An Age Comes of Age

The great religious Middle Age saw love

within and dreamt its source herein above.

Then poets hardly wrote a line it seems

without the Christian ethic in their themes.

But Shadows drift: artists learned of Classic madness

and eyed the light divine on earthly gladness.

Absorbing warm, probing eyes,

Compelling them never to disengage

From the print of romantic guise!

Blind Date

They met blindly and fell blindly;

By meeting they discovered a precious thing,

By falling they rose to the highest rung

Perceiving the meaning of a ring--

Two bent lines meeting to form one.

Gem

Poetry, a priceless gem─

 Whether you're a critic or not─

 Can scorn the soul with apothegm

 And cut through Babel's polyglot.

Sparrows

 Sparrows fly the Tao,

 Ox to Nature's troughs─

 Under Burden's brow

 Confucius scoffs.

Charon

Charon pilots the unconscious deadly mist;

The psyche's stunned─blank pages on the lexicon 

Proud reason is forsaken─adrift the stygian stealth.

Desolation, dread, enshrouds the routed spirit,

Addled by fickle, brutalizing gods.

Bard's Temple
A bard's temple, it seemed to them,
suited their risky stratagem.
Buttressed by nymphal trees
and frolicking under floral frieze,
suppressed affections breeched magically
as tender sentiment transmuted lyrically.
Though Pan perked approvingly,
their hungry hearts throbbed despairingly
in love’s embrace of natural ceremony,
lest exposure wreak no clemency.
In public each isolated felt snowbound,
And fate’s fury forced them underground.
Till time relents and lovers bound

unchecked like colts alien to rope,
reveling in story-ending hope
and laying claim to sacred soil, on which began
the dream of growing into one,
thus dissolving the iron social ban
against these lovers on the run —
While Eros dances on the round —
unashamed to let their love abound.

.

 Gift of Belief

Some men as indeed most women are given

 the piety to believe without needing

 the presence of God, though starving souls

 on Christmas do perceive His residence.

 But when one struggles to arrest the clock

 that chips away at stolen interims

 contrived by lovers' underhanded schemes,

pursuit of spirit, God, the Tao, the One

dampens what psychic satisfaction

there is from non-tactile creed

when one is walled within a wintry cell

while outside this wailing wall,

mortared by callous hands of Time,

lay the true but phantom piety

of a summer's subliminal love.

Autumn's Zephyr

Slacks up, shoes in hand,

They trek the dune's sallow band

As Autumn's zephyr drifts

In an almost silent surf

Far from social rifts

And noisy traffic's turf.

They comb uncrowdéd sands

So they in quiet quest

Can sort their private plans,

 On how to put to test

 Their love till now unspent,

 Untouched by ornament.

You Ain't No Queen

No use playing games─

I ain't no pawn─

You ain't no queen.

Rainbow is somewhere─

for Dorothy─

Umbrella for you.

No use gettin' high─

Don't need no fix─

When I'm around.

Why rise for dawn?─

Life's in cold gray─

Van Gogh's not real.

No use riding clouds─

Bed here on earth─

You ain't no star.

Get off the dream─

I ain't Romeo─

You ain't Juliet.

Sacred Is The Bagel

God's wrath upon the blasphemous mart

 which dares suggest the symmetry of art

 be altered by the unholy square─

 a bagel without its convoluting flair

 and nucleonic hole

 is a body without a soul!

Lao tzu

Swaying with flowers nodding to the breeze,

 Humming with birds in protective elms,

 I dissolve in Lao tzu's bold untold.

Copyright © "70, '02 Richard R. Kennedy. All rights reserved. Revised:

Kindle the Heart

Eyes searching the class─

 how often they tried

not to light upon

those hazel stars

blinking limpid chemistry

substratal, unthinkable,

reticently beautiful!

Only a saintly fool

or demon hypocrite

could reject that glow

with cool heart unpumped

for this iridescence

crowding out the gray

kindling of romance.

Photo by rrk jr.

 Mary

A name as plain as Mary,

nevertheless — and wary

the bearer stirs the unmeant

with questionable intent —

gives manna to an unspent life.

For, truly is her name proud and rife

with heritage, sensitivity and love

befitting this darling turtle dove.