Split

Split

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It wasn't that I knew

Where to go,

Only where not to be;

Not who I was,

Only who I wasn't.

So when I wonder

Who I am

Or where I'm going...

I'm just a wanderer

Who waits for time to tell.

Hidden Harbors

Hidden Harbors

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Is it ourselves we find

As we sail the man made sea,

Some self that waits

Beyond the horizon clouds,

A self ordained by man's decree?

Or is it ourselves we leave

As we till the worldly helm,

A self whose elements

The primal tides of boundless time

Have pooled to merge in me?

Do we find our port of home

As we search the man made sea,

Or only hidden harbors

Merely sheltered
From the man made storm?

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Wilderness

Wilderness

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There are times when

I must head for some wilderness--

Desert, mountain, ocean shore.

The Man made disappoints...

Except for the scientists

Who teach us of

Our heaven here.

I'll take the mountain's wildflower,

The lonely gull above the ocean wave,

A swirl of sand atop the desert dune;

These things are heaven here,

And I must leave them all too soon.

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Friends

Friends

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As friends to friends

May our journey never end,

But follow our loving flow

To another gather'd place again;

'Till each and each

We cross the river home,

And smiling back

A final loving glance,

We turn, and venture on alone.

To Grandmas

To Grandmas

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The years of your life

Are like threads of fine lace,

A beauty of days woven upon days.

And around your gentle face

Where years of giving

Have lines of kindness traced,

I see a ring of flowers

To garland your grace.

Expectations

Expectations

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From where came this disappointment

At the circumstances that I found?

Why these expectations planted

In my fetal brain

Of what this living ought to mean,

This paradigm of rightness before I even came?

Why am I not a clay

Molded for compliance to what is here,

Why not formed by surroundings

To never question how the craft is steered?

Why not travel the road already paved?

Why instead a resistance forged

To dispute the readymade,

And dream these dreams of difference

That never wish to fade?

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Was It Courage?

Was It Courage?

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We have come from fear,

From dark forests with dangers ever near.

We ventured upon the open plain,

Each step a trembling suspicious stride.

Was it courage that brought us from the foliage,

Or had the plains become a lesser fear?

       

A City On A Cloud

A City On A Cloud

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As I climbed atop

A coastal ridge

A city came before my sight,

Yet almost veiled from my view

By a mist of varied hues.

It looked almost a city on a cloud,

Or even more, an island

Floating on a silver bay.

It seemed a doorway

Crafted by a master's hand,

An open gate to a golden land.

     

The Rounded Stones

The Rounded Stones 

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 They call them "Erratics"

As if their journeys were chosen,
Some aimless wanderlust
Within the stone;

The great rounded rocks

Rolled for a thousand years

By giant walls of flowing ice,

To be left where they lay

As the frozen rivers thawed,

Dropped in a distant place

Far from their molten cradles...

A reminder that beginnings

Do not foretell our endings. 

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The Ropes Course

The Ropes Course

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I was carried so high

That day we climbed

The sun-filled trees

And saw beyond the filtered light,

Ourselves in golden flight,

Our wings afloat a gentle breeze,

Our Spirits freed of binding fear,

Our courage crested

By the will to be.

There is something special now
Among we who gathered there,
That place we found
To reach beyond our former ground,
To leave behind the we we were
Before we gathered there.

It Is Not Love That Ends

It Is Not Love That Ends

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  It is not Love that ends

When togetherness parts,

Nor caring that angers rend,

Nor dying hearts that endings mark.

For the melody we deeply knew

Plays still upon the strings

Of loving hearts.

And when the moments

That memory keeps

Come passing through our thoughts,

We may live again a worldly love,

Though once before

It was found and lost.

My Wish For You

My Wish For You

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May you walk by heavenly streams

And be washed in rainbow mists;

May your heart be filled

With all that wondrous seems;

And may loving's light shine golden beams

Through all the days of your living,

And the sounds of joy

Be the music of your dreams.

What Matters Most

What Matters Most

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I cannot by mind alone

Appraise the great unknown.

Reason crawls astutely

But cannot leap the trails end;

Where mind forsakes the host

Begins what matters most.

The River In Me

The River In Me

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The river in me

Has not one current--

Eddies and swirls

Distract the deeper flow.

Error'd thoughts

Erode the course,

Silting the shallow shoals.

Fickle beliefs

Deflect and waver,

Jamming the narrow bends.

But there persists

The seaward surge,

The stream of yearnings

Flowing full with loving dreams,

Waters healing the hurts of heart,

Greening the Spirit's eternal place;

Searching to find the me

Who calls for me.

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A Gift

A Gift

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Upon the journey'd path of love

We celebrate our heart's dear friends

And comely mates.

To reach our Spirit's shore,

And each the other

A gift of loving give,

Is the joy each moment waits.

The Circle

The Circle

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The circle has no sharpness,

No points on which to snag the heart.

