Poetry Archives Index

HOME

ROSEBREATH - 2

File Opened 7/96

A...

ADAM IN PARADISE

ALL CREATION URGES HER...

A POEM ON A LETTER

A SONG OF LOVE'S SUB TOTALITIES

E...

EMBARRASSMENT

H...

HEART POCKETS

HILDE

I...

I'M LOOKING FOR YOU

K...

KNOW, THERE IS ALWAYS A WELCOME

AS NATURAL AS SONG

L...

LOVE'S TRANSFORMATIVE VISION

OF FULL ACCEPTANCE

LOVING THE WORM TO DEATH

LYRICAL POETS

M...

MORE DREAMS OF THE EMERGENT HOLY ONE

MORE WRITING IN PREPARATION

P...

POEM WRITERS

Q...

QUANTUM LOVE

T...

THERE IS A TREMBLING OF THE HEART

THESE THINGS SPEAK SOLILOQUIES

THE VOYAGE OF LILLY'S ROSE

THIS IS BEAUTY

U...

UPON A WOMAN'S FACE AFTER HEARING

THE LOVE POEMS OF PABLO NERUDA

LAST POEM IN FILE: KNOW, THERE IS ALWAYS

A WELCOME AS NATURAL AS SONG

THE POEMS:

THE VOYAGE OF LILLY'S ROSE

There is a Rose

that sat between the naked breasts

of mermaids,

that once rode the foam of the sky

from the flames of Persia to France.

It unfolded in Francis's canticles;

it bloomed in the green dew

of Ireland

and the wild islands

of Chile.

Rock Conies and elves

held it in their teeth;

druids found it in deep earth;

Solomon in his gardens.

It grew in the belly of Yeats;

it blossomed in the breasts

of Neruda's Matilde.

Lilly carried it to me

in a golden pouch

spangled with blue stones.

She smiled

and placed it into a crack

in King David's altar:

It split the stone in two.

She laughed

and dropped it in the crock

that held all Christian graces.

Its roots broke through

and poured that liqueur

all through the earth and sky.

She placed it in naked air.

It vanished and exploded open

in my mouth with countless blooms

every time I ate bread...

or drank any common thing.

LYRICAL POETS

Have you noticed

that lyrical poets

write about crickets

and straw and woman?

that lyrical poets

write about stones,

and river grass,

birds and breezes

and woman--

for lyrical poets

are poets in love,

flinging themselves

into the wildest visions

of their minds

to become it—

encountering God.

*

Have you ever noticed

that God

writes about crickets

and straw and women,

and stones, reeds

and river grass,

birds and breezes,

and women?

For God is a God in Love

and lyrical,

and laughing,

a poet, an artist, a maker,

flinging Himself into the wildest visions

of His mind to become it—

encountering man.

UPON A WOMAN'S FACE AFTER HEARING

THE LOVE POEMS OF PABLO NERUDA

I have observed

that when a person's soul

opens to the sheen-freshness

of secret sunlight upon the silent

waters of the heart,

sharp, clear

stars arise in their eyes.

It is love

that moves thusly,

making all souls beautiful.

And it is love

that makes God's green blood

jump down into blood

so that minds

delight in countless

connections of love

weaving love into love,

brightening the inside

of the skull

until eyes are made lanterns

showing light.

And when the tongue

(that last resistance),

is love tutored

to turn from the rancor and jangle

existent apart from that Love

that informs trees

and motions of the moon

and stars,

then dark honey moves

from brain to mouth,

and amber-flamed honey

flares from lips

and spills through human discourse

into shadows

and roots of all things

that silently glow.

MORE DREAMS OF THE EMERGENT HOLY ONE

More dreams of you,

the pure-hearted pursuer of God,

drinker of that unflinching light

that Jesus drank before He became it.

Your hair is drifting

on the winds like pollen

across green seas,

and through the peaceful skies,

like gold dust, drifting,

bearing your honeysuckle fragrance,

your lusty humus, your faint carnations

in its long fluid strands.

