Beauty

A godly painting held over their heads As they process through a street in Florence, Each face is free from manic glee or dread And transcends with a tranquil tolerance; They are transformed by the art’s deep meaning, The ideals that they uphold in their lives Of what is proper...

Where lightness finds the passage through the dark the thoroughfare of dimness, where we’ll soar about the sun undone, unborn again, but one─divine the spark! The wicket door unfastens where the constellations form sepulchers made of stars. Celestial reach─ become what’s yet to be, your elegy of memoirs left beneath...

—a sonnet of differing with Keats Behold this naked truth, and say not Beauty: a body splayed, nailed cruelly to a tree, spit upon, a jeering crowd, a crown of thorns—blood stains and pain, not artistry. Beauty may hold but cannot be this truth of suffering, the mortal cross. Golgotha!...

Wake to this dawn like no day before you. Rise to this morning like no other morn. Night is now past and life can’t ignore you. Feel in the sunrise your future be born. Seek every trail the new light may show you. Open your mind to each challenging thought....

Clouds skip away from the full shine of the full moon The palace is lit up The maestro lifts his stick Majesty begins The richness of kings at least in human terms How quick things are Violins gone from the ballroom Metal heartstrings crushed at the crowded dance floor bar...

April 2013 The snow has thawed; it's Spring again Crickets sing to the beat of rain The sky is dark, the air is warm Again, the bugs begin to swarm Although the world is wet and dark We welcome back the springtime lark The rain beats down, replace the snow...

Faery Dust Anarchy With winds awhistling through the trees and air sprites dancing on the breeze, you'll hear the pipes from Éirinn’s lands - mayhap a leprechaun might sneeze at swirling faery dust - like bees that swarm in clouds of floating strands. Minutest drops of molten gold soon fill the air...

He's placed dramatically center stage by Benjamin West—Benjamin Franklin. His gray hair flies. He's getting on in age. Electricity coming from lightning! He's dressed in dark clothes with a white tied tie. His brow is furrowed and his face is lit. His red cape sweeps up into windy sky. A...

The lake cradles symmetries of spring trees. The sky scries the membrane of wide waters: unseen breezes, like me, are passers-by somehow touching the lake, trees, reeds, clouds, sky. My eyes focus on these without shutters, curved lenses, flat prisms, mirrored degrees, or a cam’ra. Time is ev’rywhere. Chances come and go....

On "Kaaterskill Creek" by Erik Koeppel for the memory of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow The site is downstream from the Kaaterskill Falls— where it is so shady, and certainly wet. When listening closely one hears nature's calls; that beautiful atmosphere's hard to forget. On Kaaterskill Creek you may find in the...

In Niagara by Frederick Edwin Church, immediately one’s taken in to the great falls. From a remarkably precarious perch, one’s seized by the enormity of the landscape. One sees at once the powerful and driving force of the water rushing forth to accelerate downward and over the inevitable course one...

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...