Meteor

A crumb from night’s fine table fell,
succored my wistful memory, my wan fancy.
Oh, just to steal once more into the feast
for but another mite!  Come, evening!  Come!

*    *   *

(c) Gregory V Driscoll  2012

Longing

Longing of the sea for the shore,
supine mistress of the waves;
the evening in wait for the stars’ sonata;
rain-drunk grass sprawling, silent, for the sun’s caress;
light ready to leap across the East’s sable edge.
My eyes search for that face that frees.
My heart always holds close these fluid moments,
the spirit’s desire that knows fulfillment
but no ending…  And so I think and muse.
Then calling you to mind, beloved, I smile.
The sun dances among the trees.

*     *    *

(c) Gregory V Driscoll  2011

Blessing

May love always greet you in the evening.
May it never leave you in the morning.
My song is simple and enduring,
like the waters in their cycle.
May love ever greet you in the gloaming!
May it never desert you in the dawn!

*    *    *

© Gregory V Driscoll  2011

In the chapel

at dawn the black snake of cloud
slinking across the horizon over Brooklyn
as the boat pushes off into the day…

later the evening sky with a dark polymorphous cloud
hunching over the orange expanse in the West…

the water, thousands of blue-green bumps

the ketch, all white, passing us as we pass it
going in contrary directions –
speed and languor and the Doppler effect

the sense of change within the changeless

how beautiful is this world we view
but so often never really see,
through which we move almost unaware

I look up and see the vault of heaven between East and West

clouds loosely painted
as if by some huge, clear Michelangelo hand
in this common chapel…

some clouds are mere smudges
the gray shading on their sides
away from the setting sun,
the light somehow streaking through them
to burnish my senses, to startle my soul

*     *     *

(c) Gregory V Driscoll  2011