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Phantom
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| Last night when the moon was free |
| I sent a breeze as messenger |
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to brush a kiss across your lips.
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Did you turn your head alert
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when it ruffled up your hair
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so like my fingers, light as air?
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Did you close your eyes to sleep
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And hear the rustle of the leaves?
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It was my echo whispering
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my heart, my soul, belong to you,
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and always when the moon hangs low,
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should you but pause and wish for me
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you will feel my presence near,
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lingering in every shadow
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neath the pale moonglow of night.
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Last night when the moon was free
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I sent a breeze as messanger
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to brush a kiss across your lips
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The Endless Circle
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There is so little difference
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between the very old
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and very young...
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they think so much alike.
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Only the in-betweens are trapped
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by synthetic inventions of esteem,
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who pour their lives into fragile molds
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of society, quite thinly wrapped
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in tissue paper security.
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But children turn to the aged ones
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with mist of living in their eyes,
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who know the comfrot of walking
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hand in hand on stormy days,
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to the hill's high crest, where together
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they can almost touch a rainbow
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above their heads...a secret place
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where they can laugh
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and loiter, and listen
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to the whispering grass.
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There is so little difference
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between the very old
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and the very young...
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they think so much alike.
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| In 1975 The Endless Circle was included in a report to United States President Gerald Ford submitted by the National Retired Teachers Association. |
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Witchcraft
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The city street was lonely, drab and bleak,
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the sky, a bitter shade of sorrowful gray
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above belching chimneys, where March played
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hide-and-seek
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with Winter, snow flurries, mixed with gusty spray
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of rain, dimmed the hope of spring in every heart
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that throbbed beneath a coat turned against the blast.
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I rounded a corner, and there found a peddler's cart
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tended by a gnarled old woman who masked
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her ragged hair, her pointed cap, with a shawl
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pulled tight; disguised her eyes with a toothless
grin
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as she took a small broom to whisk snow from her stall
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of flowers. Deliberately she selected a thin
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stemmed narcissus and held it so...before my eyes
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while I stood enchanted by white fragrence,
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lilac moods,
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apple blossom memories, daffodil surprise,
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and lily-of-the-valley interludes.
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A thousand years ago this sorceress
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would be condemned to burn upon the stake...
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now folk buy her charms to leaven somberness
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and go whistling down the street as dreams awake.
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