The morning, the day,
these times we live in
have their price,
their pain and glory.
Suffer what you must.
Resist the little lies.
The catastrophes
of arrogance
come and go
yet somehow
we survive,
the gates of eden
ready to open
awaiting only
one kind word.

I reach into the dark for these few words,
humble before the memory
of what we were given.
Now as the leaves of summer
stir in the morning breeze
I recall the soft wet earth
and the rising we once knew.
Hummingbirds green and gold appear,
tracks of deer cross the commons,
in the deep folds of the creek
the sound of insects and young life.
Something will come from the buried ash,
a new birth under clearing skies.
I leave the old garden and take wing
with the bright colored birds,
the gifts and the time of their giving
recorded and left in the ground
to feed what is yet to be born.

photograph by Louis MacKenzie

Let the morning come
in unveiled glory,
let darkness speak
and tell of mystery.
Let the day be what it will
as legions of despair
find home in their beliefs
while the river of life
pours on through deserts,
through rock-lined cliffs
and featureless prairies,
through land without end
until pouring through every heart
with the force of the eternal.
The day, the darkness,
despair and the great river,
all come on the tide of morning
with the unblemished faith
of a newborn.

One day
the peace of the earth
will fill my body.
I will know the river,
the roaring of the sea
and a calm green glade
where ferns wave softly
beneath towering cedars.
I will be the earth
and all her inheritance
from aeons past
through dim lit future
yet with gentle rain
falling in the valley
she tells me sweetly
that one day is now.

Surrendered to the morning,
the coming day and pressure to do,
I leave the night, the darkness
that wraps me in its blanket
teaching the art of dreams.
To love the light, the soft touch
of spring rain on open leaf
is to join the green world
and all that’s rising, yet
part of me remains in root,
following water down
through dark hollows
and coarse layers of stone
to the unerring food of silence.

photograph by Willard Walch

We can’t catch the dawn
or chase night to its safe retreat.
We face an incoming army,
troops of words like soldiers
marching across the once green land,
the music of poetry driven underground.
Their forces move in lock-step
as we withdraw into darkness
with stories of ancient times,
leaving behind the dry dust of logic,
a wasteland of abandoned dreams.
Who will remember the fires at midnight,
the heroics of song and verse?
We join with stone in the birthplace of water,
awaiting the earthquake of color
upon whose shattering tide
we will one day rise.

photograph by Jim Frid

When morning comes
light will change our dreams,
the thoughts, the images
of the self we’ve known
and free us to the open sky.
Every fingered bead
and candle lit
leads us to that moment.
The hour and the day
or who will be there
no one knows,
yet it will come
sure as sunrise,
written upon the morning.

When the light darkens
the path twists,
becomes more difficult.
What will rise must have root,
the grace of a flower.
Let the earth be your ally
and the patience of stone
flow through you like a river.

photograph by Louis MacKenzie

The night so long
it seemed the darkness
would never fade,
the light on the roses
and soft glow of the trees
only a memory.
When I awoke
I went to the window
and looked out to see
pink and white blossoms,
rain drops like luminescent bells
hanging from the dark cherry wood.

Born to wonder,
our original memory
a secret code
of symbols and runes
letting darkness nurture,
dreams become talisman.
Emissaries of an ancient light,
born from the mother
on a rushing tide
of blood and water,
we find ourselves
naked and shivering
on an unknown shore.
We learn the stories,
speak the language
until one day the body
within the body
emerges from its chrysalis.
Stones rise, seas lift,
the veil of mystery rents
and the silence of the ages
opens once more
to the one who walks within.

photograph by Eilish Hynes