ZONED OUT

                    While musing, I drift in a twilight zone—
                    I’m cocked back in my chair, pad on my lap,
                    As if I’m waiting for a cosmic phone
                    To ring and wake me from my hapless nap
                    With some inspiring message, setting me
                    Along a course in an iambic trot
                    Toward an undetermined destiny,
                    Such as my Muse may generously allot.

                    It’s clear by now, however, that this verse
                    Is not the one that I was hoping for
                    Because there’s hardly any poem that’s worse
                    Than one that talks about itself or
                    Wastes its reader’s time with folderol
                    Like this.  I clearly missed that cosmic call.

*

 ANAPESTIFEROUS

                Outside now it’s noisy and humid and hot
                But here in the AC it’s certainly not,
                So, girls, let’s just wait for our evening walk
                And then like night critters you can wander and stalk
                And see eyes in the headlights and wonder who’s there,
                Though be sure it’s no panther or coyote or bear.
                 Just in case the dark falls before we get home,
                 We’ll take a light with us where ere we should roam,
                 But enough now of anapests galloping on
                 Whose fleet rhythms can make you so weary and wan
                 That you’ll likely be snoozing before I am done
                  In the vanishing light of the day’s setting sun.
                  Now this rollicking patter has near worn me out
                  And you too I am certain—I’ve nary a doubt.

*

ILLUMINATION

                      What have I in me yet to realize
                      Of my innate potentialities
                      To let incipient sapience grow wise
                      And manifest its possibilities?

                      It’s only by attending to my soul
                      As I do now in circumspect repose
                     That I may fuse my fragments in one whole
                      That will my true identity disclose

                      By proving me a Maker of repute,
                      Not merely a mundane verse-crafting hack,
                      But capable of poetry astute
                      And sonorous, a Muse-inspired knack.

                           A sonnet’s more than just a pretty room
                           And may at best one’s very soul illume.

*

 ENIGMA

 We human beings are a function and an expression of  intelligence implicit in the universe, which some have elected to personify as GOD, and others to designate impersonally as Good Orderly Direction, or sometimes SOURCE, which is the most profound enigma that we recognize: How have Homo sapiens come into being, both conscious and self-conscious?

* 

ARTISAN

                     I am foremost, I think, an artisan,
                     A maker in both words and images,
                     Whose business is to do the best I can
                     To add to all the beauty there now is,
                     In recompense for what has nourished me,
                     Hoping that with my work my skills will grow,
                    And thus it is each day religiously
                    I line out morning verses row by row,
                    And when I walk our dogs, my camera
                    Accompanies us, unholstered in a trice
                    To capture a true scene or a chimera,
                    A marvelous and felicitous device,
                    A means by which a poem that I’ve made
                     May be illustriously displayed.

*

SAGACITY

                  There’s being smart, and then there’s being wise,

                  A higher mental state to realize

                 When intellect and virtue are combined

                 To bring about the best of humankind:

                 Until we manifest such sapience,

                 Woe only shall be our experience,

                 Though growing great in our capacity

                 For prudent love will show sagacity.

*

 TOWARD WISDOM

                      The marvel and the wonder that we’re here,
                      Alive on Earth within this cosmic realm
                      Is sure, although our purpose is not clear,
                       Nor whether we’ve a captain at our helm.
                       But, obviously, our prime task’s to protect
                       Our precious habitat that fosters life,
                       So much in danger now of being wrecked
                       Because of our antagonistic strife.
                       Our childhood’s past, thus now to grow mature
                       Is our clear quest, and must not be delayed
                       For, short of that, our species can’t endure
                       Since there’s no one to hasten to our aid.
                            A Global Wisdom Culture must be born,
                            Or all posterity will be forlorn.

*

MIND REACH

                    This entity, this ego that is I —
                     Did it exist before my body’s birth,
                     And will it then continue when I die
                     In Heaven above, or back here on this Earth?
                     While ancient tales and scriptures proclaim Yes,
                     There is no scientific certainty,
                      And we are left to speculate and guess,
                      Perplexed forever by this quandary.
                      So, for my comfort, I’ll proceed as though
                      Once this life’s over, there’s another round
                      And then another, so my soul may grow
                      Eventually discovering where it’s bound.
                           My mission now is to explore and find
                           The furthest reaches of my fervid mind.

