A Higher Place

 

                                                      A Higher Place

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My turnings quicken,

I feel unfitted,

My folds forgotten;

I do not match where I am,

Aloneness has become isolation;

I reach into darkness and touch nothing,

I must find the light or never see;

 I can find no way back...

To where, I do not know.

I must climb a mountain path

And find a higher place,

Above the roar of rage and wrath,

Beyond the cast of shadowed fate...

A world beneath my feet,

The edge of the universe

Only an arm's reach.

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Place of silence

A Place of Silence

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I would find a place of silence

And listen there to hear

What only quiet brings,

When thoughts can then rebound

And wonder to a deeper place,

Where all the world around

Becomes a faint and distant sound.

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So briefly mine

So Briefly Mine

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As morning turns to noon

And noon to evening time

Thence sleep to end the day,

So death will come

To take my life away.

So as I sleeping lie

And live my life to die,

Will I know no other time

Than these moments...

So briefly mine.

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Solitude

Solitude

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Solitude my shelter

Apart the human gale,

Whence true to self

No promise fails.

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Haloed Leaves

Haloed Leaves

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A noonday sun

A canopy of trees

A million haloed leaves

A passing autumn breeze...

A rhyme and rhythm

Of starlight and motion,

The glorious dance of Creation.

Stones

Stones

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I sat for awhile

Beside the wilderness stones,

Listening to the silence,

The human absence.

I watched a squirrel

Rummage in a golden grass

Gathering its morning harvest;
Felt the late Autumn breeze
Rippling the cold mountain waters,

Warning of winter snows;

Saw starlight beams

Casting life upon the evergreen...

A substance pervaded,
A sense of related meanings
Gravitating together,
Pulling me from human separation
 Into a great gathering of elements...
Pieces perfectly composed,
A cosmic symphony
Played to my witness...
Inviting my return.

Peacefulness veiled everything,

Embracing the moment of Eden,
The moment of mergence.

Soon the visitor will leave,
Return to the disassociated fragments
Of human separation.
Evening will settle darkness on his moment of light,
Time will tumble his temple of stones,
No murmur will remind of his passing...
But his homage has come home

To the place of his belonging.

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Everland

Everland

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I never lived in Everland

Where hearts are seldom sad;

I only lived in Neverland

Where dreams are only dreams...
And hearts are seldom glad.

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True Friends

True Friends

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There are true friends

I will never meet,
A few I've met but never see...
Once near sails now adrift
Upon the endless sea,

Souls of likeness unseen

Beyond a poet's plea.

In harmony our chorus'd songs

Of praised wonders unheard,

Yet bonded our solitary hearts

By Truth and passion shared
In that fond and knowing place
Apart the realm of words expressed,
Where kindred hearts and unseen friends

At last embrace.

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Surfaces

Surfaces

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I see surfaces,

Sunbeam reflections

On soundless pools,
The spark'ling light
In the endless night;

Frowns and smiles,

Gowns and styles,

The dance of gesture--
The endless parade of pretense,
The zealous
Orchestration of invented meanings...
Unreality escaping reality,

Never do I see

The underneath,

The Being beneath,
The abiding Truth withheld--
The inaccessible wavelength,
Cosmic secrets
The eye is not meant to see...

Is it nothingness to which we venture?
A pointless path of made up meanings?

Bits of sensation we construct

Into imagined realities?
Or a veiled Wonder
That waits the eye that sees?

A mind that understands?

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Brevity

Brevity

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I do not mourn my brevity

Among these lasting things--

The sea and ocean shore,

The inland mountain's crest,

The river canyons

Where rushing waters pursue their primal quest,

The ancient forests and desert sands,
The meadow valleys and desolate lands,
The lights and shadows of revolving worlds aglow,

All in their cosmic dress.

Surrounded by eternal forms

My littleness abounds;

My wondering witness the grant they give,

My brief stay Creation's gift,

My fading print upon the ageless clay.
Before these cherish'd scenes I pray...

This mortal me

On a windswept day

By the ocean sea...

Beheld Eternity.

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No Moorage

No Moorage

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No home do I remember

To mark a place embarked.

I know no purpose for my passage,

Nor where my course is bound;

Only a rolling swell of moments

On a sea of endless time;
The lash of sudden gales,
A seldom sun-filled sky
And ever turning tides...

With no moorage to be found
On the boundless boundless brine.

                                                           

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Waiting

Waiting

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As a flower

Grows from within,

The bloom a promise

In the seed,

So I have also been,

Awaiting within

The promise of me.

Weathered

Weathered

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We cannot know

In a human life

The wear of eternity...

To stand a million rages,

Unmoved,

Only weathered by the task

Of forever waiting.

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A Willing Heart

A Willing Heart

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If I could choose
A grace or gift
It wouldn't be a clever wit, 

An evoking art

Or handsomeness,

But a willing heart...

To always find the finish

From the start.

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Evening Time

Evening Time

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A million years we have come

To embrace only a day,

And already it is evening time--

The twilight's seductive passing

From moment into mystery.

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Another Year

Another Year

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The end of another year...

The moments pass,

Our lives change

With the lessons of time. 

Some dreams end,

Others we did not find.

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The Emptiness

The Emptiness

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The emptiness beckons me,
The desolation of untrod wilderness.

I want to follow

Unaware of the distance I must go

To find the edges

That bound'ry me.

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The World Without

The World Without

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To the world without

I was always discontent,

Flighty,

In my ever shifting bent.

But in me a spirit yearned,

A seeking to return,

To find again

The world of wonder

It remembered of,
To search the secret 'bodes
Where mysteries hide;

To somehow circumvent the mind

Whose habits bind,

The world of Man

Whose fears debilitate and blind.

Sunday Fishermen

Sunday Fishermen

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Sunday fishermen

Casting thoughts to sea,

Adrift in silent reverie,

Hoping the morrow affords

Another dream fill'd sea.

The Green Lane

The Green Lane

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What fears did they know

Who walked this lane of green

Those far-off years ago?

What passing joys interposed

The pains that hardship surely posed?

What scant possessions

Did they love that robbers stole

Along this lane of green

That I now so wondering stroll?

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