I remember a dream
of sunlight melting
into twilight shadows
at the hacienda door
Then, the sudden strum
of guitars,
the whirl and swirl
of fanciful dance,
a rhythmic drumming
clip of heels on stone,
high light laughter
and flash of white teeth
a-gleam as stars floated down
And I remember awakening
to a slow, hazy shimmer
of rainbow dawn
and the misting, fading pulse
of a strange and wonder-filled dream
Fragrance and color
Enchanting through the day
Each hour
Of roses, roses
With the unlikely names
Of sterling silver
And Eiffel tower.
Arnheim, a perfect reality
A fairy-train that moved us
Beyond mountains
And sleeping hurricanes
And memory takes us backward
On the path to our last wild mountains
And sleeping hurricanes.
He fled
The bounds mundane of Earth
To follow lustrous stars
October nights
Strange and wild
And roamed in Arnheim
It’s always hard to
Say farewell
Especially to one who’s
Done so well
A president par excellance
Is our own
Who’s done so much
Far more than this pen
Could tell
Someday
Oh, someday
On that wonderful
Dreamed-of someday
The children of the world
Who now
Hunger and cry against the cold
Will know the feasting board
The warm hearth’s glow
The whole world needs Christmas
O, little dove, have you flown so far
You’ve lost the way in your lonely flight
Can you now wing back to that Star
Leaving behind the sullen night?
There is a wide and hopeless land
Bright though it be, beneath the sun
Dry and hot lies the lifeless sand
Waiting the return of the sweet, kind One
To bring the joy it sorely needs:
Christmas joy. O, little dove
With branch of olive and hope-sown seeds,
At last flower the desert with peace and love
The tree flamed
a lone amber flower
on a silent plain
The mind stirred
there fell the sound
of golden rain
And I am filled
with wonder now:
how that amber power
the silent tree
on the lonely plain
sang golden fire
rang golden rain
Palest to cold orange
Stares through
Autumn cloak
A relentless eye
Unwinking.
A poet is born, not made
Yet the poet must be made
Once born
The leaven and the kneading
And the slow rising
And the heat, the pain
Of the hot, hot stove
Before the hunger-ease—
The sharing—
The time of feasting
When piece by piece
The bread from the heart
Is torn