferred on The Course of Empire, 1833-36, by Thomas Cole   The Savage State THE foreground is dark, sublime, and savage. Storm-clouds roll up towards the right. The ledge reflects the setting or the rising sun. The turquoise waters crash; the storm's not done. One bounding...

O Thou Fount of Joy, I Praise Thee In my dark night He brought His joy    by an ancient melody. I was young then, did not know that    what He taught me by degree was a way to remain with Him    when the storms of each new year gathered o’erhead...

  Sonnet on the Death of a Friend Throughout our lives we have the love of some Our family, our friends , the special ones Who help us deal with problems as they come And share our joys and sorrow as life runs But one by one they leave, the...

They gathered softly in a field for many miles around to taste in haste the flowers before showers tumbled down upon the clover blooms, the goldenrod, thistles and grasses; never in one place too long as hungry blackbird passes. An undulating wave of black and orange fills the skies. Silent...

  I Saw a Giant Train by Red Was Iceblue I saw a giant train come out of blue and purple light, the colours of its cars, red, yellow, orange, black and white. It seemed gargantuan and powerful, a forceful shape, about to take the World on in one horrendous...

  The Shore Forever lost in the ocean the water seeps into my chest I’ve lost myself in the motion let the fish swim beneath my breast And yet each time I’m pulled under the sun too far to touch my face never does my body sunder and crumple in...

Rose Window Firs at sunset cast golden geometries As myriad needles swarm like bees And burst into sun-kindled flame – A rose window without its frame.   Falun Dafa Fingers curved like willow stems, Dancers bow before killers’ blows, Soldiers whose helmets bear red stars Soldiers whose eyes rage red...

  Where Can I Find You? A girl, with hair the colour of honey, giggled while she chased a little bunny through fields of golden hay and black cherries. Suddenly she stopped and asked a fairy, “Beauty, you only appear to a few. When you’re not with me, where can...

  Vessel No one can insure candlelight; its flame Precisely burns in flickering waves of gas, Ingesting oxygen while fibers pass Through burning into soot, and feel no shame. A stroke of pen or brush behaves the same When we regard them steadily: the mass Remains inert like painted prairie...

The nightingale flutters on its wings And lighting on a branch he sings Voices the song of his spirit Brings joy to all that hear it With pen and paper in my hand I listen to my heart’s command I hope that someday I can be Like the nightingale flying...

Life's Golden Key Like the sparrow, robin and crow sharing in a concrete birdbath, mortals require kindness to grow, pleasantly exploring life's path. Each gifted day, time is borrowed to search and find life's golden key. Somewhere, in dark depths of sorrow, glows kindness for eager hearts to see. On...

In the Shadow of a Mountain In the shadow of a mountain lies a valley, lies my home swaddled by the earth’s embrace in sweet repose – a state of grace in the shadow of a mountain in a valley, in my home where I am blind to turquoise skies...

  Shadow of the Laogai In the Laogai’s shadow, the ghosts of China stir, Unseen by dreaming eyes as golden currents blow Across the sea. Our compassion seems to falter In the Laogai’s shadow. As the Red rope tightens, prices fall like Harbin snow Upon the Western coast. What need...

  The Day the Persecution Began "The year is 1999, July, A king of terror would come from the sky,” The Frenchman Nostradamus prophesized Indeed, the red dragon in China flies. It covers all in its violent shadow, Into detention centers it throws The practitioners of Falun Dafa, The hardworking...

He Kept On By Erisbawdle Cue He kept on striving to attain an ideality connected to the good, but grounded in reality. He kept on working to achieve perfection in the act, pragmatism on the run with satisfaction's fact. He kept on pressing to combine both ecstasy and truth, to...

Just a Dream I. You vowed to descend to the world below, In an agreement that was made. To the mortal world others dared not go, Yet what would happen if you stayed? A promise to save sentient beings, Empowered your hesitant heart. Your compassion for all living things, Made...

Tares in the Wheat "No one, having put his hand to the plow, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God,” Luke 9:62 “The sun will burn; the heat will cause you sweat; Dust will choke before the sun is set,” Michael Curtis, -“Novice”- When I recall various seeds...

Our Day in the Sun We, each of us, every one Have had our day in the sun Came a time that day was done Let us then no longer dwell On what we consider we did well Time moves on –so must we all.   If for Change You...

