Beauty

  Bounty When apples hang untouched on branches’ bottom, Or beans lie grounded, neither grown nor dead, Or bulbs down-nestle into earth of autumn, Then let them lie! Don’t hurry them...

  The Persecution of Falun Gong I. Meditating group One clear crisp day at Shanghai In earth’s sunny loop II. What is Zhen-Shan-Ren? Truth-Compassion-Forbearance Refiner of men III. Police arrive...

It spreads like wildfire when you give a smile. At first you won’t really notice at all, But if you wait patiently for a small while, You’ll notice that each domino will fall. In the smile you see...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBmdmFCtTNU   Near the End of Don Giovanni The terror starts with the entrancing entrance of Commendatore's shattering note in the brass one long, diminished...

Beyond the skies is universal eternity. Nebulous ghosts of dust float around In the black hole of space. A night profound As death itself, as life in its old infancy, Contains a trillion grains of stars...

Revised October 18, 2021 A Psalm of Christmas What the heart of the young activist said to the psalmist by Evan Mantyk Tell me not in boring numbers ___About today’s economy, For our consciences grow...

In darkness, in the mantling of the night, When Earth is calm, and troubling noises cease, I turn with wonder-looking eyes, to please My dulled senses, from the day’s untranquil sight: And first gaze...

Here is a blonde-marked maple tree: Stands by the road so stolidly While mourners make their floral shrines And in the night a taper shines; But soon the taper will burn out And yet the tree will remain...

Whether if my promise be known or not, Of which I spoke when lying on this spot, The weeds have covered up my trail; Their stalks show not the seat that I once made, But mounds still show the meadows where...

Those Catskill Mountain Climbs I've walked from Ayers rock to Sydney I've seen all those majestic sites I've beheld the peaks of Mt. McKinley And of Everest in all its might I’ve seen the meandering...

A Sonnet Saluting Lady Snow Snow is a rainfall in frozen repose; Rainbow rich in hues, delicate its shape After lightning strikes; its thunder echoes. There is still tension in each crystal...

A godly painting held over their heads As they process through a street in Florence, Each face is free from manic glee or dread And transcends with a tranquil tolerance; They are transformed by the art’s...

Where lightness finds the passage through the dark the thoroughfare of dimness, where we’ll soar about the sun undone, unborn again, but one─divine the spark! The wicket door unfastens where the...

—a sonnet of differing with Keats Behold this naked truth, and say not Beauty: a body splayed, nailed cruelly to a tree, spit upon, a jeering crowd, a crown of thorns—blood stains and pain, not...

Wake to this dawn like no day before you. Rise to this morning like no other morn. Night is now past and life can’t ignore you. Feel in the sunrise your future be born. Seek every trail the new light...

Clouds skip away from the full shine of the full moon The palace is lit up The maestro lifts his stick Majesty begins The richness of kings at least in human terms How quick things are Violins gone...

April 2013 The snow has thawed; it's Spring again Crickets sing to the beat of rain The sky is dark, the air is warm Again, the bugs begin to swarm Although the world is wet and dark We welcome back...

Faery Dust Anarchy With winds awhistling through the trees and air sprites dancing on the breeze, you'll hear the pipes from Éirinn’s lands - mayhap a leprechaun might sneeze at swirling faery dust...

He's placed dramatically center stage by Benjamin West—Benjamin Franklin. His gray hair flies. He's getting on in age. Electricity coming from lightning! He's dressed in dark clothes with a white tied...

The lake cradles symmetries of spring trees. The sky scries the membrane of wide waters: unseen breezes, like me, are passers-by somehow touching the lake, trees, reeds, clouds, sky. My eyes focus on these...

On "Kaaterskill Creek" by Erik Koeppel for the memory of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow The site is downstream from the Kaaterskill Falls— where it is so shady, and certainly wet. When listening closely...

In Niagara by Frederick Edwin Church, immediately one’s taken in to the great falls. From a remarkably precarious perch, one’s seized by the enormity of the landscape. One sees at once the powerful and...

Young knucklehead: Today you’ll bruise your thumb To harden you to pains to come; The sun will burn; the heat will cause you sweat; Dust will choke before the sun is set. When you are good for more than...

Goddess sleek and draped in white, Flowing wisps of long brown hair, Halo hat of holy light, Cherubs floating everywhere. Beads around her long thin neck, Each a world for which she cares, Gazing down at each...

How weird and eerily appears, that solar surge, Aurora Borealis, 1865, by Hudson River School's Frederic Edwin Church. The skyscape is so alien, and yet alive, with faint and dancing lights, blue, yellow,...

Avocado Grove On dry, withered leafs Until drizzle leaves Sitting silently The fruit’s ripe, big crops Giant green rain drops Hang abundantly The bark thick and strong Like cultivated...

Nearby a wasp lights, twitching its pointed stinger in the summer heat. As I drive my car, an eagle flies overhead. How far have I come? An ant climbs slowly up the old man's hairy arm. He flings...

They operate contrary to the rules of common sense that we hold dear as proof that what we know is right, that we’re no fools and senses we possess perceive the truth. They ramble through eleven...

The Farmer’s Wife He may as well be sitting on a piece Of junk john-boat out on some open lake. The field is shorn, divested of its fleece. The hay is tedded and the rusty rake Is resting now beside...

1.  In 373, at Antioch, Jerome asked himself if he were not a disciple of Cicero rather than Christ, his eternal home; and thereupon abandoned his early love for philosophy, law, language, and...

Alone, I take a flight to see some friends, I gaze out over ocean from the clouds and marvel, as the plane I’m in ascends with all of us above the earthly crowds. From gravity itself we’ve all been...

Written in May 2010 / Revised April 2020 Trumpets blast and Heaven opens, light shoots through, Gods of all the Kingdoms smile now anew, Legions of celestial soldiers stand, salute, Drumbeats sound between...

God of men who’s dressed in white, Beard on face of long brown hair, Halo pattern traced in light, Nimbus flowing through the air. Glowing skin with mercy shines, Ancient toga wraps His frame, Fabric...

‘On The Group Of The Three Angels Before The Tent Of Abraham, By Raphael, In The Vatican’ O, now I feel as though another sense, From heaven descending, had informed my soul; I feel the pleasurable, full...

  I This is the month, and this the happy morn, Wherein the Son of Heaven’s eternal King, Of wedded maid and Virgin Mother born, Our great redemption from above did bring; For so the holy...

Ballade for Trains They are no more, the whistles’ longing wails, Retreating like a stately, mournful queen. Where are the smokestacks that left fading trails, The blackened engine with its oiled...

Below is an excerpt of the last ten stanzas of Lord Byron's ‘Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage,’ published originally in the 1810s. It may be read as an ode to the ocean, or perhaps an environmental...

The American poet Robert Frost was born on March 26, 1874, in San Francisco, CA. He spent his first 40 years mostly unknown, and it wasn’t until after returning to the United States from England—where he...

. Lepanto Editor's Note: Don John of Austria, or Don Juan de Austria, (1547-1578) was half-brother to King Philip II of Spain and a Spanish military commander who achieved victory over the Turks in the...