A Walk Around Manukau

Stepping forward in this world but back in another,

Takes me farther from home, yet closer to mother.

Drinking the nectar of life going on: Sweeping

Me back to comprehend others.

`Round to the end of my journey's beginning

arriving to find it is gone, I'm admitting

I'm less and I'm more, more questions than answers.

Less logic more faith, perhaps that is fitting

I cannot return to the place I began, deterred

from old views, new vistas conferred.

I am what I am, though not what I thought.

Learned from the ancestors my walking inferred

Truth to be told I'm just more aware

The sum of it all, an internalized prayer

©2004Isaacson

Migrations

Wild geese are flying overhead unseen

Just as the dead who leave their bodies lying

Who are the souls of radiance migrating

In lines by wings bear up their winter sins

Crossroad of meridians their goal

Beneath a star that never loses place

Where summer is the solar of Christ's face -

Their aim - beloved and ever-destined pole

Now like the souls the spring-migrating geese

Call above the houses, rough in clarity,

Their soundings clear in unison's disparity -

Far overhead and far until their voices cease

Let those who wish pray mercy for the dead

But still remember wild geese overhead

                 March 2, 2004

Spring Pond

How odd, how strange

The spring frogs

Are the northern bellbirds

Their cries above

The spring pond ringing

Sound like bells

Bells invisible

And yet they ring

And yet they ring

The silver sight

The sound in flight

Unseen delight

Here and there

The bells appear

No telling where

Ancient bells

Of northern spring

The spring pond ringing

                   March 7, 2004

Pavel Chichikov's Spring

Flat House

A doorway on its side: unsinned amens

Peeping mirrors, many voices sing:

Never need for Lent, we have not fallen,

We are the shrill inhabitants of spring

Breathing through our skins, our bulging eyes,

Slimy legs that formerly were fins,

Ceiling ever lower till it dries,

World enough because we have no sins

Merry house we have, a loud uproar

Where only metamorphosis is new

Water walls and shapeless is the door

And all the footloose clouds come walking through

   March 6, 2004

The Heron

I see the heron sentinel gray

Great eye fixed on me at close of day;

His black and steady eye on me.

Sleek his head, long his neck and sinuous,

So still, still as time, he stands and waits

Regarding me at close of day.

In growing shadow red flames his eye

Against dying light in Western sky,

And black his steady gaze at me.

Then off from settling shore he seeks.

See, up on mighty wings he beats

Looking back at me at close of day.

Straight East toward densest black he flies.

Ever east beyond the flowing skies

The heron that had gazed at me

Until on shores of night's dark lake

So still, still as time, he stands and waits

To pierce the sun and bring light back to me.

Peter Gallaher

March 2, 2004