from Modest Impressions 

© rrk, ‘70, ‘02

A Long time ago on Okinawa

Walk Alone

I walk alone now;

my love beside me

no more to greet

the happy dawn.

I eat alone now;

my love across from me

no more to share

the cantaloupe.

I shop alone now;

my love to guide me

no more in the zone

of bargain wars.

I bed alone now;

my love to warm me

no more in the bliss

of two as one.

Yet together now

in touching memory

of all our wonders

that matter still.

{from novel Angel Queen}

UNAM

When time is felt as grains of sand

grating the heart with feeble interludes

that cloud the dial of Apollo’s hand

unable to sweep away severe vicissitudes,

And when our natural windows open space,

Yet clutter it with judgment's pieces

And classify with pointless interlace,

Like an Aristotle rigid thesis,

We do dishonor to nature's graceful flow,

Which like the swelling sea and breezy wheat

Blend their divisions in a single show

And swallow individual conceit

By wrapping the glory of their toil

Round the unifying marvel of the planet's soil.

Charlotte's Off Moment

Thoughts once grounded true hath flown away

To couch with other minds in proud array!

O Plato, glutted with ideas, lease thy realm

To a silly queen who's lost her thinking helm!

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.

Agony of a Gymnast

Helplessly, delicately, tearfully she toppled from the beam.

How penetrating ABC's "Agony of Defeat"!

Not in the courage of the loss, but in the ordeal

of he who suffers witness from distant bleachers--

at a loss to commiserate in the privacy of locked arms.

clip art from Corel