The colors of being

I do not know when it began or when
breath gave me the French kiss of life
but, I do remember its naked entrance
awash in birthing color, red, red as blood.

Life begins with a crimson passion,
a spontaneous ignition of the soul,
a firing of the spirit’s, spirituality, an
exploding kaleidoscope of pigments.

The nurturing soil of being dusky brown,
the rich fertile nutrient of beginning, rooting
flesh to bone, skin to flesh, mind to body,
a garden of composted existence.

Knowing is a universe of eternal blue,
a velvet dark blue of limitless forever,
pulling, inviting, a challenge to humankind
to comprehend the what and why.

Opening the mind’s eye stirs awakening,
surrounded by the green of our mother,
her trees, flowers, a teeming growing bounty,
a blinding awe of her sustaining abundance.

The firmament bares burnished golden hue
the purse of eternity gathering coin,
all the things we do or do not do, the gleaming
repository of the soul’s resurrection.

©2012, Donald Harbour

Kingdom come

can one contemplate forever
forever is the eternal plain
a distance without punctuation
unending since creation began
a horizon so unimaginable
constant as the wearing of time
to tread upon it finds no end
a soul decays on the journey
relief in acceptance of the trial
the testing of a human shell
watched weighted and valued
the worth only in forgiveness
there is so much that is lost
so many drop into the abyss
that purgatory of damnation
souls used and used and used
learning until they are ready
until they know the meaning
of life and its immutable cycle

©2012, Donald Harbour

Skipping stones

Selecting a small smooth flat
river rock, he wrote his name
on one side and threw it
skipping across the water.

Standing silently, watching,
he turned quickly as it
sank beneath the surface
to be collected on the bottom.

To him the rippling mirror
was life momentarily touched.
The stone a soul cast out
on an unknown journey.

It was a truth welling up,
a realization that time
and water could not support
the burdens of a life forever.

It would be so easy giving in
to the gravity of his life.
A momentary lapse would mean
another unknown journey.

There was a comfort in that,
he felt a calm, an inner peace.
For the first time he felt
connected to the moment.

Of all the millions of stones
that lay beneath the water,
this stone was different.
This stone had his name on it.

©2012, Donald Harbour

Bounded by boarders

“My God,” cried the supplicant,
expressing belief in extremity,
that token labium of the metaphysical.
We are all the hoarders of borders,
living on imagined deckle-edged paper,
there writing our circumscribed lives.
Each defining the selvage of our fears,
consternation of woven limitations, we are
fettered by a bête noire tenant of the soul.
At times, others handcuff us to a purlieus bed,
accepting, seeking release from dragging our yokes,
then, refusing to master the pale of our requiem.
Lives lived in containment, shackled by convergence,
never venturing into the freedom of self, never
bounding past our own hobbling erosive manacles.
They are meant to contain, they are control,
the pestilence of living that defines what we become.
When the lights go out we are each confined,
bound by dirt, plastic, wood, or brass jar,
that is the environ of our material existence,
rest, peace within a packaged repository.
We do not realize there is no caracole,
only in life ending release of the energy within,
will we understand its limitlessness, and the
boundless freedom of being one with creation.

©2012, Donald Harbour

This room holds history

Look about this room,
Inhale the scent of its past,
Peer into its shadows,
Memories dark places cast.
Come, look at its walls,
Where pictures neatly hang,
Faces smiling, faces frowning,
Faces grimacing in pain.
There is history here,
Though not at first sight,
Things buried deep within,
Vanquished, never seeing light.
This room is a shrine,
A place of hope and damnation,
A constant reminder,
A time vault of consternation.
It is a journey’s narrative,
The quest that one man gained,
It is the only room he owns,
It opens only to his name.
All these things are treasures,
Pages filled with love and strife,
This room a valued possession,
A library of one man’s life.

