travels, reflections, poems….
Now is the darkness
When the black moon
Rests
On the waterway,
In the windless,
Silent shadows
Of the invincible heron.
There is no one
Else, nothing,
Only the emptiness
Of time gone into the lost
And gray-
Mossed
Forests,
And of eternity not yet risen.
In the morning
Light, soon
Ring
The echoes
Of stray
Mists.
©Sharon St Joan, October 18, 2013
Photo: © Tony Wilson | Dreamstime.com
Within the rose
The mystic rose
Rises the fragrance of only the misted
Echoes
Of wind and rainbows.
There, there is no death, blank-faced
And cold, but only the blue
Wings of the sky.
No songs of shadows
But only those
Lilting, cloud-laced
Songs the moon
Might hum
While walking, clad in her glad gown
Beside the riverbank.
No scarecrow of injustice, twisted
Bent
But only the iridescent
Eye
Of the mountain sheep
Dancing with her lamb
Among the high
Summer snows.
Within the rose
Happen only the going forth in flight
And the returning to
The Great Soul of the Night
Who will ever keep
Dream and event
Beginning
And ending
In her shining circled hands of starlight
Within the mystic rose.
© Sharon St Joan
Written around 1993
Photo: Philipp Haupt from Zug, Switzerland / Wikimedia Commons / This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license. / Bighorn lamb in Alberta, Canada
Stone doorway
Within the stone doorway
Stands
No one, nothing,
Only
The juniper trees
That
Twist
In the crinkling air
Of morning,
Only the peace of the empty
Jars
That lie
Pale blue as the skies,
No one
Only the goldfinch with his black hat,
About to drop
From sunbeam to slender branch, to hop
And toot in the gray-
Pebbled dawn, only
The chasm that opens
Between the slanted
Sails of the stars
Where the ancient ones
Still
Walk in the windowed wind, where
The gold eyes
Of the bear
Reflect the rushing stream, where
Rocks remember,
Where glad ravens of rain clatter
To uncreate the rusted disarray
Of time, where the spirits of arcane mist
Call ever
In the green, breaking
Waves of the seas
There where there
Is no one
Nowhere
Only the shining wings of lands
Out there
In the lone doorway of stone
On the owl-enchanted outcrop
On the high
Hill.
Written June 28, 2009
Photo: Sanandkarunakaran / Wikimedia Commons / “This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.” Dolmens at Marayoor in Kerala, India.
Gone
Now, the cloud-wandering
Of the winter night,
Before the moon
Will write
Her comments
Across the pale
Rock
Invoking
Those untraveled moments
Yet to be, when soon
The silver, ambling feet
Of quail
Will flock
To greet
The sky-winged
Innocence of dawn.
Written about 1999
Photo: David Williams / Dreamstime.com / A Gambel’s Quail
Black bells toll,
Flowers scatter,
Stars undone,
Black hole
In the center
Far, far away,
Or so it seems they meant
To say,
But it is not true,
There are no sails
Of time, nor space to unfold,
No mist over the eyes who see
In the stirring jungle.
Only the frog watches,
Intent,
And your world is not his;
Your world of laws of what can be,
And what cannot, do
Not contain the worlds untold
Of magic tales
Written on the scroll
Of the single
Bright ray
Of the sun.
Where is the wild egret
Of the Himalayan
Foothill,
Who calls
At the break
Of day; who sails
In her glimmering
Country
Beyond the starred horizon,
Beyond the veils
Of dust and pain,
Who sends her
Flaming
Dragon
Forth to still
The stirring pit,
That none will
Be
Thereafter
But only the holy
Misted, quiet
Rain
That falls
Long,
Silver on the shorn parapet
Down the clefts of the rock-born mountain
And only the white petals of the lily
Who will find yet again and again
Her echoing,
Snow-winged song
On the windlit lake?
To view a larger version of the artwork, please go here,
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From atop the bone-bent tree
Two raven watchers scry
The ending of the ashen days,
Glimpsing the moment
When the rattling reign
Of the purveyors of death
Will be done,
Swept clean
In the wind’s breath.
Then the star-sent ways
Of the spring that spills
Over the rocks, singing
Her song that gladdens the earth
And the wide
Sky
Will be handed on
To the scions of light
To the shining ones
Who were ever there
In the stillness beyond the wall.
When the forest will abide
Anew in the deep tones
Of the wild
Owl, and will shake, with the innocent
Footfall
Of the elephant
And her child,
Then gleaming worlds will live again
Under moons of mist that call
The winds to walk abroad on the steeps
Of the haunting hills,
Then out of the cast-off heaps
Will have climbed the brave ones,
Winged in robes of gossamer,
Born of the stones
Of the ever-dwelling
Night,
Of the mystical intent
Of the blackest ravens.
To view a larger version of the artwork, please go to
http://fineartamerica.com/featured/the-forest-sharon-stjoan.html