Looking Forward

With my hand on the plow
I do not look back
but instead,
look forward
into the eyes
of Christ.

Time

The silver tarnishes.
The polished stone
goes grey.

Possessions
gather dust
and color fades
from memories
carefully built
over years
and across generations.

In the distance,
beyond the mountain,
the rain sparkles
in the sun.

I look
for a way
across.

A small child
reaches
for a rose.

Thornless,
red blends
with yellow.

Her exuberance
does not
kill its beauty.

I wrap it carefully,
the paper molding like clay
into a suitable container,
and, protected,

it grows.

The Poetry of Beauty

All around us is
the poetry
of beauty.

The age-old impassioned yearning
of humanity
for the timeless, unsurpassed achievement
of created exquisiteness,

in sound
or in art,

in poetry
or in form,

unfolds for us
that which is beyond ourselves.

As we hunger for this beauty--
this order--
spending hours with the paint brush
or the pen,

with the clay
or the computer,

we toss aside our weak attempts
and start again.

We search each stranger's face
for the perfect beauty
that we know exists

for even our imperfect minds
have conceived it.

Beauty will save the world.
~Theodore Dostoyevsky

Catching Up

I am running and running.
It is catching me,
the molasses monster--
making my brain
sticky and slow
and dis-functional.

What will happen to me?

Will I escape
at the last moment?

Will I find myself
able to breathe
underwater?

Is there anyone left
who knows

cpr?

To-do List

The words are gone,
faded away
in the impossibly hot glare
of the noonday sun.

All that is left
is the in and out
of daily breathing

that is the last thing

on my to-do list.

Present Continuous

mourning
grieving
bleeding
leaving

changing
growing
running

knowing

I move through the day
as through molasses--
sweet, sticky,
and slow.

I am a snail
in the summer
a listless sloth
among strong, sinewy saplings.

I live in a dream world
of subconsciousness.

Naked in public,
I walk uncertainly
into a strange classroom.

I have not studied
for the test.

I find myself
suddenly
in the middle of a road,
the blacktop
hot under my chest.

I pull myself along
at an agonizingly slow pace.

I am unable to crawl away
from the moving train.

The Great Impressionist
takes His brush in hand
and thickly lays on the paint
in neutral greys
and soothing whites,
in tender greens
and ruddy browns,
giving us peaceful respite
in the noonday sun .