To each place upon its path

It returns by gentle curve

To enfold itself,

A loving whole.

And when we look within

We gaze upon the center,

Where all who enter meet.

A Silent Word

A Silent Word

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I hear a voice

In the sound of Nature,

A silent word

In a silence heard,

The mountain breeze

That does not move the trees,

But is the breath

That Spirit breathes.



Reflections

Reflections

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Reflections of a promised me

Upon a tranquil sea

Casting back my thoughts to me.

A timid hope I see,

A promised time to be,

A coming

Coming back for me.

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The Watcher

The Watcher

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The light rises to quell

The dangers of the dark;

The watcher of the wood

Retreats to wait another night,

As primal man emerges

From his shelter

To attend his daily task...

 For the dark will fall again,

And the watcher cometh back.

Stardust

Stardust

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Myth onto myth

Does the mind go 'round,

Searching and searching

For the beginning and the end,

And the meanings in between.

But stardust to stardust

Does the circle go round,

'Till one day again
To a star

Will our dust be bound.

Night Players

Night Players

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These players who nightly

Come upon my stage to play,

Whose ways I know so well,
Though the play be yet to tell.

When the morning curtain falls

I wonder where they go.

There is an Eternity

There Is An Eternity

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I walk mountain trails

And see granite slabs

Smoothed by the movement of glaciers,

Small meadows

That once were shallow lakes,

Ancient Bristlecone Pine

Bent by countless winter gales.

All these things that sign

The passage of Time,

Telling me there is an eternity

That I only touch for a day.

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Isolation

Isolation

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My words sound of misuse

In the ears of others,

My touchings fail.

I am surrounded by mirrors;

My sendings come back

To flail me.


.............................................


My dreams slip
Into unfilled memories
Frozen in circles
Of silver'd glass,
Looking at me
Like unloved children.


.................................................


My mirror'd me,
The watching shadow I see
Waiting to heed.
Who follows who leads?
Do I follow the shadow?
Does it follow me?

                      

Sorrows

Sorrows

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My sorrows lay

In the power of allurement

To trick hope upon the heart;

Of imagination to give visions

Of what will never be.

Distance

Distance

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Distance becomes

Imperceptibly-

Until it forbids

Even another glance.

Aloneness

Aloneness

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I walked by the sea today,

Aloneness as near to me

As the white foam

Washing away the footmarks

Of my last moments passing,

Leaving but an awareness

Of presence

Amid the ancient song

Of the seas endless reach

Upon the eternal sand.

Is this not the woe of life

For all of us?

We are placed alone

In each succeeding moment,

A singular piece of consciousness

Rushing forth our longings

For a oneness so known, yet lost,

That we must reach for it

With each breath of our living.

A Christmas Wish

A Christmas Wish

  

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While travelling home on Christmas day
I thought to stop along the way,

And stay awhile where poems are made,

My plan to send a wishful cheer

Upon the ending of the year--

A singing merry rhyme

Of brightly glowing lights

And roundly ringing bells

That toll of Christmas time.

But as the verse began to sing

Of heartfelt joys

And first-time toys,

And laugh with happy tears

For life's remember'd years,

A silence fell

Upon the ringing of the bells,

A place unfilled by gifts 'n things

That Christmas always brings.

For what we need of all above

Is that our greatest gift be love.

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Inner Gravities

Inner Gravities

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We must give fluidity

To our lives.

So like quiet water

We flow gently

To our natural course,

Pulled ever down

From the peaks of delusion

By our inner gravities.

The Dreamt Of Place

The Dreamt Of Place 

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To live once more

Those feeling flights on billow'd clouds,

To pass again the windstreams end,

To find the dreamt of place

Where moments passed
Return again.

If I imagine

If I Imagine
 

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  If I imagine
What is not before my eyes
I place it nonetheless
Upon the throne of existence,
Among those things
That move the mind to ponder,
The heart to yearn,
And Spirit to follow dreams
Into the making of wonders
Before our eyes.

Thinking

Thinking

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Yesterday there was something

I should have done,

But I didn't think about it.

Later when I thought about it

I didn't think it was the best time to do it.

Today I didn't think about it again.

There are so many things I don't think about
When I wanted to think about it

That I have decided to stop thinking about it.

For Billy

For Billy



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Death Is Like The Ending Of The Last Summer Day

There is an absence now,

A place unfilled,

A chair on the porch where no one sits.

A loneliness lingers,

Like the quiet that comes

When all the Summer quests have gone ...

Beyond the ancient forest hills

The Summer sun is setting,

The lowered light making shadows fall

Upon the silver lake

Where laughter is remembered still.

And across the growing evening water gloom

I hear the lonely calling of a loon.

The last day of Summer is done...

Tomorrow will be new.

Silence

Silence

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Only when alone do I hear,

When absence

Is so complete,

There is nothing left

But listening;
Listening,
To what was here before
And will be after.