From ocean's wave a Wanderer came,
With visage tanned and dun:
His Mother, when he told his name,
Scarce knew her long-lost son;
So altered was his face and frame
By the ill course he had run.
There was hot fever in his blood,
And dark thoughts in his brain;
And oh! to turn his heart to good
......
"And will you cut a stone for him,
To set above his head?
And will you cut a stone for him--
A stone for him?" she said.
Three days before, a splintered rock
Had struck her lover dead--
Had struck him in the quarry dead,
Where, careless of a warning call,
He loitered, while the shot was fired--
......
They sent me a salwar kameez
&nb sp; peacock-blue,
& nbsp; and another
glistening like an orange split open,
embossed slippers, gold and black
&nbs p; points curling.
Candy-striped glass bangles
&n bsp; snapped, drew blood.
Like at school, fashions changed
&n bsp; in Pakistan -
......
Oft I had heard of Lucy Gray:
And, when I crossed the wild,
I chanced to see at break of day
The solitary child.
No mate, no comrade Lucy knew;
She dwelt on a wide moor,
- The sweetest thing that ever grew
Beside a human door!
......
I love to rise in a summer morn
When the birds sing on every tree;
The distant huntsman winds his horn,
And the skylark sings with me.
O! what sweet company!
But to go to school on a summer morn,
O! it drives all joy away;
Under a cruel eye outworn,
The little ones spend the day
......
(In loving memory from her children left behind)
When you were needed, you were always there,
Doing tender things that revealed your care.
Love you displayed in many other ways;
Mother - our earthly saint of yesterdays.
Your compliments, sometimes overstated,
Pleased us no end - are still appreciated.
Warmhearted smiles with eyes aglow;
......
The sun falls,
And night begins,
Blue irises enthrall,
The eyes of my kin.
I never shared that ocean,
I was always miles behind,
always reachin',
never could unwind.
My eyes of grass,
On a summer's day,
......
it never came with conclusion as how the night took its time to raise a sunshine
to survive in the wild makes no sense for such a young wolf
to be part of a pack , to learn how to defend , avoid danger , hunt — crushed hares , bison , and moose
much more to be close to them all
blood dripping all the way to my mom’s home
at heightened peril of death , all lone and numb from hunger
wandering through unknown terrain , limping , some bones broken
no such scheme in mind for how the high spirits turned way upside down
to ponder why it unfolded just as it did
......
April Brooks was four years old, prattling a blue streak, like comets;
Or backwards walking time, seizing swiftly, days of golden promise.
April lived with parents and older sister, in the sunshine of a valley;
And petals wore dew pearls and fragrance, all along the green alley.
April and sister, Dawn, loved horses, though still too young to ride;
But, they adored fairy-tales about them, like lilac, at rose's bedside.
Fuchsia was the color of fall skies, and the fun year was fading away,
......
My children tell me of a mystic
Living by the lake
In a green and purple house
Surrounded by gardens of giant flowers
Who takes small dreamers
On uncharted adventures where
They choose their directions and she
Finds their way
My children tell me
......