"...that best portion of a good man's life;     His little, nameless, unremembered acts     Of kindness and of love."         —William Wordsworth, Lines Composed...Above Tintern Abbey At any time in life, the little kindnesses occur. Somebody greets you with a smile brightening 'Yes, sir!' One store clerk reassures...

Life Ravaged forests again take root Life nestling within the sturdy acorn Cannot be throttled Ashes reborn yield bitter fruit Fragrance scattered upon the winds Cannot be bottled   The Old and the New What shall Lord and land and hall and bower Castle and fen and glade and tower...

Dandelions She touched their gray-haired afros tenderly: an urban six year old with kinky hair who pounced on dandelions (bud-vases were full of yellow stubby). Telling me: “This is the way that dandelions age” – then blew upon them (instant baldness), sad that “no one liked them but the wind...

Fall Haiku New England college towns: Pumpkins, apples, breakfast in a warm café. Swamp-maples afire! Rusty colored barns, silos draped in bittersweet… In their black pea-coats, off of the Metro North, the leaf-peepers arrive. Cross-country. Small-town football. The leaf-smell hunting— God I love the Fall...   The Little Vector (a...

From the Pages of Washington Irving, for my Hudson River Friends Whoever 's made a voyage up the Hudson must remember Catskill Mountains, a dismembered branch of the great Appalachian family, I trust. West of the river, swelling to a noble chance, their hues and shapes are magical barometers. When...

Two Months On I walk between the tired trees restless soldiers standing ground pray for just a tiny breeze bringing me a cheerful sound. Bubbling ruby robins tweet, squirrels dart from tree to tree. Leaves crunch underneath my feet. All these sights I love to see. Two months past my...

Courage I saw a tiny spider spin a web Within my humble hut between two beams. He tried to throw a thread across, it ebbed Away.  He did not have the will, it seemed. And then the tiny spider tried again, Again he failed to reach the other side. Five...

I saw the face of beauty fixed Upon the rising sun Beyond all mortal compliment Her loveliness there shone Within the constellations set Against the heav’nly realm She glittered ‘cross the universe My heart to overwhelm The Seven Sisters ne’er could light All heaven like her smile Nor Aphrodite’s sweetest...

A counter to a Walt Whitman poem When I first heard the learn'd astronomer explain his proofs and figures, and arrange the particles of this vast universe, I was excited; I was not estranged. I truly loved his charts and diagrams. They made the cosmos understandable, as if I'd found...

  I hope your life will offer you new opportunities, that you will find contentment in the choices that you seize. Remember family's important. You can count on us, especially when the way of life is hard and mountainous. Remember to believe in goodness, when you're down and out. Remember...

For the Mid-Autumn, or Moon, Festival My Ford Explorer would ascend no higher: Stuck half-way up that driveway's first steep hill. 'Twas a December night so cold and dire, The truck, that old machine, had lost its will. Not I, I sprang right up and looked about, Fit spikes upon my boots...

Untitled Savants like to arrange their stars and push their poets into piles: marble-misers who assign the jars according to the artists’ styles. They line them in their fusty den when they deem an era’s past, and deign to burp them now and then, but work to invent a ‘new’...

There’s a wonder about it, the fragile beauty of lace. Many kinds for centuries have been important to own; one can go to Ireland, Flanders, from place to place— they’re in catalogs: Irish, Mechlin, lace for the home. Many kinds for centuries have been important to own; even I have...

There are a number of reasons for writing poetry, and alas they are not all good; for not all poetry is good, and indeed some ‘poetry’ is not poetry at all. This is not to denigrate anyone’s effort, but you don’t want to pay for a gold ring and get...

In Rembrandt's scene of 1653, Aristotle Contemplating a Bust of Homer, there is much that we can see amidst that musty sett(l)ing of gold dust that balances upon the old and new, upon the dark and light, upon the dead and living, giving forth beams of the true and glimmerings...

  Spring Haiku I’m optimistic; like a brand new tennis ball, everything’s chartreuse. The brook trout’s belly is like a sunset I saw; its stipples the stars. Papa bear’s hungry. He tests his weight on the bough. I’ll need more bird-seed. The calf on the grass, steaming in the morning...

  A miracle, how else to say it then? At first, but ground, absolutely nothing there, A river meandering by, some cattle, gorse, Nettle and herbs whose use proved no sure cure. Then, as if by magic, he stood majestic, by – Conjured from out thin air his being gainsaid...