Mark Scrivener

Poetry Poems Original Verse

Monday, December 21, 2015

DOUBLE RED HIBISCUS

DOUBLE RED HIBISCUS

Such red
like energy,
ablaze against green leaves and grass.

Such red
like radiance
of sun that touches westward skyline.

Such red-
a bursting out
from bud transforming to a final splendour.

True, its allure
is for winged pollen-spreaders...

and yet that I admire
this form like life's own fire
is some part of reality-

the gift of beauty that I see.











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Sunday, December 20, 2015

TREE IN THE WIND

TREE IN THE WIND

Against a swept, blue sky a flooded gum
Holds leafy branches to the morning wind,
And whispers, rustling in the breeze-fresh run,
The minute music that air's whirling spins.
There bright, alive in light, its many leaves
All shimmer in sun's white and winter blaze;
And billow, as the breath of heaven breathes,
In changing swirls of gleaming, leafy glaze.
How well it would be growing as a tree,
In time's unfolding from firm being's seed,
To stand in yielding power, firm but free,
Yet grounded in the good and knowing deed-
A tree of life that time's calm living weaves,
With strong and branching years and days as leaves.


Tuesday, December 15, 2015

THREE KINGS (STAR OF BETHLEHEM)

THREE KINGS

The heavens set the times
of human destiny-
for those who find the key.
And well we know that he
was to be born once more,
west of his mountain majesty.

The signs were set
and his soul's star
was beckoning
and many days we travelled from afar;
on many ways
we came and Herod questioned us,
but at last
we found the blessed, new child,
to later be anointed by
the spirit of divinity,
and gave our gifts,
our recognition.

Gold-
the wisdom that true thought
finds in the wide world's being.

Frankincense-
true feeling's power
that gives the soul true seeing.

Myrrh-
the spirit-willing aim
flowing from the might of worlds,
the sacrifice and greater destiny.

Know,
that from this turning of your time
without the soul's three kings you are
not on the path to find

the guiding star.

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Thursday, December 10, 2015

GALAXY

                                      
                                             GALAXY

billions and billions” – commonly but wrongly attributed to Carl Sagan


The artificial light has faded from
The cardboard skyline. Now pale points of light
Are dimpling the dark-domed planetarium.
We sit within a semblance of the night.
Our stellar host elucidates and wields
A cosmic arrow on the turning sky
And shows the hazy band that spans star fields.
Quite casually the numbers pass us by:
Six hundred thousand million stars. And each
A sun. Is this beyond all feeling's reach?

And I remember frost-clear nights when darkness
Was palpable upon wide upper spaces.
And there, upon the real, star-dotted vastness,
I saw the galaxy's white, milky traces
Arched overhead from earth rim to earth rim.
And gazing upwards in receptive quiet,
It seemed quite possible to gain a dim,
Grand apprehension of the depth of night.
But some perception of this arcane glory
Depends, perhaps, on how you spin the story.


For it's not hard to find a facile phrase
On "distances beyond imagination".
And it's not hard to talk in expert ways
Of light-years and of galaxies' creation.
Soon clichés drown a living comprehension
And dull immediate, informing sight;
Until you steer a telescope's attention
Upon the milky way's sky-spanning light;
Resolving it to far suns, each a spark,
Like gleaming sand grains, scattered on the dark,

And see the vast and glowing clouds of gas
And clusters with such myriad of stars
Each centre merges to a misty mass;
And know these things are not just some ideas
But of our cosmos, real as all on earth,
As real as stones and trees, as clouds and flowers...
More real by far than fame and honour's worth,
And schemings of the wrongly-named "World Powers".
What power is power compared to all of these
Worlds without end on space-time's chartless seas?

Worlds without end: how shall we feel this speaking?
We dwarfs who measure time by hours and days?
How can we sense our sun's great helix sweeping
On through those time-deep, wonder-vast star ways?
How at five hundred thousand miles an hour
To circle this, our single galaxy,
Will take two hundred million years. O how
Shall we touch truth of such immensity?
Great empires are but a minute here,
Within the passing of this cosmic year.

Men dream mad dreams of power, war and kill
For rule so brief on one small globe, believing
That this imparts some majesty to will,
When all that's ever left is waste and grieving.
And even murder for some mere conception,
When it is manifest in all the height
That there is much beyond earth-small perception,
The limits of our Lilliputian sight.
Beyond earth's edge goes the world far beyond the far;
No human craft can touch a single star.

And so when daylight's done and there outside
The night releases vision of the vastness,
And shows the pale and stellar stream stretched wide,
The pathway of the worlds across the darkness-
Then called to heart is sure belief that being
Has depths beyond our deepest, searching thought,
Has heights beyond our farthest, sharpest seeing,
And this, at least, is heart truth of one sort.
Six hundred thousand million stars; and each
A sun- it's not beyond all feeling's reach. 

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