In the Light of Innocence

In the light of innocence

Things can be that aren't

Babes can outwit the weighty and

Where their foolish or imprudent things confound

Can there quite suddenly surprise the wise!

In the light of innocence

Things can turn inside out

And upside down

And there whole glories can be seen as flowers

Which before the wrong way round

Had been considered only weeds!

In the light of innocence

Improbable things can steal by

Real as butterfly wings

And there these strange fortuitous sightings

Appearing all impossible

Find all the more a certain appeal!

Oh for eyes of innocence

And a simpler heart

To go against the flow of the ugly, and predictive

The usual, the norm, and what we’re used to

And choose instead life’s inner gold

And the courage to be different!

A Moment...A Fleeting Dot of Time . . .

In all checkered places of the cutting back

Ascending stairs and steps to Everland

In the working backwards they were all around me

Those pictures of weighted things that fly.

In the painted vision of even the simplest thing

Came the entirety of the all in all 

Being there even for a moment and I was       

Through to the happening-breath of the Other Side

Immediacy in the taking in of life

The partition split in the instant

The curtain being pulled aside

And the running thing there inside the hard

Seeing through in this fleeting dot of time

I had wings to fly amidst the unravelling runes

Vaster, realer the feathered things there         

Greater than hard shadows of halting outsides

In the breathing instant the shining thing laid bare

And I too become taken of the breaking longing . . .

Its living part always reaching out towards you

Ever following you, seeing you pursue the swiftlight

Ever close to you, seeing you knew

The need of changing

And all that in the glimpse of one moment there

Upon the veiled steps and stairs of the descending

Bearings of the beautiful tastings of the love-gold

And the thing beyond you twisting its tearing edge

Deep inside you

Knowing you there, if you let it,  
The tearing thing, the freeing thing 
In the stairs of the pursuit        

The swiftlight in the knowing of you deep within

Bearings of the weight of a bushel of answers

Could you?

All branded oscilloscopes measuring uncharted waters

But to believe, who would be so foolish as to lose     

What you thought you knew?

Who would give a fig for a basket of feathers?

Or trade in their first lamp to join with the finders?

The Saga of Amethyst Poetry / Part Four: A New Art

        If art went abstract, couldn't poetry? If some streams of art turned 'incomprehensible,' but not without a battle for acceptance first, should I wonder at or fear initial rejection? Although these 'poems' are not abstract - for like the inventive artist every line or brush stroke is full of known meaning - I suppose they might appear so, at first glance! But I had experienced that the heart 'rent in twain' could carry the mind's every finding further and deeper, and that it wasn't necessary for the outer parts of it to understand, in order to perceive light via the spirit.

      In joy and wonder I was shown that the primary purpose of these poems, is not that they be literally understood, but that they literally make us littler. For the littler we are the lighter we become; and the lighter we become the happier we are, which isn't by more, but by less. 

The Saga of Amethyst Poetry / Part One: A Winter of Rejection

(This is the first of a ten part story . . .)

     A few years ago I submitted some of my poetry to a professional body of poets for assessment, critique; and, hopefully, some encouragement!  I was devastated by their response. My poems were deemed incomprehensible. Such complex conceptions could not be understood. Heartbroken, I stopped writing. But after weathering a long hard winter season (of about two years!) I began to write again. Yet it seemed that the format in which I could most satisfyingly communicate, and express what was burning inside me, was in my earlier formidable art of “incomprehensible poetry.”  I knew that I might have to face continuing rejection because of it; but I was willing. Being torn to shreds wasn't a bad thing! Even so, in a moment of desperation I began to call my work ragged writings instead of ‘poems,’ because I was left in tatters! (And, not being ‘poems,’ they might evade censure!) Then in an emerging of a tentative springtime, I wrote a definition and an explanation for my strange writing; and hoped it made some sense!