There was a young lady named Bright,
Whose speed was far faster than light;
She set out one day
In a relative way
And returned home the previous night.

Professor Arthur Buller 1874-1944

Punch, 19 December 1923

The illustration is copyright: Bruce Rolff via Shutterstock

She will play to me
Skipping a beat and finding a beat
All of the memories and the melodies of blue

She will sing the stories
Running up and down this town
She will sing of cyclones and
The rooves as they fell down

She will play to me
She will play to you
She will sing of me
And sing of you – she

She will play to me
Skipping a beat and finding a beat
All of the memories and the melodies of blue

She will sing of youths
Who died before their time
She will sing of Diggers and
How they lost their mates.

She will play to me
She will play to you
She will sing of me
And sing of you – she

She will play to me
Skipping a beat and finding a beat
All of the memories and the melodies of blue

She…

They said there’s a rainbow

After every storm

It’s been raining for so long

I forgot about the sun

I’ve been running for days

Finding for shade

But you run into the rain

As if it can wash away the pain

You dance with the lightening

Go with the beat of the thunder

While I wait for a rainbow

Together in a silence
that holds a worry
about the absence of talk,
that holds a preference
in difference to the prevailing
speak;
not always companionable.
At times it shrieks
inside my head, giving orders
I cannot obey.
Silence is golden
talk is cheap.
Solitude and writing have become
my conversationalists,
is anything lost,
or gained for those we guide,
for those we love,
when words are sparse
and silence holds us all?

Called me your best friend
I thought of you as a sister
Now that’s gone.

I said you were my best friend
We planned to spend time together
Even as we made the plans I wondered if they’d happen
Remembering the times we made plans that didn’t happen
Movies we intended to see
Places we meant to go

But the proverbial hit the fan
And got in the way.

Wasted time being selfish and childish-something you called me more than once
And that’s what gets to me when I consider our friendship
We could have grown apart
But you ended things between us in a much different way

I think that’s what’s going to bug me in years to come
If I think about how we stopped being friends, I’m going to remember this
Maybe I’ll wonder what would have been

Maybe I’ll have forgotten completely

Either way, we went…

Graceful glides through midair
Air resistance supports white, feathered wings
High-pitched notes mock unpleasant silence
Resounding echoes throughout the pine-scented forest
Like white clouds or drunken dreams?
Determined elegance and beauty without approval
As I sit idly by the lake in admiration
Internal desires and fire budding in the heart
Hoping to become the swan that reaches high altitude
But on what basis if high altitude exists in infinity?
What swan flies freely forever in blue skies
And doesn’t descend upon earth to find a resting place?
Dead babies rest on wings of swans
Sacrificial creatures of the ancient past
Odette yearns silently for human form
Calling out in pride or fatigue, who can tell
As swan tears create Swan Lake
Ballets impersonate white swans
Becomes an old-fashioned style
And modern dances model awkward storks
As dancers fall to death on the ground
Applauses that resound in theaters
Break unaccompanied…

I lurk in the shadows unnoticed,
the days pass me by with gleeful, careless abandon,
as i sit in the shadows, hidden.

there were nights bejeweled with stars so bright
i blink from the glare that hurt my eyes.
there were afternoons so still and airless 

as i lay forgotten, suffocating in the dust.

there were days so dark with storm clouds

i strain to see the road before me.

i stay in the shadows uncertain,
the moonlight bathes my dreams
in a silver blanket that engulfs me
in obscurity.

So soft, the crinkled bough

Sweeps to the path of the

Rain kissed tar.

The scent is sweet and carries far.

I’m there now in summers previous,

When life was new

And love was tedious.

There upon the crown of

Majestic Killiney Hill,

We embraced our lives,

We drank our fill.

There beneath the darkness of summer.

©SD 1997