Giant-Slave

I journeyed in the valley of despair

Where stalked the spectre of the yet-to-be.

While terror bade my faith and courage flee

I waited for the atom's deadly flare.

I visioned a chaotic dying earth

Wearing the sackcloth in its misery.

Then came a flashing from Eternity

And eagle-pinioned hope achieved rebirth

I saw a giant slave with gentleness

Working our farms and mines; whose touch will bring

Freedom from toil and pain ... and give the stars

To man, his master, by his power to bless,

The strength of Atlas in his whispering.

I walk with faith beyond fear's prison-bars.

Midwest Chaparral

Third in Citrine Contest

I Heard a New Bird Singing

(To Lilith Lorraine)

On the rim of chaos

my ear was cupped

to hear hoofbeats on a country road

but I heard a new bird singing.

Piercing as a naked scimitar

cleaving the housewife warblings of the wrens

came its new song.

Its tongued lightning,

its sundering bass,

deep with the thunder of the gods,

shook my Jerico-walls of apathy

until they crumbled--

Through my trembling skeleton

I saw the world.

I heard a new bird singing,

merging its song with the Eagle's scream

until in exultant crescendo

it mingled with the shriek of shattered patterns.

Bugle Call

O pilot now your ship of days or years

Unerringly to reach a promised goal.

The Master Helmsman will allay your fears

And still the tempests that would scar your soul.

You leave the haven of a citadel

Which greed would now destroy; so let a song

Rise from your heard that you may break the spell

Of avarice that moves a Judas-throng.

Wearing white armor, go and give release;

Brave terror's henchmen on the death-strewn plain;

Bid earth to sing a canticle of peace,

Become a sanctuary--love's domain.

Your shield is youth's clean strength which you have won--

God's arm is long to reach to you, my son.

The Improvement Era

Granite Temples

Tenaciously I clung to outworn dreams,
I would be young and keep the mind June-burdened.
(A catacomb for ghosts, I learned, with gleams
From dead moons flickering) Now autumn-guerdoned.
Mature as earth, I taste the wine of youth;
Embrace October, and I hear no sighing
From musty tombs, but clarion calls of truth.
My spirit sings its freedom from the dying:
Reality is stern, but oh, how good
Though kissed more acridly by lips of sorrow,
To build of granite, not of rotting wood,
The temples to adorn the new tomorrow--
Ripe fruit was clinging to a withered bough;
Seeing, I shook the limb and greeted NOW.

Inviolate Eden

The albatross of discord--should it light--
Casts far its gloomy shadow. While the choice,
Gay-plumaged birds with sweeter song take flight
Before its somber spell, its raucous voice
Brings castles crashing. (When the mute batons
Of aspens twirl while from the lark's glad throat
There spills a star-splashed fountain in the bronze,
Hushed hour of dawn, a magpie's zither note
Shatters the fragile moment.) The retreat
Illumined by love's tapers knows the dread,
Dark, heavy wings of gloom, the gray web-feet--
No  haven which they have not visited.
Yet man may keep, if he will guard the gate,
The Eden of his mind inviolate.

First in MFCP Sonnet Contest, Spring 1953

Wind-Lightened Bough (Two Versions)

Spring leaving jonquil footprints called and stirred
My slumbrous will--The tree in full-blown flower
Spiralled her petals down and sang the word,
The new green word that woke the fruit-bud hour.
The golden summer danced across the field,
Crimsoned the fruit upon the laden bough;
Matured and ripened me to give my yield,
Yet hear my cry: What of the fruitage now?

Swift came the wind and shrill--Still wild it flings
Its wrath: The bough is lightened, torn and tossed,
And only one dwarfed withering apple clings--
Storm-bent and ravished, I too wait the frost.
Forlorn the tree, yet poignant-sweet my sorrow
If wind-reaped fruit will give seed for tomorrow.

(The above published in Path to Home, 1962)

Version Two:

Spring, and the slumbrous I was stirred --
The tree in full-bloom flower
Spiralling, dancing petals down,
Awoke the fruit-bud hour.

Summer, fulfilling, sang in me --
Heavily laden, the bough --
Ripened, mature for giving, was I.
(What of the fruitage now?)

Muted my song in the wind's wild shrill --
Lightened the bough and tossed:
Only one withering apple clings --
Storm-maimed, I wait the frost.

Mendicant-forlorn, the tree --
Poignantly sweet my sorrow,
If in the ripened wind-reaped fruit
Is seed for tomorrow.

(Published in The Relief Society Magazine, September 1961)

Lift Your Eyes

With eyes downcast in grief and doubt,
Slowly I walked a country lane.
I failed to hear the joyous shout
Of springtime after April rain--
A violet in greening sod
Whispered, "Lift your eyes to God."

The very greenness whistled then;
My ears received the robin's call;
My thoughts escaped their stagnant fen
To hear a laughing waterfall--
My heart held room for no regrets
Weaving a lei of violets.

True Sight (two versions)

Let my eyes see above the thorns
The perfection of the rose;
And my ears hear through discordant notes
The patterned, rhythmic melody.

The above published in Path to Home, 1962. Variant version likely published in the Relief Society Magazine:

Let my eyes see beyond the broken gate
The perfect lily,
And my heart feel through strains of dissonance
The patterned rhythm.