When you come in the night

with your three trembling roses,

you fill my darkness with fragrance.

I would kiss you with foursquare kisses

upon your double face

and watch in the mirror of you

visions of constellations

being born in luminous clouds

across southern skies.

In the calm waters of your eyes

I would see fleeting images

of rivers flooding arroyos,

bright honey offered by a warrior

on his extended staff,

a balsam-balmed book that pours winds

and flutes from its pages.

And because of your devotion,

I would choose a God-huge freedom

pouring through wheat and water,

onions and wine,

so the crafty dwarf of me

shall never remember his old magic

of how to entrap

God's sweet oils in dirty pots

so he can hoard them in dark basements,

nor how he once wove word-spells

out of a child's fear

to enchant swans into housewives

enthralled with specials at the mall.

THERE IS A TREMBLING OF THE HEART

There is a trembling

of the heart that comes

in the presence of birth,

or death,

or a pure soul:

for then is sensed

the ceaseless origin

of all things

and a kind of music

of mystery

that has no words...

only an imperceptible

emotional movement.

There is an ever-blooming,

unblooming, full-bloomed

flower

always held out to us;

there is milk for our lips

constantly dribbling from a breast

that has no body

until we take off our bodies

to sink beyond silence

into the teeming throngs

of a wing-packed sky.

MORE WRITING IN PREPARATION

When you arrive

summer will blow in my windows

dressed in its carnation garments,

trailing straw.

And that secret worm will shrink

before your luminous gaze

and fall from love's apple

into the dark.

You are the little sister

of those wild spices

that have grown upon the dry hills

of Provence since Roman times:

thyme, oregano, lavender,

to perfume your hair by day,

the smoke of sage wood fires

soaking into your skin

by night.

I swear,

if you should write a poem

the paper itself

would reek of summer.

A SONG OF LOVE'S SUBTOTALITIES

We are part of each other,

now, as we always have been,

in the same way

that the light of the sun

dwells in my breast

and in every strand

of your hair;

in the same way as

the heaven's waters

course through

my brain and your eyes:

pouring out liquid love,

pouring out a shine of ecstasy.

Someone put the Crab Nebula

in the palms of your hands.

Someone put Cleopatra kissing Anthony

in your lips.

Someone put Jesus multiplying bread

for the hungry

in your breasts.

Whenever you choose it

I can enter all history

and space of time

through your body.

Do not think I am writing

anything less then

Love's realities.

QUANTUM LOVE

I ponder,

where does your body end

and the ocean you play in begin?

Or where the exact boundary

between your hand

and the stone your hand

rests upon?

Journeying deeper

into the Life of life

all merges in light.

You are the woman

and the hen in your arms;

you the eater

and the egg eaten;

you the exclamation of wonder

and the lightning bolt;

you the observer

and the observed:

a beloved specific

in the unbroken sea

of God.

You are nothing.

You are everything.

You a fluid, unfolding,

beloved, happening

of soul fragrances

impelled by Spirit.

You sweat, you belch,

you laugh at me,

the man, and the hen in my arms...

the eater and the egg eaten.

*

And yet, reality is beyond

all this.

THIS IS BEAUTY

Arriving like a shy boy

in the presence of a girl he loves,

I come to you and you to me:

as that green light in the shadow of trees

kisses the ground,

as the blue light of stones caresses them.

You walk in the coral hues

reflecting from your own spirit.

Bees hum around you

as if your body were the stalk

of a blue corn flower;

your hair the petals of wild daisies.

Everywhere we walk there is light.

It is God's delicacies at work.

This is beauty.

A POEM ON A LETTER

I thought of this rude woman

who secretly loves you, God,

and suddenly was in the presence

of that humble carpenter

of Nazareth,

the famous Prince of peace

who shyly peeks through

the flowered lattice

of the heart.

A focused sunlight

radiant with silver beams

shown in You with her name.

Infused with this confidence

I wrote her a letter

of anger and love

without knowing why.

LOVE'S TRANSFORMATIVE VISION

    &n