MIDNIGHT AND THE MOON IS HIGH

MIDNIGHT AND THE MOON IS HIGH

Midnight and the moon is high,

Gibbous in the dark-blue sky,

Riding close to Scorpio,

Shining on the leaves below.

Frogs and crickets from long grasses

Sing for partners as night passes.

In the east the ghost clouds rise,

Billowing their moon-pale guise.

And the trees are dark and high

While a wallaby stands by

In a field that seems to shimmer

With a deep and hidden glimmer.

Autumn air imparts a sharpness.

Turning time closed summer darkness

That the nights of heat are lost

Faintly forecasts winter frost.

Still the earth seems all alive

With those secret lives that thrive

All apart from sun-proud day,

Living hidden and away-

Secret like the secret mind

Lying silent and behind,
Dreaming, nameless yet aware,

Working without thought-bright glare.

And the stars gleam in the darkness,

Voicing universal vastness,

Pointing light from secret sky...

Midnight and the moon is high.

DECEMBER RAIN

DECEMBER RAIN

A dimness from great greyness

Lies in the rooms inside,

The blue-gray veil of showers

Sweeps over distances

With paleness far and wide

On hills and skylines now.

No summer sun is seen

Upon cloud-curtained sky.

High benefice of green,

The gift now given after

The long and shrinking dry

That cracked the hopeful earth

And turned the leaves to thirst,

Is smell of rain on breezes

And pattering on roofs.

The gift now given after

The longing for sky moisture

Is all this world now under

A cold wind in the summer.

I make no moral triteness

Upon this change of weather,

The bringing of sky water

For stem and root and flower,

And yet I can perceive

That after dryness now

The raindrop jewels on leaves

That catch white fire from cloud sky

Are surely like true beauty;

And drumming on the roof

Is beautiful like truth.

THIS NIGHT ON OUR DOMESTIC SCREEN

THIS NIGHT ON OUR DOMESTIC SCREEN

This night on our domestic screen

a simulacrum of a man

sheds withered, drifting words upon

politic policy. They seem

like drying leaves on desert wind.

For years I have been exiled from

prosperity or even pay.

And faith grows thin.

I step outside. The air

is clear and cool in summer darkness.

Here, far from urban glare,

galactic opalescence sheens

the scattered silver of the stars.

Our minds make maps. See over there

are five, bright stars... how hard it is to see

those five, bright suns and not the mental bars

we call the southern cross.

The constellations have real stars but not

the arbitrary lines of mind's convenient gestalt.

And nations have real people not

percentages and abstract, common aims.

Dry words from dry souls hungering for fame,

these are
less real than lines from star to star.