OF REALITY

Time on morbid hour I dwell alone,
Captured in my self-denying cell;
I could see now but for an instant,
I could hold you still and call you mine –
But moment soon would flee to minute,
And you would ring the chastened bell
And send me sweetly back to hell.

OF LOGIC

If words on wishes held smooth repartee
We soon would be entwined in loving ease,
And never leave but for a brief refrain
To reimburse our love of love’s disease –
But close we sit and dwell a league apart,
I with you in heaven, you with separate part;
And still with distant rules we sigh and kiss
Our hearts as two, our hands in patterned bliss.
This manner shall not hold my reckless tone,
I cannot breathe within these walls alone:
My cell of one heart spread for two
And not replaced – I will not die for you.

April 1979 (as amended)
© Michael G Reid 1979-2011

HONEST ECSTACY

Softly, silent words of caring pass between
As golden dust upon a pauper’s brow,
Or seasons’ wealth on Gaea’s nurtured green;
We suffer not from speech, our needs are filled
By peace of presence, never more than touching
On a hope, a fading dream, a new reality –
Moist words too light for distance, feather-bent
Yet pressing heart to heart as flame to flame,
And drifting each as one to ‘plenished need
Unframed and unapproved; we shall love
Wholly, ‘fixed with longing children’s eyes,
Never falsely, naked past the flesh and burning
Only for the day, and never ruled, never lost to pledge,
But floating free, and sharing worlds in honest ecstacy.

April 1979 (as amended)
© Michael G Reid 1979-2011

THIS LEAF OF DUST

The falling leaves cry to the wind,
One final plea for reason,
A tree of life now parting
For a time to memory,
And this our early Autumn
Dries a supple Spring romance,
As old Hephaestus forges new
Tomorrowʼs sunlit dance.

It bled for us, this leaf of dust
As will to broken dreams,
For life must draw from death
And love from amity –
In time, we shall rejoin as one
Then with the falling rain,
Till earth and heaven meet to die
We shall deflower again.

1979 (as amended)
© Michael G Reid 1979-2011

SEPARATION

An intense mortality creeps inward
Biting as a teething child,
Drawing, sucking, forcing out the breath
And into fear, or solitude, or both
But even in embalméd troth
A grasping web beneath.

I hide, cushioning myself around
With fortress borne in green’s grey mist
Deprived, depriving, crying out
For love or hate to penetrate
Or both, but mute in dreams,
And white from yesterday.

November 1978 (as amended)
© Michael G Reid 1978-2011

SALTED LIPS OF TIME

Reaching from a wind-swept dream,
A silent pleasure-ground of smiling sun
And dancing seas, eternity above,
A fire within.

Sailing, gliding, sifting promises
Of love-dried sand through answered cries;
A seagull diving, I above, unclothed
And free, licking salted lips of time –
And life, a fresh-blown memory
On morningʼs eyes.

Alive, enchanted, feeling with the sky
And for a world apart, a past denied
A dream embraced, my wind-swept dream,
My sailing, silent carousel of love,
This freshness draining tears to sighs,
And pleasure to our Motherʼs mastery.

Moruya Heads, November 1978 (as amended)
© Michael G Reid 1978-2011

ALIVE AGAIN

In dreams untried, (the painted actorʼs grief)
All feelings bled, dry fears of wisdom shed,
Our humble man, the actor held beneath,
The prophetʼs dream, the childʼs belief.

A man entombed, without tomorrowʼs sky
I felt I knew, he felt the sunrise too,
Alone with all, the world without the eye
And I was dark, as if to die.

He knew the words, and raised his pen to see
But met the heart, and visions held apart
Then cried for life, a deeper scar of me,
He took my hand, then set us free.

And from this time unmeasured, deep within
From sleep we rose, upon a virgin breeze
In freedom borne, fresh days of dreams begin,
Awake at last, alive again.

November 1978 (as amended)
© Michael G Reid 1978-2011

AND IN THE MORN

On broken tears, the naked flesh
Embalméd in a silent misery;
Twilight dreams surrender to the dark,
Unflinching in its callous strain
Of time for time, and now to life,
And in the new-found morn
Denies the early past,
A twilight yes, but not the dark,
The love but not the love,
No seepage from the heaven learned,
For naked flesh in daylight feels undone,
And cries as convicts for the mother’s womb.

