Young Love lies sleeping
 In May-time of the year,
Among the lilies,
 Lapped in the tender light:
White lambs come grazing,
 White doves come building there:
And round about him
 The May-bushes are white.

Soft moss the pillow
 For oh, a softer cheek;
Broad leaves cast shadow
 Upon the heavy eyes:
There winds and waters
 Grow lulled and scarcely speak;
There twilight lingers
 The longest in the skies.

Young Love lies dreaming;
 But who shall tell the dream?
A perfect sunlight
 On rustling forest tips;
Or perfect moonlight
 Upon a rippling stream;
Or perfect silence,
 Or song of cherished lips.

POEM BY CHRISTINA ROSSETTI

Come to me in the silence of the night;

   Come in the speaking silence of a dream;

Come with soft rounded cheeks and eyes as bright

   As sunlight on a stream;

      Come back in tears,

O memory, hope, love of finished years.

Yet come to me in dreams, that I may live

   My very life again tho’ cold in death:

Come back to me in dreams, that I may give

   Pulse for pulse, breath for breath:

      Speak low, lean low,

As long ago, my love, how long ago.

POEM BY CHRISTINA ROSSETTI

The May-tree on the hill
Stands in the night
So fragrant and so still,
So dusky white.

That, stealing from the wood
In that sweet air,
You'd think Diana stood
Before you there.

If it be so, her bloom
Trembles with bliss.
She waits across the gloom
Her shepherd's kiss.

Touch her. A bird will start
From those pure snows,--
The dark and fluttering heart
Endymion knows.

POEM BY BY ALFRED NOYES

FROM SONGS OF TREES

And only where the forest fires have sped, 
  Scorching relentlessly the cool north lands,
A sweet wild flower lifts its purple head, 
And, like some gentle spirit sorrow-fed,
  It hides the scars with almost human hands.

And only to the heart that knows of grief,
  Of desolating fire, of human pain,
There comes some purifying sweet belief, 
Some fellow-feeling beautiful, if brief.
  And life revives, and blossoms once again.

POEM BY EMILY PAULINE JOHNSON

BY EMILY PAULINE JOHNSON

Idles the night wind through the dreaming firs,
That waking murmur low,
As some lost melody returning stirs
The love of long ago;
And through the far, cool distance, zephyr fanned.
The moon is sinking into shadow-land.

The troubled night-bird, calling plaintively,
Wanders on restless wing;
The cedars, chanting vespers to the sea,
Await its answering,
That comes in wash of waves along the strand,
The while the moon slips into shadow-land.

O! soft responsive voices of the night
I join your minstrelsy.
And call across the fading silver light
As something calls to me;
I may not all your meaning understand,
But I have touched your soul in shadow-land.

They all say it is a lie that I do love you

because never they saw me so much in love

I swear to you that not even I understand

why your glance has fascinated me

When I am near you, you are happy,

I woudn't want you to remember anyone

I am jealous even of the thought

that could remind you of any loved person.

Swear to me that although time passes by

you won't forget the moment when I first met you.

Look at me, for there is nothing in this world bigger

or more profound than the love I gIve you.

Kiss me, with a loving kiss,

like no one has kissed me since the day I was born.

Love me, love me up to madness

and then you will know the sadness that I am suffering for you.

LINK TO TEXT

Somewhere along the line

the ball bounced too high

never to return

casuing a stir in the equation

To say the least. To say the least.

And I thought three plus three

meant something

meant

something

somewhere

down the line.

The ball,

oh the ball plus three

begs for a chance.

I try, but can’t

and wonder why it’s so perfect to say

Never to return never to return

POEM BY TOM CONE

o that after all no
thought breaks
the mind's cold spell

chill these bones their
language lost

in this fresh silence
weather hides all
odours of decay

by freezing time
I travel through
this numb day

look look
my small
my beautiful child

the icicle here
how it shimmers
in the blue sun

my small
my beautiful child
look once more
into the shimmering

POEM BY JOY KOGAWA

moving into the slow

pool beneath the voices

to the quiet garden where

airtime sounds are

cloud shadow and

sun games—what

matters here in this cool

inverted sky are small

darting fish

coloured cues shimmering

past the hooks, beneath

the nets, succulent, safe

and swift as prayer

POEM BY JOY KOGAWA

the fruit takes from the sun

the skin swells thin green

to red to ripeness

until the time for giving

when the wind

thuds and seeds the earth

and the rich brown soil receives the flight down

and to walk at that moment

in the orchard again

when the children

are still small

and to see

in the sunlight

how the blossoms are falling

POEM BY JOY KOGAWA

If your eyes were not the color of the moon,
of a day full of clay, and work, and fire,
if imprisoned you did not move in agile grace like the air,
if you were not an amber week,

not the yellow moment
when autumn climbs up through the vines;
if you were not that bread the fragrant moon
kneads, sprinkling its flour across the sky,

oh, my dearest, I could not love you so!
But when I hold you I hold everything that is —
sand, time, the tree of the rain,

everything is alive so that I can be alive:
without moving I can see it all:
in your life I see everything that lives.

Your hand flew from my eyes into the day.

The light arrived and opened like a rose garden.

Sand and sky throbbed like an ultimate

beehive carved in the turqoise.

Your hand touched syllables that rang like bells,

touched cups, barrels full of yellow oil,

flower petals, fountains, and, above all, love.

Love: your pure hand guarded the ladles.

The afternoon was. Quietly the night

slid over a man asleep, its celestial capsule.

Honeysuckle set loose its sad savage odor.

And then your hand fluttered, it flew back again:

it closed its wings, its feather I had thought were lost,

over my eyes the darkness had swallowed.

Maybe—though I do not bleed—I am wounded,Walking along one of the rays of your life.

In the middle of the jungle the water stops me,

the rain that falls with its sky.

Then I touch the heart that fell, raining:

there I know it was your eyes

that pierced me into my grief’s vast hinterlands.

And only a shadow’s whisper appears,

Who is it? Who is it? but it has no name,

the leaf or dark water that patters in the middle of the jungle, deaf along the paths;

so, my love, I knew that I was wounded,

And no one spoke there except the shadows,

the wandering night, the kiss of the rain.

And now you're mine. Rest with your dream in my dream.
Love and pain and work shall all sleep now.
The night turns on its invisible wheels,
And you are pure beside me as a sleeping amber.

No one else, Love, will sleep in my dreams.
You will go, we will go together over the waters of time.
No one else will travel through the shadows with me,
Only you, ever green, ever sun, ever moon.

Your hands have already opened their delicate fists
And let their soft drifting signs drop away;
Your eyes closed like two gray wings, and I move

after, following the folding water you carry, that carries me away.
The night, the world, the wind spin out their destiny.
Without you, I am your dream, only that, and that is all.