I am happy to announce that Lost Tower Publications will include my poem “Garden by the Sea” in their new anthology “Along the Shore” coming out April 2017.
Category: Inspiration
Eve
The promise of the Tree pounding in your breast
Tongue of the snake soft upon your cheek,
You reached for unseen death and gave the fruit to man.
So men have said–
In you all women are
Innocent as a girl in awe of the first dawn
Saying its color over roses
Again and again and softly to herself.
From you a strength bolder than Joan whom men damned
But gods praise, wisdom and power of Elizabeth
Who gave no man her crown, purity of Calcutta’s Mother
Too busy with the poor to stop for more than begging–
Jezebel, Salome, Antoinette
They also fell from you, but what deed compares
To this your greatest gift, the feeble and the weak
Asleep in your arms, you, our highest hope and dream
Bearing both of our sorrow and our joy, Mother of Man
There is nothing, no one so vile, contemptible you cannot love–
Ocean ever rising
O woman we rise in you, each of us a wave rising up,
Rolling in, returning to you.
Esoteric
After all, as you lie in my arms knowing all
needing nothing but what is, the earth rolling away from the sun
Thunder rolling in the distance
Can you hear the thunder of death, my dear?
Yes, I hear it and more, I hear a sound
Not everyone can hear, I feel an energy not everyone can feel — a Sound
Birth a note, Love a song, Death
Spinning days into silk, connecting man to men, men to women
Woman to every child, weaving nights out of the past –
The Dead speak to me
They are not dead; they are here
And with the silk of souls our future is woven, all that is
that is humanly good, out of birth this note, out of love this song
Little worm silken light little word OM
Japanese Garden Photo by Terry Busch
A Forest Monk Speaks
If you find yourself in a Buddhist temple
You are not in a Buddhist temple.
Though you pray and chant for yourself
Night and day, you remain in Hell.
Living and dying, are the two not one
Happening at the same time?
A cobra lifts its head in your path.
Teach it to hiss, not bite. It is you.
Poem first appeared in “The Fires of Spring” by Rayn Roberts
When One is More than Three
for Fred Longworth
The pure energy of choice, the exercise
Of wisdom and will between the extremes
Of hatred and love, apathy or action, war
Or art, the painful year, a joyful moment,
Only mind dreaming our future into being:
All that is made by man, woman or child
Every toy, house, bridge, bullet or bomb
Was once an idea given birth in the mind.
It may look like we take one step forward
Three back, but a forward step is always
The greater distance in dreamtime, mind is
Forever dreaming forward into the future.
Poem first appeared in Of One and Many Words / Poetic Matrix Press
Experiment with Time Travel
They led us to sunlight on the grass beside the school
Brought an extension cord and phonograph with a box
Of long silks of many colors, played Stravinsky’s Firebird
Ravel’s La Mer, Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake, and suddenly
We began to move like birds, like deer trailing scarves!
We began to come alive outside the classroom, the box.
We became human for the first time in our public school.
This was kindergarden, no thought, no conditioned response
We were happy to be in the light with melodies enchanting us
Inspiring wonder in motion as in many innocent moments
Unaware of gender or race, only a spontaneous urge to run
Dance in circles with colors glowing over our heads, sway
In time to leap and fly celebrating two or three colors,
Yes, simply being as children are, free to express and play.
We were fully alive for thirty minutes– it felt like hours.
The teachers smiled when the experiment was over, they had
Done their best to evoke some creativity in us, but that
Was never needed, we needed only to be worry-free, fearless
Willing to listen, to laugh, and you know, I can’t tell you
How many yearless moments, I’ve wondered why this memory
Returns like a dream of an old love, time and again– Well
I don’t anymore, but fall, into a reverie and dance, dance again.
Poem appeared 1st in “Of One & Many Worlds” by Rayn Roberts Poetic Matrix Press
The Web
It’s not the known that holds the secrets to knowing more.
There is more than what we see and know here and now.
Search the far reaches of the future
Dark womb of tomorrow
Understand the possible
Flowers in impossible gardens:
If we can link
Countless computers
One massive mind giving dreams
Knowledge, ideas
Making the many one,
How possible is One Mind
One Net of Energy, Web of Spirit?
It’s not what you see or know that can hurt or help you.
Be still as you move, keep an eye open for the invisible.
“The Web” first appeared in the book “Of One and Many Worlds” by Rayn Roberts @ Poetic Matrix Press