June 1978 (as amended)
© Michael G Reid 1978-2011

THE AEGEAN SOLDIER

A hilltop of green saw the soldier,
In pain as he cried to the mist;
For the soldier saw only his father,
In death to a black morningʼs fist.
Persephone watched from a rise
And sighed for the pain at her ʻneath,
And the father in white watched beside,
As the young soldier courted the wreath.

ʻI have but the one life to giveʼ he cried,
And felt his judgement true,
And then he wept for truth to wilt
And faith to drown in dew.
ʻAs againʼ cried the thoughtless Aegean,
ʻI have lost only morningʼs attire;
But the prayer for a tear of remembrance
Is the wood for the next mourningʼs fire.ʼ

Sweet Demeterʼs child spake at last
With a strength for the dying to learn,
That the voice of the winter be broken
As the harvests of honour return:
ʻFor the dew shall once more breed afresh
And shall plunder fateʼs deepest domain,
And while man follows peace through the darkness
He may never wear deathʼs coat in vain.ʼ

ʻAnd so hold the courage of lightʼ cried his father
ʻAnd would to the tunnel unseen –
And feel in the nightʼs dew a warning
And see, in the morning, the green.ʼ
Not brooding in the clammy light
The Aegean took death by the sword,
And headed in time for the darkness,
And soldiered the light by his word.

1978 (as amended)
© Michael G Reid 1978-2011

WITHOUT YOU

Silence, in a morning’s misery
Of wasted loves and dying moons,
A headache of light’s truth to come;
The pain of disappearing dew,
The death in living without you.

December 1977 (as amended)
© Michael G Reid 1977-2011

A WORLD OF GOLD

In a tireless age, in an infinite dome,
The breath of morning birds and new-born winds
Unfolds, in a senseless skin, a beauteous mirth
And in an unmasked eye a world of gold.

Coffs Harbour
December 1977 (as amended)
© Michael G Reid 1977-2011

TO YESTERDAY

A sinner be in loving, sinners’ foe,
Injustice bred in reading errant lust
As artless love, sweet dalliance, hope –
I bled those days as one possessed:
My eyes I dared not see while closing yours,
Dry lips did mock with common tongue, found
Rare betwixt damp love – yet I pervert
A dawn denied, for loving never had, then
Never be, and never as but living friends
In passing play.

July 1977 (as amended)
© Michael G Reid 1977-2011

SEASON

The silent scent of buds new-fallen,
Leaves as tainted embers of tomorrow –
I search the peace where eyes so burned might
Sigh, to ponder never more upon a tear;
Sweet darkness bred as light awakens,
Terrified with morning’s mist, love’s visage
Of a crop dew-burnt and fossilised
Into the memory of a dream to come.

July 1977 (as amended)
© Michael G Reid 1977-2011

SWEET PRINCESS

If you can say our love is lost
And futureʼs warmth to seasoned frost,
If you can smile a last goodbye
To eyes that never dreamed deny,
If you can name one kiss the last
And loving nights a pleasant past,
If you can hold short memʼries dear
And cast them in unconscious fear,
Then shed my tears while youth remains
To walk the seasoned fightersʼ lanes,
And banish Timeʼs eternal pain.

But if, my heart, you feel the fire
Still kindling with our past desire,
If you can feel unseasoned arms
And whispered moans of natures charms,
If you can smile on evening walks
And teasing silent loversʼ talks,
If you remember past still new
And waiting for the reckless few,
Then cast aside all mortal bonds
And teach me what is right and wrong;
And I will draw the sun to you
With love which Time will neʼer undo –
Sweet Princess, in a lifeʼs debut.

June 1977 (as amended)
© Michael G Reid 1977-2011

TIME ANTIQUATED

Sweet Time it motions trees to grow,
And Time allows the river-flow;
Strict Time it beckons day to night
And lets time-wearied seasons fight.

Fresh Time purveys a cloudless sun
As children to their futures run;
Fair Time draws age-old leaves to dust,
And feeds to life the savage crust.

Deft Time it breeds a knowledge through
And amputates the seedless few,
And Time paternal, ever firm
Assigns to life a balanced term.

Old Time the craftsman builds anew
And germinates a life’s debut;
And Time denotes a tenancy
Till payment due, a painless fee.

Yet Time uncoupled, tearless heart
Denies two lovers torn apart,
When time for life is bred so young
And time for love untimely sung.

Then Time the warden stand aside,
Embrace two hearts with humble pride;
Eternal space bleeds not the dove –
Poor time divorced by timeless Love.

May 1977 (as amended)
© Michael G Reid 1977-2011