There in the dark
unseen
unheard
unknown
but for its effect
on the heart
Love resides

Its time has not
come
Its domain is that
of silence
Its force concealed
in stillness
Its untamed spirit
restless, rolls
over
and the mind awakes
to its presence
longing
to emerge

The Seven Spices
EZway Books, LLC

- Thomas “TAJ” Ainlay Jr. 16 months ago

I’d rather listen to your silence
than to the chatter of the world
I’d rather bathe in your smile
than in limbo be held.

So lets take a chance
and see where we land
I reach for you
just take my hand.

I’d rather hold your memory
next to my heart
than let the dream crumble
before we even start.

So lets take a chance
take all that I give
if the world ends tomorrow
I want to know that I lived.

If it doesn’t work out
we can learn to forget
far better that
than a life of regret.

So just take a chance
smile, laugh and say yes
let what time is before us
be by love blessed.

Perchance to Dream
Collected Poems
Blurb Inc.

- Paul Hensman 16 months ago

“It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living.
I want to know what you ache for
and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing.

It doesn’t interest me how old you are.
I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool
for love
for your dream
for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn’t interest me what planets are squaring your moon…
I want to know if you have touched the centre of your own sorrow
if you have been opened by life’s betrayals
or have become shrivelled and closed
from fear of further pain.

I want to know if you can sit with pain
mine or your own
without moving to hide it
or fade it
or fix it.

I want to know if you can be with joy
mine or your own
if you can dance with wildness
and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes
without cautioning us
to be careful
to be realistic
to remember the limitations of being human.

It doesn’t interest me if the story you are telling me
is true.
I want to know if you can
disappoint another
to be true to yourself.
If you can bear the accusation of betrayal
and not betray your own soul.
If you can be faithless
and therefore trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see Beauty
even when it is not pretty
every day.
And if you can source your own life
from its presence.

I want to know if you can live with failure
yours and mine
and still stand at the edge of the lake
and shout to the silver of the full moon,
“Yes.”

It doesn’t interest me
to know where you live or how much money you have.
I want to know if you can get up
after the night of grief and despair
weary and bruised to the bone
and do what needs to be done
to feed the children.

It doesn’t interest me who you know
or how you came to be here.
I want to know if you will stand
in the centre of the fire
with me
and not shrink back.

It doesn’t interest me where or what or with whom
you have studied.
I want to know what sustains you
from the inside
when all else falls away.

I want to know if you can be alone
with yourself
and if you truly like the company you keep
in the empty moments.”

- Oriah Mountain Dreamer 18 months ago

Between two seas the sea-bird’s wing makes halt
Wind-weary; while with lifting head he waits
For what may come of glory thro’ the gates
That open still toward sunrise on the vault
High-domed of morning, & in flight’s default
With spreading sense of spirit anticipates
What new sea now may lure beyond the straits
His wings exulting that her winds exalt
And fill them full as sails to seaward spread
Fulfilled with fair speed’s promise. Pass, my song,
Forth to the heaven of thy desire & dread,
The presence of our lord, long loved & long
Far off above beholden, who to thee
Was as light kindling all a windy sea.

~Algernon Charles Swinburne 19 months ago

Psalms 139:12

Like trailing silks, the light
Hangs in the olive trees
As the pale wine of day
Drains to its very lees:
Huge presences of gray
Rise up, and then it’s night.

Distantly lights go on.
Scattered like fallen sparks
Bedded in peat, they seem
Set in the plushest darks
Until a timid gleam
Of matins turns them wan,

Like the elderly and frail
Who’ve lasted through the night,
Cold brows and silent lips,
For whom the rising light
Entails their own eclipse,
Brightening as they fail.

~Anthony Hecht 19 months ago

In far Attu
The south-bound cariolis wind
Still stirs its love,
Propels each wave anew
Majestically and grand
Across the curving
Bird-specked, fog-drenched globe
In growing sensuous passion
Through days and nights
To bear them on our coast
In cadence slow
Where now they pass in measured repetition
The portal of times dread gate—
Above the foam the sea birds fly,
Gray and blue the sun-flecked sky
And here where first I held my lover by the hand
The sea and wind that once in violent passion joined
As soundless bubbles on the sand
In iridescence
End

-R.E. MacDonald
Best Poems of 1996

The National Library of Poetry19 months ago

Thin are the night-skirts left behind
By daybreak hours that onward creep,
And thin, alas! the shred of sleep
That wavers with the spirit’s wind:
But in half-dreams that shift and roll
And still remember and forget,
My soul this hour has drawn your soul
A little nearer yet.

Our lives, most dear, are never near,
Our thoughts are never far apart,
Though all that draws us heart to heart
Seems fainter now and now more clear.
To-night Love claims his full control,
And with desire and with regret
My soul this hour has drawn your soul
A little nearer yet.

Is there a home where heavy earth
Melts to bright air that breathes no pain,
Where water leaves no thirst again
And springing fire is Love’s new birth?
If faith long bound to one true goal
May there at length its hope beget,
My soul that hour shall draw your soul
For ever nearer yet.

~Dante Gabriel Rossetti 19 months ago

You are made of almost nothing
But of enough
To be great eyes
And diaphanous double vans;
To be ceaseless movement,
Unending hunger
Grappling love.

Link between water and air,
Earth repels you.
Light touches you only to shift into iridescence
Upon your body and wings.

Twice-born, predator,
You split into the heat.
Swift beyond calculation or capture
You dart into the shadow
Which consumes you.

You rocket into the day.
But at last, when the wind flattens the grasses,
For you, the design and purpose stop.

And you fall
With the other husks of summer.

~Louise Bogan 19 months ago

“One of those dreams: you struggle and fail
for years
to dial a number, read a page, remember
not to look back…

(her hand confused in mine, soft struggle of a bird)

I’ve drunk so much
it rises in me: something like soft roots
parts softly
and my head sweeps down the singing river singing…”

- James Richardson
By the Numbers20 months ago

“They flee from me that sometime did me seek
With naked foot, stalking in my chamber.
I have seen them gentle, tame, and meek,
That now are wild and do not remember
That sometime they put themself in danger
To take bread at my hand; and now they range,
Busily seeking with a continual change.

Thanked be fortune it hath been otherwise
Twenty times better; but once in special,
In thin array after a pleasant guise,
When her loose gown from her shoulders did fall,
And she me caught in her arms long and small;
Therewithall sweetly did me kiss
And softly said, ‘dear heart, how like you this?’

It was no dream: I lay broad waking.
But all is turned thorough my gentleness
Into a strange fashion of forsaking;
And I have leave to go of her goodness,
And she also, to use newfangleness.
But since that I so kindly am served
I would fain know what she hath deserved.”

- Sir Thomas Wyatt 20 months ago

“Never and never again, song says,
love or pain like ours.
How vast a night one firefly
easily overpowers.

- James Richardson
By the Numbers20 months ago

“INTO my heart on air that kills

From yon far country blows:

What are those blue remembered hills,

What spires, what farms are those?

That is the land of lost content,

I see it shining plain,

The happy highways where I went

And cannot come again.”

- A.E. Housman
from A Shropshire Lad (1896) 20 months ago

“The wind blows-nothing mostly-
blows its blowing
happy to have what happens to be free
go where it’s going.”

- James Richardson
By the Numbers20 months ago