©2011, Donald Harbour

Mirrors

mirrors are shameless
static plates of glass
renouncing the reality of image
a reflection cast as if
the reflected is magic
on the hard surface
specks dot the glare
streaks of water droplets
smudged finger prints
there randomly placed
gouging the clarity of the eye
a shot of Windex cleans
but it does not change
the visage as viewed
most find mirrors damaging
but then the eyes transform
seeing only the good qualities
lesser dimensions discarded
answering what we want to see
not the indigestible of what is
somewhere on the other side
where its magic resides
we are all being observed
not for beauty of form
not for the warts and moles
nor chemically whitened teeth
or grace of dress and makeup
those unseen others are there
searching the hidden places
recording the deeds of a life
watching for the cracks
the varnish of age presents
waiting until it is the hour
to unlock the shackled passages
opening that tiny place in the heart
that vaulted room of self where
we sit in a chair of destiny
releasing the fragile soul
into infinite cosmic consciousness

©2011, Donald Harbour

The Soul’s Poetry seeks Absolution

I once faced this world bound and cast in a pit
of despair.
Words saved me.
I do not claim poetry,
it has claimed me for good
or worse.

The ache with in pounds upon my soul
seeks absolution through its complaint,
those observed moments of life
where truth
meets the lie.

As oil and water separate,
knowing the difference
contradicts.

What I feel is not given to know.

You would not understand.

You would walk along the sandy beach
looking only at the placid surface
of that which is me beneath the waves.

Never knowing the depths.

Never knowing the leviathans there.

My greatest fear is that
there is more.
Something in the dark depths of me
that must be,
should be written.

My greatest fear is that you will never
Reach out and grasp a drop of this water.
These salty tears that would give meaning
to the poetry
I was given to give.

The fear that you will pass by these words and
they will die
as each sunset does,
never to be seen again.

Will you
remember only the sunset?

©2011, Donald Harbour

Push back the night

The first line of this poem inspired by the last line of a previous sonnet “Thou Art a Strumpet Fair”.

*************************************

Thy kiss to seal heart’s dalliance there,
Oh maiden with locks of golden hair.
Where first your want, thus did I espy,
Within the depths of thine violet eyes,
Canst thou not be charmed nor pleased
As flowers kissed by a summer breeze;
Where heady nectar drips from crimson lips
That only a honey bee of love dares to sip?
Thus stung as a dagger pierce’th mine heart
With an enchanted poison pointed Cupid dart.
Lay down I now in death’s shallow musty grave,
A broken ragged beggarly tarnished knave.
Mine blood gone cold didst cease to flow
While thy cheeks burned with a passion glow.
Bring back my soul from this bottomless abyss
Push back the night with  thy lover’s kiss.

© 2010, Donald Harbour

This chill

bone of my bones
flesh of my flesh
succor me now
in this hour of night
when the blush
has left the grape
the winds bring
the valley mist
rolling over hills
past the barren vineyard
toward the ocean current
seeking north though
not knowing why
it drifts from me
yet it lies deep
finding each crevice
in the veneer of life
bone of my bones
flesh of my flesh
why is there this chill
in my heart and soul

©2010, Donald Harbour

Where the Robins fly

One morning looking out my window,
A Robin perched looking in at me.
A rumpled feathered creature
In the boughs of a Tulip tree.

Its beak was old and weathered,
Chipped pecking at hardened seeds.
Its scaly legs and talons,
Dried and withered reeds.

I smiled remembering spring,
When it had come the year before.
To fly against my window pane,
Or sit chirping above my door.

To me it was an omen,
A gift from my distant past,
I wondered where it had been til now
And if this visit would be the last.

The Robin held still its feathered head,
Not a breath of life could I discern,
It continued to examine me with eyes,
As if from me an answer it would learn.

I think it knew its time was near,
That it would rest on the ground below.
To become part of the fertile earth,
Where wild flowers each spring would grow.

In an instant it flew out of sight,
A dart of color across the sky
Where the soul of man will ascend,
Carried away where the Robins fly.

©2010, Donald Harbour