Saturday, June 27, 2020

Rose at Nightfall


“God wants to know the divine goodness in us.” Thomas Merton

Red rose flames
in shade of day’s end.
Night sifts gently
through dark trees;

but the rose!
the rose yet blooms;

defies the fall
of night’s certain pall.

7/31/13

Tuesday, March 3, 2020

from "Memorial"


Brian Federle, born March 4, 1986

Spring  

Seven years after my father died
my first child, my son, was born in spring,
and in the gleaming, sterile room
I first held him in my arms
as, with his impossibly wide, blue eyes
he calmly gazed right into my raw soul,
and I felt in a sudden rush of warmth,
a timeless love
and at last discovered
the reason for my life.
It was then
I understood my father.
In my son’s face I saw my own
and felt my father’s eyes gazing
in warm wonder on me
and I glowed with
unconditional love for my son.

Wednesday, August 21, 2019

The One Thing



“Happiness consists in finding out precisely what the ‘one thing necessary’ may be, in our lives, and in gladly relinquishing all the rest. For then, by a divine paradox, we find that everything else is given us together with the one thing we needed.”  Thomas Merton

rain
falling
tenderly
on spring grass, on leaves
bending as two mourning doves moan,
beat wide their wings and brush back the sky, falling low to
dark earth. Gladly would I give it
all for a moment
in the glow
of your
eyes!




(9 April 2013)

Sunday, August 11, 2019

Poet to Reader


Deep inside my silence
words glow like burning stones
plunging to dark waters.

Share with me my holy fire!
With joyful shouts,
we’ll flood the hidden rivers.

But if you leave
I cease.

My words die
without your eyes,
molder to
faded stains.

So come into my heart
and sing with me
this mystic chant!

We’ll be madmen,
hunting diamonds in the dark.

Tuesday, August 6, 2019

The Connecticut Effect

devastating velocity,
blood thirsty, fresh death-
dealing NRA
lies fly super-
sonic flesh thud-
ing ragged rounds
slamming into
stunned souls,
dreams
die.


(26 Feb 2013)