*

 WHENCE?

                    We’d been implicit in the universe
                    And now, some eons on, are manifest
                    Once it, at last, was ready to disburse
                    A creature with intelligence possessed
                   To represent in little its vast Mind,
                   The cosmic intellect that is our Source,
                   By which our world and species were designed,
                   Whose grand benevolence we should endorse.
                    Supposing otherwise, that randomness
                    Might fumble such a cosmos into being
                    Is absurd, for only Yahweh could possess
                    Intelligence so potent and far-seeing.
                         Good Orderly Direction is the cause
                         Of this unending Cosmos and its laws.

*

SELF-EVIDENT

                    “No evidence for God,” reports the news,
                     As if all This has come without a Source,
                     A wellspring whence the Universe ensues
                     To follow its prescribed implicit course.
                     “Ex nihilo” defies all common sense:
                     There surely can’t be something without cause;
                     Though we may lack the power to fathom whence,
                      We shall persist, though now it gives us pause.
                      Perhaps it is that God’s self-evident:
                      Good Orderly Direction is the way
                      The universe proceeds, the evidence
                      Of which is us, and we are here to say:
                            “Behold that something out of nothing rises
                             Just as the mind of God now realizes.”

*

VOCABULARIAN

                    “Abate, abash, abet, abstemious”
                     Began my word list from the seventh grade:
                     Ten words from which each week our syllabus
                     Required us to learn, and we obeyed.
                     Our teacher, Mr. Harlow, seemed so stern
                     And we all thought the task so burdensome,
                     Being quizzed each week on all we’d had to learn,
                     Oblivious to whom we could become
                     By virtue of such virtuosity—
                     In my case now, a poet and professor,
                     Endowed well with a rich vocabulary,
                     Useful as a scholar and a jester.
                          For even in light verse, to turn a phrase
                          With nimbleness and grace may earn one praise.

*

INSPIRATION

                    I take another sip of morning tea

                    While waiting for the Muse to visit me

                   As I sort through my memories and dreams

                   Until within my mind a notion gleams,

                   Which now I see: the Miracle of Being,

                   A glimpse of which is spiritually freeing. 

*

MAKING A POEM

                    Those potencies I’ve yet to realize,
                    Still deeply lodged within my mind and soul,
                    I aim, before I go, to exercise,
                    For being an artful maker is my goal.
                    Since I’ve been gifted with a verbal knack,
                    Then poetry’s a natural enterprise
                    Which I shall work at daily, never slack,
                    Discovering what lines I might devise,
                    For only when I sit to contemplate,
                    My writing pad poised ready on my lap,
                    May I expect my Muse to compensate
                    My pains to pen a poem for which you’ll clap.
                         If this one that you just now gaze upon
                          Is not that kind, I’ve more—so please read on.

*

HUMAN PROGRESS

What are the foremost goals for the  advancement, for the maturation of the human species?

Preeminent, I would say, is attaining sanity, health and wholesomeness: physically, mentally, and spiritually, according to our clearest understanding, and then exhibiting the best exemplars of each to emulate.

Instead of designating ourselves as flawed and fallen by nature (as in the Biblical tradition), we need to conceive of ourselves as works in progress, evolving toward fuller realizations of capacities and virtues inherent in our natures, exemplified by the likes of Moses, Jesus, Aristotle, Plato, Sappho, and others up to the present day.

*

ON BEING

                     The miracle, marvel and wonder of Being
                     Is something about which there's no disagreeing.

*

MIND II

                     I thank you, Lord, our Father in the sky,

                     That Mind we’ve chosen to personify,

                     Who brought all earthly creatures into being,

                     But whom we have no faculty for seeing.

                     Despite that misery and death abound,

                     Our cosmic consciousness can grow profound,

                     And at our best we happily may transcend

                     The fear of our anticipated end

                     By reckoning that mind shall never die

                     But is the Source on which we all rely,

                     Mysterious, but apprehensible,

                     The That of which the universe is full,

                     The omnipresent ground on which we stand

                     That some unfathomable force has planned.

*