Category: Ban, Peadar

Not All Gold

Sr. DorceeLeave a comment

Not All Gold

(for KJM)

Not all gold in deep vaults is locked away.
Not all gold is sealed, seamed in stone, from day.
Not all gold is sluiced into crystal streams,
Deeply dug, fire tried, forged and formed for dreams
That circle fingers, slim and supple necks.

Not all gold forms crowns or pours gilded decks
Down rivers rowed by slaves in chains below
Not all gold, not all gold will you find so.

There is a gold so sweet and free you’d cry
To hold, though freely let it from you fly.
Beyond reach this gold, of hand but not eye,
Appears above you in the morning sky
And lights the edges of the tallest leaves
Dancing in very tops of all the trees.

Before the wind wakes and shakes down the dew
It shatters green, this gold, the last bit of night
And scatters little diamonds from the height
To the waiting eye and memory.  You
Will find it so at dawn’s coming when with ease
In golden air, clear shifting, shaping, still
You spy shimmering in morning breeze,
The gold of God and his creating thrill.

-Peadar Ban

Originally posted here.

The Oriole

Sr. DorceeLeave a comment

A Sunday-poem from a blogger friend of mine:

The Oriole

I saw an Oriole come by.
Light, I thought, had learned to fly.
It seemed the sun had come to my garden
This morning, light winged, breast golden.
His song rang as bell rings clear
Whose charm pierces fleeing night, lingers
In heart’s ear but is too soon gone
While pale memory sips of sight and sound.

And I?  I must wait till sun’s return
Who, had I had my way, would have preferred
He stay and sing and shine like my own sun
In my own sky for me, for me alone;
His other works wait in other places
And he must shine on other faces.

The sun will peaceful on my garden shine
But bright light’s song has with his going flown
So I must rise and I must tell that I saw :
The brightness of day where was none before.
I saw an Oriole leap to the sky
And so I know that light can fly.

~Peadar Ban