Paradise --
You had no name for it
but could see it in soft yellow petals
you knew as Flora Maxima.

You doubted it could be,
but recognized something of it
in dew drop studded webs shimmering in the light --
beaded beauty indifferent to death's ways.
You wondered at the mystery,
mystified.

And then, your gleaming eyes--
like the zircon crystals you collected,
shining in the grey gneiss,
defiant of their earthly hold--
joined the child's excitement
for the object so reverently held.

All around and inside, abounding life moved,
irrepressibly pulsing through your veins,
pushing yet more wonder from your heart.
Beauty irresistibly revealed through your eyes,
and shared in joy.

This was your Alleluia
and Praise the Lord!

You,
always embodied by a faith you couldn’t name,
sharing something of the mystical
through those gleaming eyes.

Tell me --
in this dark-eyed world,
where up is down, and down is up,
and divisiveness and hatred rule the day;

where respect is weakness,
and winners need losers,
and lies and deception
serve the confident clamour --

Tell me… where is the light?
Where is the speck that brightens the night,
showing way through this darkened sky?

In moments of darkest embrace,
will we finally learn
how light rises from void,
burning without waiver --
in each of us,
defying the storms of time?

Will we finally learn
that strength lies firmly waiting --
recognizing that the immovable beauty is within,
holding eternally
against the onslaught of the deadening crass?

Will we come to see
how the light flows and rises
through fields of despair,
giving of itself freely—unceasingly,
in no need of the dark effort of a lie
to exist?

Every moment given --
borrowed from eternity.

Every breath I take --
birthed by love.

The yellow touch of light on skin,
its soft radiant heat --
Your restraint for me.

All around, light reflected in colors
plays --
to the glory of Your spirit.

Everywhere life abounds.
Root and branch grope ceaseless in praise of existence,
while pulsing life toils and teems, willfully

Even breezes are shaped
in expressions of Your presence.
Long flowing strands of grass, rustling withered leaves,
dance and give song --

while I search for words.

I AM
On wind swept dune at ocean’s edge
where dappled silvery light finds way through dull lit eyes
to lay its jeweled offerings at my heart.

Wake Oh Wake!
See the flow from our brimming star,
shimmering in the waves — ​
Feel how earth dances in the light.

Hear the invitation
wave upon wave, and soar
like sea birds circling overhead,
aware of their place in this light washed land,

Embracing wind — embraced by wind,
the same, caressing skin — mine;
brushing light filled air through body
inward, upward, — revealing presence.

Sacred and reverent — 
given — to see and feel,
and move, and rise,
upward in circling flight,
above the rhythm of the lapping waves.

And with sight honed clear
recognizing the grind between land and rolling sea
in constant rub and friction,
as equal with the to-and-fro in me — 
weathered edges fading in a persistent wash.

Even the once proud bluffs of Les Îles
battered by time worn ways drift to another age.
Breaking — grain by grain into the sea
to rise again into other wholeness.

In an eternal moment, les Madeleines hold me in the sway,
grounding me, on shores of ever dancing landscapes,
uttering through the sound of pulsing waves,
“All is well, and all will be well”

My heart has relented.
Another fissure has opened in the stone.
The jeweled light has found way through,
and taken me in awesome flight. I sing…

I Am — 
In days of moving shores.
Here, certainties bleed into destinies.
— long ago stirred by love.

In a world of raging certainties
where the lie-soaked moment
shapes the day,
hold to the bedrock of your being.

Make no mistake.
Wait for no one.
Heroes make no demand of us.

Stand against the spread of despair
with your immovable beauty--
it has always been within,
at the ready, to meet the howling winds
of the hour’s dark clamour.

With every act of kindness,
and every truth proclaimed,
you are a beacon
piercing through the covering dark,
coursing through tracks
that tears have traced.

Resist.

Know the unbreakable strength
of the one simple gesture--
and how the outstretched hand
holds the earth.

Know that in you shines
the brightness of a day,
and the goodness of a moment--
ramparts holding back
the insidious creep of deception.

In your beauty moves a salve.
Rising from the lingering cold of night,
to flow like morning mist
brushing the ground with warmth
of the new day’s growing light.

Resist.

At journey’s end,
resting in sunlight’s radiant glow,
we drifted into the golden hush
and gave rein to the moment.

In its embrace,
we gloried in the fullness of days
and befriended the certainty
of a life greater than our own.

Each of us--
reflections of our own making,
shaped and cast
from the vast silence within.
Each of us,
fragmented prisms
imbued with life’s colour.
Each of us,
now bound by this one golden filament,
washed in the warmth of its wholeness.

Can it be the pull of our birth’s origins,
whose love it is that seeks so anxiously
to bind we sinewed shards of light?
​Like pieces of a shattered mirror,
seamlessly, miraculously
fused together
to reflect the maker’s face.

​For what else could Camino be
but the way we move and are moved by the light,
drawing us ever forward — together,
breaking the silence
of private prayers,
in the blaze
of such wondrous beauty.

Each breath deepening
​To strike a flaming moment
And pierce shadows’ veils
With golden shafts of light.

For every man who straps a bomb to kill another,
A million more will turn from horror to mourn the loss.

When a Tiananmen tank, oppressing the free,
Is thwarted by courage of the one
Or yet again is driven by another,
Who preserves a life he’s been ordered to quell,
We know that good persists.

When tears flow and hearts break
At the sight of the desperate refugee,
When her child’s body, lying awash in the rising tide,
Rebukes to release the bridled good
Then we know love’s time is near.

Where there is fear and pain,
Hatred and judgment, and lie upon lie,
But you alone stand
As an offering to undo the twisted path,
Then through you we will know:
​Love’s time has come.

Immaculately gowned in an ankle-length night dress
your cherubic frame,
crowned with rings of delicate red curls,
twirled round and round.

You were in the moment --
​immersed,
perfectly attuned
to the strummed, earthy melody.

Arms waving, fingers tracing the air,
moving with purpose, shaping
the sound that filled you.

Baby blue-grey eyes,
riveted inward --
searching,
listening purely
for the notes that would lift you.

From the ground that once held you near,
you rose, on white-laced wings,
dancing you to the clouds.
And it was there that we could see
how softness glows.

With your innocence,
you took us in your arms
and helped us all embrace life
once again.

--

Only your soul will carry the memory of this.
The dance was freely given — a  gift
from the ground that gave you wings.

For surely it was this:
beauty, 
bringing us back to one another.

Oh, such power and wonder
in a slight frame --
crowned with delicate red curls,
twirling, round and round.