ON LIFE’S GREAT JOURNEY

On life’s great journey
When sweet love crosses your path
Seize it with great urgency
Capture it and keep it safe
Do not let it loose from your grasp
Lest it slip through your fingers, and be gone
Hold it tightly
Cherish it, nurture it, and watch it grow
Until it wraps itself about you
Like a great loving cloak
Protecting you from the world
Making you invincible
And you will know true happiness
But when on your life long expedition
And sweet love crosses your path
Ignore it at your peril
For who can say
When it might pass your way again

BENEATH THE WEEPING WILLOW TREE

Like the star-crossed lovers,
Romeo and Juliet,
They come from feuding kin
And must hide their love
They meet in secret
Beside the quiet lake
The only sounds,
Are of the faintest breeze
Disturbing the lofty tree tops
And ducks squabbling on the lake
But despite the quiet
Fearful of discovery
They embrace hidden from view
Beneath a weeping willow tree
Whose leafy pendulous branches
Trail down into the still water
Stirred by the gentle breeze
They dip in an out of the water
Like the toes of a reluctant bather.
They kiss there in the quiet shade
And feel at once renewed
No words are spoken
Their language is of caress and kiss
Such tender converse
With limitless vocabulary
And languid pronunciation
Every syllable well employed
And when the final paragraph is reached
They end with perfect .punctuation
Stirring from their lovers languor
They tread separate paths
To rejoin warring tribes
Adopting adversarial manner
No knowing looks to be exchange
No casual brushing past
When for that exquisite moment
Hand touches hand
They must remain entrenched
Until they can once again
Embrace beneath the weeping willow tree

BENEATH THE WEEPING WILLOW TREE

Like the star-crossed lovers,
Romeo and Juliet,
They come from feuding kin
And must hide their love
They meet in secret
Beside the quiet lake
The only sounds,
Are of the faintest breeze
Disturbing the lofty tree tops
And ducks squabbling on the lake
But despite the quiet
Fearful of discovery
They embrace hidden from view
Beneath a weeping willow tree
Whose leafy pendulous branches
Trail down into the still water
Stirred by the gentle breeze
They dip in an out of the water
Like the toes of a reluctant bather.
They kiss there in the quiet shade
And feel at once renewed
No words are spoken
Their language is of caress and kiss
Such tender converse
With limitless vocabulary
And languid pronunciation
Every syllable well employed
And when the final paragraph is reached
They end with perfect .punctuation
Stirring from their lovers languor
They tread separate paths
To rejoin warring tribes
Adopting adversarial manner
No knowing looks to be exchange
No casual brushing past
When for that exquisite moment
Hand touches hand
They must remain entrenched
Until they can once again
Embrace beneath the weeping willow tree

BENEATH THE WEEPING WILLOW TREE

Like the star-crossed lovers,
Romeo and Juliet,
They come from feuding kin
And must hide their love
They meet in secret
Beside the quiet lake
The only sounds,
Are of the faintest breeze
Disturbing the lofty tree tops
And ducks squabbling on the lake
But despite the quiet
Fearful of discovery
They embrace hidden from view
Beneath a weeping willow tree
Whose leafy pendulous branches
Trail down into the still water
Stirred by the gentle breeze
They dip in an out of the water
Like the toes of a reluctant bather.
They kiss there in the quiet shade
And feel at once renewed
No words are spoken
Their language is of caress and kiss
Such tender converse
With limitless vocabulary
And languid pronunciation
Every syllable well employed
And when the final paragraph is reached
They end with perfect .punctuation
Stirring from their lovers languor
They tread separate paths
To rejoin warring tribes
Adopting adversarial manner
No knowing looks to be exchange
No casual brushing past
When for that exquisite moment
Hand touches hand
They must remain entrenched
Until they can once again
Embrace beneath the weeping willow tree

GHURKA WARRIOR

Ghurka warrior
Proud and loyal
How can you take
This cruel betrayal

Always williing
To take up arms
To suffer war
And all its harms

You defended empire
And commonwealth
Fighting hand to hand
And in stealth

You stood and fought
In our nations name
How we forsake you
To our governments shame

Ghurka warrior
Loyal and proud
You now have justice
Let us cheer you aloud

LOVES METAPHOR REVISITED

Not even the angels above
Could make a better match
So please be with me
And I will make you happy
Such is the depth and breadth
Of my lasting love
Intense and profound
Broader than the horizon
And the measure of an ocean deep
Enduring till that watery abyss
Dries to sun baked desert
And its powdery form runs
Through your fingers
And loves metaphor is blown away
Like smoke on the wind

DESIGN FOR LIFE

lWhen you look out
Across the cityscape
The first impression is one of planning
With order and method
A systematic landscape
Above a thriving community
Running as a well oiled machine
Every element doing its part
A symbiotic relationship
Every person a cog in the machine
A perpetual entity
Evolving and changing
Redesigning itself
Outside the conurbation
As if in stark contrast
The country side and nature
Appear chaotic and haphazard
Without order or method
Simple and ordinary
Lacking the sophistication of civilization
But in reality the urbanites live in chaos
Dysfunctional and self-destructive
While in nature there is structure and order
And the closer you observe it
The more of its complexities
And intricate structures are revealed
Everything precision engineered
With order and purpose
Every organism contains nature’s code
The building blocks of our world
And of our universe
True sophistication exists at every level
Complex and extraordinary
So let man builds his cities
While God builds everything else