Life is a privilege. Its youthful days
Shine with the radiance of continuous Mays.
To live, to breathe, to wonder and desire,
To feed with dreams the heart’s perpetual fire,
To thrill with virtuous passions, and to glow
With great ambitions – in one hour to know
The depths and heights of feeling – God! in truth,
How beautiful, how beautiful is youth!
Life is a privilege. Like some rare rose
......
from Memories of President Lincoln
1
When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom'd,
And the great star early droop'd in the western sky in the night,
I mourn'd, and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring.
Ever-returning spring, trinity sure to me you bring,
Lilac blooming perennial and drooping star in the west,
......
There sat two glasses, filled to the brim,
On a rich man's table, rim to rim.
One was ruddy and red as blood,
And one was clear as the crystal flood.
Said the glass of wine to his paler brother,
"Let us tell tales of the past to each other;
I can tell of banquet, and revel, and mirth,
Where I was a king, for I ruled in might;
For the proudest and grandest souls on earth
......
Out of the cradle endlessly rocking,
Out of the mocking-bird's throat, the musical shuttle,
Out of the Ninth-month midnight,
Over the sterile sands and the fields beyond, where the child
leaving his bed wander'd alone, bareheaded, barefoot,
Down from the shower'd halo,
Up from the mystic play of shadows twining and twisting as
if they were alive,
Out from the patches of briers and blackberries,
From the memories of the bird that chanted to me,
......
GREAT are the myths--I too delight in them;
Great are Adam and Eve--I too look back and accept them;
Great the risen and fallen nations, and their poets, women, sages,
inventors, rulers, warriors, and priests.
Great is Liberty! great is Equality! I am their follower;
Helmsmen of nations, choose your craft! where you sail, I sail,
I weather it out with you, or sink with you.
Great is Youth--equally great is Old Age--great are the Day and
Night;
......
They say the waves at the shore, where foam meets the sand,
That once upon a time, no foam there did stand.
Until an old blind woman, knitting night and day,
Her sorrows and her joys of life in thread would lay,
Showed them to the sea, and the sea, in envy’s gleam,
Took up those crafts and donned them as foam’s white seam.
Upon the wet sand lay a ragged patchwork old,
Just enough for Tasso’s to sit, cross-legged and bold,
Knitting with her needles, tirelessly she toiled,
......
SEA WANTS ME
Waves are here for the winners
spirals floating in turquoise
dance ululating undulating
blue bright sight
a point with paddle board
to soar sanguine Seas
I know not whether I’m
merman or beach sand speck
......
TURTLE DOVE
A turtle dove
I landed on your chest
widened the jagged crack
Your Heart chambers shivered
quiet silver ripples in a
tender Garden of Eden
Watching me, your son
......
Scarlet sun peeks through
a slit in darkling storm clouds.
Butterflies go home.
Sky meets sea at plum border
as pink moon trails, in order.
Sea are you like a Creek?
Or are you more like a Flood?
Don’t worry I'll tell thee
you’re much like humankind
childlike like a Creek you start
come the dark times and into a flood you grow up
A Flood that seems to swallow everything whole
Ferocious and evil you will become
Lose the empathy for nature and all