Beauty

Young knucklehead: Today you’ll bruise your thumb To harden you to pains to come; The sun will burn; the heat will cause you sweat; Dust will choke before the sun is set. When you are good for more than sweeping floors, In five or six years—maybe more— Then you may...

Goddess sleek and draped in white, Flowing wisps of long brown hair, Halo hat of holy light, Cherubs floating everywhere. Beads around her long thin neck, Each a world for which she cares, Gazing down at each small speck, Seeing each one’s special flare. Arm extends and points the way,...

How weird and eerily appears, that solar surge, Aurora Borealis, 1865, by Hudson River School's Frederic Edwin Church. The skyscape is so alien, and yet alive, with faint and dancing lights, blue, yellow, red and brown, above an opaque hemisphere. Ice mountains thrive. Although it seems as if the tiny...

Avocado Grove On dry, withered leafs Until drizzle leaves Sitting silently The fruit’s ripe, big crops Giant green rain drops Hang abundantly The bark thick and strong Like cultivated gong* Grows there upwardly I share with you fate You share with me shade Time moves patiently. The fresh spring breeze...

Nearby a wasp lights, twitching its pointed stinger in the summer heat. As I drive my car, an eagle flies overhead. How far have I come? An ant climbs slowly up the old man's hairy arm. He flings it away. Continuously, the rooster crows all day long. He is barely...

They operate contrary to the rules of common sense that we hold dear as proof that what we know is right, that we’re no fools and senses we possess perceive the truth. They ramble through eleven dimensions. Their motions, seemingly governed by chance, confuse and amend our comprehensions – on...

The Farmer’s Wife He may as well be sitting on a piece Of junk john-boat out on some open lake. The field is shorn, divested of its fleece. The hay is tedded and the rusty rake Is resting now beside the tree-lined wall, Next to the tedder, stilly looking on,...

1.  In 373, at Antioch, Jerome asked himself if he were not a disciple of Cicero rather than Christ, his eternal home; and thereupon abandoned his early love for philosophy, law, language, and literature, and devoted himself instead to the remove of Hebrew, Greek, and translating Holy Scripture, seeking sure...

Alone, I take a flight to see some friends, I gaze out over ocean from the clouds and marvel, as the plane I’m in ascends with all of us above the earthly crowds. From gravity itself we’ve all been freed. Like Shakespeare said, how like a god our sense, and...

Written in May 2010 / Revised April 2020 Trumpets blast and Heaven opens, light shoots through, Gods of all the Kingdoms smile now anew, Legions of celestial soldiers stand, salute, Drumbeats sound between the flourishes of flute, Cherubs and celestial maidens spread their flowers, Time himself relaxes for these joyous...

God of men who’s dressed in white, Beard on face of long brown hair, Halo pattern traced in light, Nimbus flowing through the air. Glowing skin with mercy shines, Ancient toga wraps His frame, Fabric rich and much more fine, Than what mortals give a name. Eyes of keenest vision...

‘On The Group Of The Three Angels Before The Tent Of Abraham, By Raphael, In The Vatican’ O, now I feel as though another sense, From heaven descending, had informed my soul; I feel the pleasurable, full control Of Grace, harmonious, boundless, and intense. In thee, celestial Group, embodied lives...

  I This is the month, and this the happy morn, Wherein the Son of Heaven’s eternal King, Of wedded maid and Virgin Mother born, Our great redemption from above did bring; For so the holy sages once did sing, That he our deadly forfeit should release, And with his...

Ballade for Trains They are no more, the whistles’ longing wails, Retreating like a stately, mournful queen. Where are the smokestacks that left fading trails, The blackened engine with its oiled sheen, Imposing in its tons, unfazed, serene, The ties in creosote, the polished rails? I hear their bell, and...

Below is an excerpt of the last ten stanzas of Lord Byron's ‘Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage,’ published originally in the 1810s. It may be read as an ode to the ocean, or perhaps an environmental poem.   CLXXVII. Oh! that the Desert were my dwelling-place, With one fair Spirit for my...

The American poet Robert Frost was born on March 26, 1874, in San Francisco, CA. He spent his first 40 years mostly unknown, and it wasn’t until after returning to the United States from England—where he had his first two books of poetry published—near the beginning of the first World...

. Lepanto Editor's Note: Don John of Austria, or Don Juan de Austria, (1547-1578) was half-brother to King Philip II of Spain and a Spanish military commander who achieved victory over the Turks in the historic naval battle at Lepanto. White founts falling in the Courts of the sun, And the Soldan...