What Once Fell

Six white towers, at a glance
once I caught their spritely dance.
Windy towers, six stood they
last year blooming, gone today.

Upon the meadow, upon the hill
where once they full the azure filled.
All fair flowers, fields of green
have faded to a hollow scene.

Ribbed and ravaged, wrecked the ground
heaped in piles bricked and bound.
There now sits a building's shell
where once the towers dying fell.

Where the Sparrows, fond and feathered?
Where their homes of branches weathered?
What of those on morning's brow
who made a harp of each fair bough?

And what to fill the azure blue
where snow white sails and flowers flew?
Nothing short of April's loom
dare could weave that barren womb.

Weave and wake if just the three,
as those who crested Calvary.
Raise the wooden three fine masts,
to snow white sails and shadows cast!

In days and places, distant all,
I sorrowed each shall oft recall,
what once stood and what once fell,
without a sound or sweet farewell.

Brought to Bloom

My dancing butterfly
with woodland eyes,
starlit wings, starlit,
scarlet tipped and dripping
sun-strung songs
and tunes of dusking skies,
of dawnings
raised upon the hills and tipping,
spilling auburned mirth
with sweetest sobs of sapphire.

Butterfly,
gently dance
you red rose,
winged upon the crest of winds,
of zephyrs calmly cast-
caught amidst their folds, caught
but neither trapped nor held
nor will denied, defied,
or held against.

In perfect flight
your pedals fast unfold
in quickened leaps,
and loosed
you cast your song, your lure
and skyward pull the lagging sun,
the stacks of satin clouds,
alight
with chorused blackbirds teeming,
all, and upward pulling lastly,
me;

my stormy eyes of late recede,
their sheets of rain retreating.
Dark my recent dreams
have now to dawnings taken root,
and rooted reach
to deepest depths and tightly hold
to silent stand
beneath the welcome morning-

Stand
where long at last
my butterfly,
sunlit, scarlet,
ever now can feel
my reaching arms
and dance within their mirth
she singing brought to bloom.

Rightful Season

My Iris,
blue-eyed and upright,
fiercely wrought and fully formed;
bow not, bend not, stand
against the fickle wind,
the rain.
Let not the looming dusk,
your binding threads unwind,
nor Winter's whitening tide
your sea-swelled pedals wilt.

Your pedals
grown from powder blue and porcelain
now to cloudless skies,
to moon-marked ocean's boundless deeps
and welled alike
with dawning's infant blush
and twilight's thickening shades of night;
each that once I watched
commence their first unfolding
present blooms in perfect form and full,
your rightful season come
as all, and I
who long beheld your welling
now behold
your full and realized bloom.

You,
our once and little flower grows,
and grown to towered heights
has sprung to deeper shades and strong.
Within your wake we watch in wonder,
well aware our Iris, blue-eyed
leaps in colors bold
beyond our muted shades.
What once you full revered
recedes and pales
beneath your beautied swell.

My Iris, blue and moonlit,
raised aright and fully formed;
neither bend nor bow
to any sorrowed darks
or wisps of rain.
But skyward reach in bending's stead
and stay your deepened gaze
upon the boundless light
the sun has rising bled.