Self-Portrait of a Poet

I wish I was twenty and in love with life
And still wanted to change
To change the world
Inwards, old brain!

Who has the heart of a universe
There is no adversity
Only the opportunities
Given by evolution

Roses and blooming
For those who see God
In created things
I wish I was twenty and

So ready to make a self-portrait
That had dreams beyond ambition
And still wanted to love
The goodness of this world

Onwards, fantastic spirit!
We have lives for this yet
And hours, and days, and years.

I have traded nights of sleep

I have dreamed of accomplishment
though for a length of work
I cannot say that it was just
sacrifice itself is an art
Lo, have I discovered
how to love more
than a packet of ambition
to do good is more fulfilling
than to profit from others
the vanity of things perishes
but the ripeness of life
always continues, like
the youth who never change
they just exhibit new faces
and new dreams for humanity.

Autumn painfully chafes

Photo Courtesy: http://www.deviantart.com/art/Kriszti-n-Darwin-476002094

Another year gone and going
Soon autumn will return with her
Spices of colors, rejoicing change
Chanting loss, let’s say it again

Soon the uneaten fruits of our lives
Will turn to moss, and whispers
Once loud will grow so very dim
The symbols we tell ourselves

Will change, even our language
Will be more mature, us and we
These particular islands will change
Our subterranean castles will gleam

New possibilities, among the white
Of the harvests we carried from spring
Into the golden colds, the forever pastures
Of momentary pauses, the reckonings

Another year where we give up our plans
To the experience, our wanderings for water
Our return back to the source
All the efforts to be and have what

We already are, shadows crumbled damply
By the side of our journeys, how we once
Mattered so much to ourselves, now we can
Relax in a more divine detachment.

As you strode deeper into the world

When it’s over, I want to say: all my life I was a bride married to amazement. I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.
~ Mary Oliver

Photo Courtesy: http://www.deviantart.com/art/Horse-475589992

As you strode deeper into the world

One day you finally knew
The journey had ended where
It had begun, the voices soft
Lifted you to trembling with joy
A grace became your whole house

You were moved, divided
And put together again
Your soul kept crying raining joy
It was delight you knew, that you had
Forgotten, long since you were a child

Joy that has no purposes but to live
Observe, remark, joke to yourself
These were your foundations returned
Your memory wrapped everything
In a calm embrace, like branches and stones

You were a part of this all, energy
Came from one place and was moved
Here or there, but the world you loved
Well, it would go on, it wasn’t so much
A worry of yours anymore, little by little

Love became the silent prayers
Of your steps, until you no longer
Could exist, would exist, no more
One day you finally recognized your purpose
It was then you kept company

With death in that strange surreal space
Between Summer and Autumn when
You saved yourself, you finally did just do that.