SOUL RECYCLED II

                    Should I believe my essence shall persist
                    When my live body will no more exist,
                    And may decide to take another turn
                    At life, perhaps for credits it may earn
                    In that dim realm we call Eternity,
                    A place of everlasting constancy?
                    For here on Earth there’s always flux and change,
                    And here, at least, we have a chance to grow
                    Through what our varied ventures may bestow.
                    So yes, I shall believe that my life now
                    Is one of many the Cosmos will allow
                    Until at last I’ve truly figured out
                    The meaning of it all beyond a doubt.

*

MIND MATTERS REDUX

                    That out of matter mind arose can’t be;
                     Rather, the opposite’s reality:
                     For mind came first, devising what emerged,
                     Appearing as our Cosmic Maker urged.

*

A-MUSING 

 I’m on the
Divine Line
 Waiting for the
  Muse News,
 Just getting
  Vatic Static 
...

*

EACH MORN

                  Our “nutties,” a.k.a. our backyard squirrels,
                  Await me every morn when I cast out
                  Their dole of peanuts, while our canine girls
                  Chase after them, putting them all to rout.

                  That ruckus done, they come back in for treats
                  Of Greenie nubs, then I sit down to write
                  While counting out my lines in iamb beats
                  In hope of finding pleasure and insight.

                  I never know where any poem will go
                  And what delight I’m likely to discover
                  As I compose my lines row after row,
                  Each rhyme word seeking for its phonic brother.

                       Most typically, as now, a sonnet comes,
                       Which sometimes sings or merely, as here, hums.

*

       YET TO BE                   

                    Retirement’s not a time simply to rest,
                    But to wake up to possibilities
                    As yet not realized because the best
                    Is yet to be, with joyful days to seize.

                    It bodes more time to read and think and write,
                    To exercise my creativity
                    And find more ways to cultivate delight,
                    Letting things in me latent come to be.

                   And now, my record of experience
                   Gives me a bank of memories to recount
                   And mysteries out of which I may make sense
                   Then even drink, I hope of wisdom’s fount.

                        For what’s our end if not to realize
                        Our Homo sapience by growing wise?

*

THE WAY: A HOMILY

                    There is a way of being to pursue,
                    Along which the best treasures you’ll accrue,
                    Though not the kind you’ll lock up in a bank,
                    But something of a spiritual rank,
                    Your motive not to be acquisitive,
                    But minded, rather, generously to give:
                    Thus, for your goodness, you may well believe
                    That as you give, so then shall you receive.

 

*

POETRY AS SONG

                    A poem’s most enchanting when it’s sung,
                    A function of the mind, the heart, the lung—
                    That’s if it’s of the rhyme-and-meter kind,
                    Whereas free verse is simply for the mind,
                    The element of music being stripped
                    By which one’s subtler feelings may be gripped,
                    But still these phonic features aren’t enough
                    Unless the subject matter is the stuff
                    Of vivid imagery, not merely thought,
                    The auditor amused instead of taught.
                    Blank verse is better than the free verse kind
                    If one’s talent is not that way inclined,
                    But still, both rhyme and meter are the best,
                    Displaying wit, resourcefulness and zest.

 

*

TEGAN

                  Tegan, Tiggy, Tig or Tigaletto—
                  This well-bred pup’s not from a slum or ghetto;
                  No, she’s a Mi-Ki and no Mickey Mouse
                  And knows that she’s  the mistress of our house,
                  Except perhaps for Gypsy, who’s her elder
                  And in our home has been the longer dweller
                  But Tig has even Gyp wrapped round her paw,
                  Just as she holds the rest of us in awe,
                  Her winsome frolicings being so beguiling
                  She leaves enchanted onlookers all smiling—
                  Not so her puppy playmates who get whupped:
                  She’s such a fierce contender, they’re out-pupped.
                       Worn out from all her frolics and in bed,
                       Between our heads she lays her drowsy head.

