METAMORPHOSIS

  
Dead leaves fallen to ground, lying
Lifeless until stirred by wind and swirled
Into air, a last dance before - sodden -
They sink to earth, dissolving slowly to soil.

So life ebbs away fitfully to otherness
Clinging for a while like a withered leaf
On a bare branch, a bright echo of verdure
In yellow, rust, ochre  — drifting, each gust

Bringing more of them to the forest floor:
A carpet of delight before colours fade,
Leaching to brown loam for tree roots
To re-imagine each leaf in some far time

Beyond winter. So we leave the world we know
Hanging on, echoing a life that has left, remembering
And then remembered; meanwhile transformed
To new life somehow, somewhere in time’s flow.

Winter Trees

The black outlines of bare trees,

Barren boles, stark against

Yellow light of yesterday's snow.

The cloud-veiled sky covering

A shorn world starved of shadow.

BABEL

How many miles to Babylon?


  Listen to the spirit language 
  in silence

  Is there a voice?
  No human voice.

  Words?
  They are unbidden, uncalled for:

  All the words in the world
  but that we seek
  Unwordly, unworldly, unsounded.

To get there
and back again
no need to count the miles
but kindle the flame
which flickers, falters
for a candle space
a candle time.

Listen! - they are timeless,
the smooth words flowing,

Hardening to roughness:
  corrugations
   in the runnels 
    of history.