Quartz
Door-stop of white quartz,
Shutting experience out
Or keeping it in?
All that rough imagery
Worn to hand-warmed smoothness.
I have seen children
Behind the glass of years
Wearing my childhood’s clothes,
Their too-bright eyes
Unfocussed on my books,
Their wax fingers
Playing with my toys.
Unspoken words
Alert my inner ear;
I reach towards
The perfect painted egg
My daughter brings to me
Every Easter Day,
Her cupped hands cradling love.
She fills my silence
With her chatter song
And joy irradiates
The lovely oval
Of her unborn face.
Question for any mother
How much do I love you, flesh of my flesh and bone
Of my bone - enough to leave you free
To seek your ultimate good by ways unknown,
Whatever be the cost to me?
Enough to let you tread your path alone,
Even to Calvary,
If that's the way your road lies, or to see
You sweating blood in some Gethsernane,
Nor lift a hand to strike away the cup
From which you choose to sup?
That I would give my life for you, you know,
Nor stop to count the reckoning up.
But do I love you enough to let you go?
Dorothea Spears
Quiet a Mountain Knows
Mountains, blue in the distance,
White clouds scaling the heights,
Grey rock breaking the velvet slopes
With soft reflected lights-
How old they are! How peaceful!
Long years have taught repose –
When we are as old shall we have found
The quiet a mountain knows?
Or shall we die in the distance
With all our hopes and schemes
Before we have learned that perfect calm
Beyond our mortal dreams?
Quiet Mind
I am only a little voice, a small
Inconsequential traveler on life’s way;
When I declaim, no sonorous organs play
And few will heed the clamour of my call.
Yet I have knowledge of this fabulous wall
that blocks the blind Outsider from the day
And makes a mockery of every clay
Creation ever moulded or let fall.
As real is the figment of the fevered brain
As sane reality, as deep the woe,
Unbearable the bitterness and pain.
It is the way the stateless soul must go
Till separation proves its battle vain
And merges in the one resistless flow.
Dorothea Spears