*

EPHEMERAL

                    My dreams fly off in tatters when I wake,
                    Reality then sweeping out what’s fake:
                    The daylight world’s no place for fantasy,
                    Not airy dreams, but hard reality.
                    Yet shortly after dawn, I may still glimpse
                    Some vestiges of dreams that give me hints
                    Of something I might turn to poetry
                   That out of airy nothing comes to be.
                   The Yin of night and Yang of day conspire
                   To gratify this poet’s fond desire
                   To exercise godly creative power
                   And make an artifact within an hour
                   That may endure until eternity—
                   And one of those I pray that this may be.

*

BOTANICAL ANOMALY







*

A HIGHER LAW

                   Being governed not by rules but by good sense
                   Reveals superior intelligence:
                   Rules are no more than children’s training wheels,
                   Used till one gains a centeredness that feels
                   Well-balanced, confident, dependable.

                   A higher law is what at last prevails
                   Beneath which any human statute pales:
                   That law, of course, is Love, by which we find
                   That our foremost mandate is to be kind.

*

RHYME & METER

                    To write like this, bound in by sturdy traces,
                    May lead at times to unexpected places
                    As if afflated by supernal Graces—
                    Until that inspiration ends in stasis.

*

THE FAMOUS POET READS

                    Throughout the dim-lit auditorium
                     In which the famous poet reads his work,
                     You’ll see a dim-lit glow of something dumb
                     Provoking on my face a rueful smirk:

                     A little sea of cell phones is the source
                     Of this mysterious, eerie radiance
                     Which nowadays we must expect perforce—
                     Against such rudeness there is no defense.

                     What must the poet think as he looks out
                     Upon his reverent, heads-down auditors,
                     Assuming that their thoughts are all about
                     The eloquence and wit that from him pours?

                          But such is the obtuseness of our world,
                          Oblivious when even pearls are hurled.

*

SMILE!







*

O, MUSE

                    I've never formally invoked my Muse,
                    But, rather, she’ll just whisper in my brain,
                    Suggesting some idea I might use
                    Or novel notion I might entertain,

                    Then once my train of thought is on its track
                    And steaming down the line toward vistas new,
                    I feel the billows blowing from my stack
                    As widening visions roll into my view.

                   Now, past the midpoint of my destined course,
                   I try to apprehend where I shall end,
                   Soliciting assistance from the Source
                   On whose most bounteous blessings I depend.

                        A couplet’s now what I’ll ask her to send,
                        Since that is how a sonnet ought to end.

*

ABOVE ALL

                    Love and affection are the highest kind
                    Of feelings for which humans are designed:
                    To treat another with humanity
                    Means demonstrating our true sanity;
                    Behaving otherwise means we are cursed
                    Descendants of that ancient fabled first
                    Two of our kind, who lost us Paradise
                    Because they let a wicked snake entice
                    Them into disobedience to God,
                    Who’d raised them to humanity from sod.
                    The best we can do now as recompense
                    Is to live lovingly and grow less dense,
                    Illumined as if by the sun above—
                    By the transcendent principle of Love.

*

 GONE AT DAWN

for Betsy

                    My dreams fly off in tatters once I wake—
                    What had been so engaging moments past
                    As soon as my eyes flutter will forsake
                    My memory: that vividness won’t last.

                    Though others can recall in great detail
                    Adventures they’ve pursued throughout the night,
                    My hopeful efforts are of no avail
                    And what was splendid fades in morning’s light.

                    The best that I can do is sit right here
                     In readiness to write and hope somehow
                     That what I dreamed about may reappear
                     To manifest in poetry right now.

                          That isn’t quite what happened, as it seems,
                          And so I write on not remembering dreams.

*

CARPE DIEM

                    The aptest attitude one might assume
                     Is wonder and amazement towards life;
                     Although inevitably it ends in doom,
                     Its modes of growth and happiness are rife.

                     Our challenge here’s to fully realize
                     The host of human possibilities,
                      Especially our sapience, growing wise,
                      While letting no days pass we do not seize.

                     My daily way to celebrate this gift
                     Is to turn out, as I do here, a verse
                     With an ardent intention to uplift
                    The hearts and minds of readers and reverse

                         The fabled curse once cast upon our race
                         By demonstrating wit and style and grace.

*

INSUBSTANTIAL PAGEANTS

                    When I am fast asleep, the curtain rises
                    On scenes my ever-active mind devises
                    In the unceasing theatre of my mind
                    Presenting spectacles of every kind.

