“Contemplation V”
I watched a star or two
burn out behind space, and my only
rival was the past that presented itself to me
in verse and distorted drama.
It has neither gender nor form
It is like every elusive beauty we grasp
through perception
For the eye is but a small opening to the
brain;
our minds swallow fluid pictures,
and our ears, mere caves that
lead whispered words to the heart.
The balance of our senses--
delicate implements of the soul.
And if I touch you, do I not
touch the moon and the stars?
For you are so like them.
And if I seek your grace, am I not in love, too,
with shell-seasoned beaches?
Passion personifies every mood,
every fantasy made mortal.
And If I know that passion has not the carnal
limitation of recklessness or
lust
then have I not extended a soulful reach beyond the grasp
of love,
itself?
Rapture comes not to all.
Rapture is the imagination of passion
and passion is the aspiration of love.
When in those of us who are tender,
the heart makes its bed with the mind,
a soul is there conceived
until love shall come to its interior
and release it.
And such a soul shall
suckle the breasts of wisdom and
vision
to know now, the passion of which I speak.
There are those snows that will fall this night.
The simple wind will pass the time like a cold
but wholly proper minuet
then the whisper of snow in a downward climb.
Through my window my eyes
bait my brain.
Such a luxurious whim! Snow, prevailing upon my
night with indulgence.
Snow, like scattered lace
crumbled from a great white gown
of white under the clumsy hand of an impetuous lover.
Nevermore the kiss of springtime
nevermore the slur of summer afternoons,
nevermore the grey haste of autumn but the
stiffened clouds chafed and
chiseled by the breath of a winter God.
these gated ivory trinkets will sting my eyes yet.
The world will advance and I,
I will be here by the window. Ever the dreamer
sorrowfully content to be the thinker--
--violently amazed at the incongruency of my fate.
Why
when certain joy is mine and my
soul
runneth over, has God
commanded me to the unrelenting spirit that is
aware?
a spirit that wonders...
Indeed how may I grope with any
grace at all?
How then shall I suffer? From ignorance--
or all that has been revealed to me?
In quiet arbitration,
I study my plight and wonder.