The Transcendent Surge.

Sometimes, when the heart is heavy,
the world of wonder and beauty can seem
little more than a vast, pitiless sea
with dark waves rolling relentlessly on,
great, towering crests and troughs
carrying only strife, struggle, injustice
and a squalid, petty, deceiving tide
of narrow self-interest. Then
I reach for your hand, feel its warmth,
sense a strange, mysterious connection,
the greater sea of lives intimately shared,
and buoyed by a wave of love, hope and joy,
surrender to its greater, transcendent surge,
letting it take me wherever it will.

In the Nursing Home.

That great gift-giver, Time,
Has brought them to a point
Where they shuffle slowly in their frames
Or sit quietly in their chairs
Sustained by remnants of memory,
Waiting for they know not what.
Weep for them, shed your tears,
But in this life of vulnerable mortality
Time has gifted them abundance of years.
The weight of Time's gifts has bent them,
Carried them at last to the great, dark portal
Through which all life must flow,
Carried them ceaselessly along
With one final gift to bestow,
The release into serenity,
Into quiet, conscious-less eternity,
Time's final gift of letting them go.

the spider's web

the spider's web hangs
in silky soft symmetry
laced with sun and dew.

I search for words

I search for words for earth's mystery
but they, like mercury, slip away,
or lie, too dense, like heavy clay-
what remains are haiku, mere slithers of day-

So...

         a microcosm-
         dewdrop's quivering glisten
         on silvered soft grass

         inevitable-
         the slow fluttering spiral
         of single spent leaf

         o now gaze upon
         this stunning white flowering
         on bare winter's branch

For youth, death and rebirth
these will suffice-
but not for sun, moon or sky,
nor love, hate, fire or ice.