                    Yet what a waste of my creative powers,
                    Laboring intensively for many hours,
                    That once I wake, these visions disappear—
                     What seemed so palpable, no longer here.

*

SALVATION

                   The soul, the spirit animus that gives
                   Vitality to everything that lives,
                   Remains for all the ultimate mystery
                   Perplexing us throughout our history.
                   But what we wonder most is whether it
                   Continues in some realm where angels sit,
                   A spiritual zone beyond this habitat
                   Transcending all that’s sensory and that
                   At best imagination might conceive,
                   Though none of our five senses may perceive.
                   So I’ll imagine now, as many have
                   Before, what to our terrors may bring salve:
                   Salvation does indeed await our souls,
                   And seeking that’s the highest of our goals.

*

SUN’S UP

                      It’s time to toss this torpor off and rise
                      To new vitality—the day awaits:
                      There’re waking dreams I’ve yet to realize
                      That only daylight consciousness creates.

                       It’s only when I sit like this and sip
                       My morning brew and chew my pen cap that
                       My mind can travel off to Serendip
                       And hoist a magic rabbit from my hat.

                        It’s true a verse is drafted line by line,
                        And yet that labor’s guided by the Muse
                        For more than human effort but divine
                        Is called for or my torpid brain will snooze.

                             You may will think my Muse failed to appear,
                             Or I should undertake a new career.

*

HILL &  BILL

                    Bombastic, megalomaniac buffoons
                    (And there is one I’m just now thinking of)
                    Belong not in the real world but cartoons,
                    Objects of scorn and ridicule, not love.

                    And yet, there’s Donald Trump on his high horse
                    With billions to invest in a big win,
                    Whose victory would prompt buyer’s remorse
                    And pleas to do the whole process again.

                    However, we have finally this best shot
                    To vote for our first female President,
                    A long-time politician who is not
                    A wild card or a weird experiment.

                        And if you liked her husband, you’ll have Bill
                        Again, although this time nose-ringed by Hill.

*

SHIELDS AND BROOKS

  
                    There’s Mark and David on the Friday news
                     Prepared to give the week’s wrap-up reviews
                     As Judy prompts them from one topic to
                     Another to reveal what they pursue:
                     The motives and the circumstances of
                     What needs a clearer look from up above,
                     From the perspective of well-seasoned minds
                     Revealing what clear-eyed discernment finds.
                     These gentlemen may sometimes disagree,
                      But count on them to do so civilly
                      And with good humor as they reason out
                      The best way to transcend or settle doubt.
                      May they continue long on PBS
                      Applauded by us fans for their success.

*

YIN/YANG







*

WHAT IS PROGRESS?

                    The universe seems programmed to produce
                    From its most elementary particles
                    More complex entities for higher use
                    While reaching ever higher pinnacles.

                    That we’re the highest yet, we may suppose
                    For lack of evidence of any higher,
                    But surely, out there, we have friends or foes,
                    A knowledge we’ll eventually acquire.

                   Meanwhile, how should we best prepare to meet
                   Such awesome aliens from outer space
                   Who, if they find us, will no doubt defeat
                   Us easily, unless we win their grace.

                       Our best defense must be to show we’ve grown
                       In peace and love—and come into our own.

*

 HUMAN POTENTIAL

 "We are beings of light, love, music and happiness."

                                                                            —Duane Elgin     
                    
                    We come with grand potentialities
                    That with good circumstance we’ll realize
                    Fulfilling our implicit destinies,
                    By which we Homo sapiens grow wise.

                    Unfortunately, because of many traps,
                    Distractions, and our own misguided choice
                    We prove instead of sapient simply saps,
                    No outcome at which angels will rejoice.

*

EX NIHILO

                      What is it needs exploring in this verse
                      That only rhyme and meter may disburse,
                      Some subject by meandering to be found
                      As if it were just lying on the ground
                      Just waiting for a passerby to see
                      Then cast into a new reality?

                      The very subject I’ve discovered now
                      By just such random circumstance is how
                      There seems to be implicit Providence
                      That out of randomness engenders sense.

*