Let Angels Lift Your Wings to Free a Child Whose Temperament is Gentle, Meek and Mild

Unfold your wings. Be born again a child;

familiar as a newborn with God’s peace.

Let from your heart flow mercies, meek and mild.

Let their deep pathos and their sweet increase

through godly passions multiply your gifts. 

Let fullness of  fair beauty’s child set free, 

like strains of music reach out to uplift.

Let them be bread to succor hungry souls

Let them be tears that weep with those who mourn.

Let them be hands which reach deep down to pull

from depths, fair hopes which once from men were torn.

Let them be words which lift men from despair.

Let them be ears which hear and comprehend.

Let them be deeds which seek means to repair

the breach between the foe and would-be friend.

Let them be drink which quenches famine’s thirsts.

Let them be prayers that summon angels near.

Let them be smiles that with compassions burst

through deepening mists of grief, men's anguished tears.

Let them be joy where sorrows have been sown.

Let them be peace where fears did long reside.

Let them be beauty where no beauty’s known.

Let them be liberty where chains abide. 

Let those thus freed from bonds and scorns and chains,

look up and see the light of unfeigned love.

Let them be cleansed of sin and sorrow’s bane  

till they gain peace through mercies from above.

Let angels lift your wings to free a child  

through whom God works His mercies meek and mild.

Establish a House, Even a House of Prayer

 “If there’s some other way to gain experience,
Then grant that I may find that way.”
This was my constant prayer.  Unlike my peers
Who wanted to grow up, I would have stayed
A child in that vast Dome of Innocence
Where God preserves the Purest of the Pure.
He answered my request, “I send thee hence
My child to build thy home and to secure
Thy crown.”  The Father’s plan was this: I’d work
To build a home where He was known, where faith
And works made sure foundation stones, where words
Were more than sounds on air.  They were the lathe
And plaster holding up the walls.  To bear
Up Truth, experience became the stairs.

Each step in agency was laid–most whole,
Some half, most up, some down, but none a platform
Made.  I found that windows were the goals
I’d framed.  Most held God’s light; a few had slats
That darkened them, but in the nursery drapes
Were folds of fun. The outside walls were
Variously done.  Steel frames and fire escapes
Ascending up witnessed my constant prayer
For strength to be prepared.  Rock walls held out
The elements.  Weak joists fell prey to bores
And mouse’s holes and yet there rose about
That home the dome I long had labored for.
And though my home’s no castle in the air,
The Purest of the Pure are sheltered there.

This I Believe:

How beautiful are dreams that have great powers,

when glimpsed as blooming buds from fallen flowers.

I’m a cracked mirror reflecting all that I have been,

so how can I become brand new? Let me

propose that there is more than mere descents

to cracked and fallen things. Falls hold complexities.

It’s my belief, we fall to rise again.

We make mistakes and we repent of them.

Repentance is what makes what’s been a fall,

become a call to rise, to change, to be

one turned around, to grow new shoots and in

the process find our roots have not

forsaken us. Their essence lives within.

Unbounded is the firmament and we,  beneath, are no less free.

Under an open sky, we see nature’s astir with new awakenings.

It breathes the breath of fire that’s turned to wind,

as do repentant souls who once had sinned.

As fallen pedals blend into earth’s soils, they’ve wrought       

a change, brought nourishment to roots of budding plants.

The soul which blooms is nourished by the thoughts

which in remorse, it’s dropped.  The circumstance

is one which we observe. The wrinkled bloom which  falls,

has hit a nerve, becomes the nourisher of brand new buds.

We too can bloom in recognition of 

that plant’s rebirth.  It lives not in the tombs of what once was,

but in awakenings that breathe of faith’s  ascensions out of death.  

Be unashamed to bury the old you.  Be done with him! Become brand new. 

Let your old man breathe out on flaming winds the times you fell.

Nurture repentance till with Mercy’s ransomed ones you come to dwell

as an unblemished alabaster bloom whose mastered passion burst from Triumph’s womb.

Mr. Frog Prince

Mr. Frog Prince tell me why

you change your ways to catch a fly.

Your charms, it seems, go underground.

You cease to hippy-hop around,

and use your lovely ribbet sound.

You hide that song and dance routine, 

to turn into a sly machine.

You float about on pad of lily,

looking really rather silly;

eyes agog, and mouth agape,

tongue just waiting to escape

out your mouth when buzzing sound

lets you know a fly’s around.

Out pops your tongue and down the hatch

goes your latest mid-day catch. 

Your diet, sir, unmasks your air,

for being suave and debonaire.

If a true frog-prince you’d become,

I recommend you hold your tongue.

The Soul Takes Wing on Ashes of its Former Self

How gratefully I rise to greet the dawn
in glory rising on another day.
The shades of past mistakes are all but gone.
New vistas share their promise which conveys
not only hope that past is past, but that
there rises now in richness, wakenings
of mind and body framing welcome mat
to resolutions made.  



The soul takes wing on ashes of its former self.
In depths of pain, and sickness and disease, much wrestling
can bring forth new resolve; to make a gain
of restless nights and of that suffering
which humbles and in crucibles refines.
That soul which bursts asunder linings cast
for pathogens through purges which align
repentant’s urge with pure and cleansing fasts,
leaves prison house to try out wings of wars;
lays claim to Suffering’s means to healing cures.                                                                                                                                                        

This Way Again

Perhaps I shall not pass this way again

And yet I might.  Whatever good I do

However slight, I shall remember when

I reminisce upon my life.  If true

And sweet nobility shall be mine then,

I must not lose this opportunity 

To lift, to cheer, to bless or comfort lend.

Through acts of love this small community

Of neighbors I call friends could be increased.

Eternity suggests I ask such things 

As how the present moment could bring peace

To someone else; for every person brings

With them some task or mission to perform.

Perhaps they’ll do it better if they’re warm.