How Strange Is That?
I felt I fell in love with you today; how strange is that?
Waiting for the bus we stopped and stayed to chat,
when suddenly and subito my head was overturned,
unbalancing my body, making blood to burn.
I'm not even sure I really caught your name!
What mischievous cupid is playing this game,
that uncanny things, ungrounded, maddening, and swift
can throw the world off kilter, make the earth to shift!
That meeting you but once, but for a little while,
I am haunted by your eyes, the flashing of your smile!
That though I hardly know you, nonetheless my brain
spins out imaginations as though your heart were gained!
But swiftly comes its death as swiftly came its birth,
and if it passes thus away, what is such feeling worth?
The merest little fizzle, a frenzy in heated brain,
and after sudden torrent nothing will remain
but strange, wry self-suspicion, memories that will fade,
and the quiet gravestone where this madness has been laid.
Heart's Leap
You are a summer morning,
golden day,
the roses brightly blooming on the way,
a vision for rejoicing,
sunrise-smile,
life and breath renewing on the final mile,
mercy's fire burning,
warmth of flame,
heart's upward leaping at music in the Name.
Thunderstorm
Lightning cracks the air,
rifting night with fire:
God takes up His pen
and flicks it down the page.
The mark it leaves is madness
drawn with ink of light;
above us clouds still rumble
and glower with His grace.
Bounded Book
I am not so clearly dead
that you can roll me over,
nor am I yet a mouldered corpse
that rests beneath the clover.
My name still echoes in the minds
of people far and distant;
my life was not a leaping splash,
the breath of but an instant,
but hope outreaching to the skies
with prayered hands and dusty:
I worked to build this bounded book
that is not yet grown musty.
And though it be a simple thing,
and not a godlike glory,
no tomb has yet encircled me,
no headstone ends my story.
