For My Brother On the Occasion of His 38th Birthday

“How can the past and future be, when the past no longer is, and the future is not yet?” ~St. Augustine of Hippo

Each of our moments blossoms into memory,
bursts of fireworks the next atop the last;
they come from beyond our gaze,
star-shine at dusk.

These veils of time swirl around us
as wind in autumn,
each gust offering a pattern of shape and color:
red maple, orange oak.

As the breeze swishes past,
do we stand and reach, run and chase,
watch and pray, move and act?
We are bound and buoyed by possibility.

Now, the Everlasting Instant calls
and calls again for our right choosing;
it is All in All.  And we, these flitting moments,
love our way through another season.

The Light and the Challenge

In the blazing heat
the trees and grasses golden;
they are candleflame and firelight.

In the shimmering cold
the frogs and crickets amplify;
they are thunderclap and echo.

In the winding cave
the dripstone spikes lengthen
into mountain and valley

where the heat blinds and the cold paralyzes,
the climb and the cliff wear and scatter,
abandonment and fright surround;

I can not see, and yet I know
the living light that radiates within,
illuminates the cracks and begs me to begin.

“Any man who follows me will not be walking in the dark: he will have the light of life, says the Lord.” (John 8:12; Universalis)