List of Poems

At First Light

At first light, they say.
Is this it then? The dusky rain-
scented breath, almost shadowless
but sufficient to know the red
flowing between gardens of poppies
and blood--Or was it the fuzzy
murmer as dreams open musing?
And hours before, a fullish moon
blinks through woods, tails waning day.
Perhaps it's still ahead in yet unseen
illumination of this darkness
or a radiance more than blood red,
softer than rains breath know,
yet more loving than dreams dare go.

Joseph McCaleb, 5/11/06

A Snowflake Life

Through the steel grey-blue blush
of early morning light playing
our body minds heedless
of seen-through walls like window panes
the winter branches dance soundless
in harmony with the invisible will.

Clouds flow by too or just disappear
like yesterday, like so many dreams,
like love calls between two hoot owls
calling forth their young even before mating;
this resonance evokes smokey mist off
snow fallen mid-winter to remember
the so-far away unseen spring then.

From such invisible forms goes out
the glimmering lonely strand into that web,
magnificent though we see so little of it,
on which, years later, we walk an island
to the precipice of paradise where a rainbow
ladder-light flows ocean into heaven,
like prayers go as the snowflake plans
of our life in the intricate pattern of it all.

Joseph McCaleb, 3/4/06; photo, 3/7/07