Sunday June 8
*
Medlar tree standing
so small upon a hill,
never to become so huge
and grand as others do,
with a quirky ancient wise little spirit
and a blossom as pure as fresh fallen snow
that I've never seen before.
You saw the great stones rise
above Stonehenge,
and Shakespeare write
in garden fair
and uncountable acts of tenderness
and untold acts of cruelty
of man in bloody struggles
from your place
huddled beside great trees of oak
at the edge of ancient wood
as iron met iron
and blood met earth
all uselessly.
But still for thousand
upon thousand years
you gave your gift
to great oak table of fuedal lord
bowed with the weight of enormous repast
and sweet comfort to
spare bread and cheese clutched
in gnarled impoverished hands
in the dim smoky light
of a few damp bits
of peat
And so oft it to be treated
with rough disrespect
to be plucked at first frost
and thrown upon rotted hay
in moldy loft
or beside pen of rooting swine
To become a thing of sustenance
alone and unaided
Yesterday
In dusk at end of day
I stood and communed with you
that came from a land
that sits across a vast sea
far from the land of the ancestors
with no relation here
to give it company
with your contribution
forgotten with the ages,
I stood and thought
in the evening chill
of one who would have the purity
and reverence to gently help
me to take care of you.
Who has the wisdom
coming not with years of present life
but springing freely from her being
given to her by the ancestors with her beauty
and gentleness
as naturally as a summer breeze
and gently falling rain
to be felt without a single word.
Who will love and respect
such a little tree
growing in your own strange way
so different from the way
that others do
and respect you as yourself
as she so firmly is
herself.
Who can commune in respect with the
spirits all about you
who will feel this earth
beneath her
feet within her being
as a voice in her blood
of those who walked it here
from millenia ago
and walk so as
to make for you a happy,
peaceful place.
And who has the determination
and love of hard earned freedom
to swiftly make her way to you
past all interference
fair and foul
and to carry on with me
the struggle
for love,right
and good
for spiritual traditions and wise ways of life,
and beings crushed by those,
with minds controlled by greed,
and the cruel
in this age so sad,
so filled,
with suffering.
Today
upon this day
marked well beneath
this stumbling bit of verse
I walk across the span
lost in thought
on quiet afternoon
to hear her voice that I’ve never heard
barely distingished from silence
itself
The most beautiful sound
to turn my head,
so gentle
with just a hint of irony
and amused and beautiful lilt
She quietly confirms to me
that which I long have known
she alone can,
And
after a time
she will.
Window's light
Gouges on a Bench
Drafting Board table
Where will stand a loom
In an effort of the heart
all quietly waits
for patient dawn bright
long dark mane
flies in wind
In land where ancestors walked
uncountable ages ago.
June 3,2003
* courtesy of A Luminous Diamond (Bright) Crystal Show productions.