Never underestimate a California rose!
Her loveliness will break your heart,
Her thorns can tear you life apart,
Approach with caution, awe, respect, every wise man knows!

Her flirty dress at Easter-time will never be outdone!
Her fashion sense is truly awesome;
Shining leaf and painted blossom,
Flashing colors that could blind you in the California sun!

She’ll blow a kiss on perfumed breath for you alone, it seems.
A fragrance that can numb the mind,
Sweet and tart as Napa wine,
Her scent will linger in the air and haunt your summer dreams.

The slow, seductive opening of bud to fullest flow’r;
Each velvet petal, soft and light
As wings of dragonflies in flight
Cleverly conceals the secret of her staying pow’r.

When New York roses fall asleep with naked stem and thorn,
And every other dormant rose
Demurely dozes ‘neath the snows,
The California rose is known to bloom on Christmas morn!

Wherever you encounter her, she’ll strike a willful pose;
Climbing over garden walls,
Holding court in banquet halls,
Oh, never underestimate a California rose!

Oh, come with me, my own true love,
Down into the wooded dell.
There we'll beg the dappled shade
To cast again its leafy spell.

Let Time relinquish its control
As hours, blurred by muted light,
Mix memories with promises,
Heedless of the coming night.

Your heart and mine, my own true love,
Will pulse a pattern we know well:
Now as then, and then as now
Down within the wooded dell.

Nature's canvas grows
green upon green upon green
Love views the garden

One porcelain cup
fragrant steam circles around
fragile budding dreams

Love watches unseen
the loved one strolling alone
each step a promise

But who now appears?
furtive familiar kisses
shade sheltered passion

Jealousy's eyes glow
green upon green upon green
shattered cup and dreams

Why do I cry when crocuses bloom?
Why weep at daffodils?
Springtime’s salty sweetness fills my eyes with dew.

Bleak and barren winter harbors beauties of her own,
But not the type that wrings the heart for tears.

Here the sunlight, bright and white,
Ignites each flash of green
On every bush and tree within my garden wall.

Hope, hope and promise.
I weep for happy when the crocus blooms!

I wound myself in a white cocoon of singing,
All day long in the brook’s uneven bed,
Measuring out my soul in a mucous thread;
Dimly now to the brook’s green bottom clinging,
Men behold me, a worm spun-out and dead,
Walled in an iron house of silky singing.
Nevertheless at length, O reedy shallows,
Not as a plodding nose to the slimy stem,
But as a brazen wing with a spangled hem,
Over the jewel-weed and the pink marshmallows,
Free of these and making a song of them,
I shall arise, and a song of the reedy shallows!

Butterflies are white and blue
In this field we wander through.
Suffer me to take your hand.
Death comes in a day or two.
All the things we ever knew
Will be ashes in that hour,
Mark the transient butterfly,
How he hangs upon the flower.
Suffer me to take your hand.
Suffer me to cherish you
Till the dawn is in the sky.
Whether I be false or true,
Death comes in a day or two.

Why do you follow me?—
Any moment I can be
Nothing but a laurel-tree.
Any moment of the chase
I can leave you in my place
A pink bough for your embrace
Yet if over hill and hollow
Still it is your will to follow,
I am off;—to heel, Apollo!

Oh, lay my ashes on the wind
That blows across the sea.
And I shall meet a fisherman
Out of Capri,
And he will say, seeing me,
"What a Strange Thing!
Like a fish's scale or a
Butterfly's wing."

Oh, lay my ashes on the wind
That blows away the fog.
And I shall meet a farmer boy
Leaping through the bog,
And he will say, seeing me,
"What a Strange Thing!
Like a peat-ash or a
Butterfly's wing."

And I shall blow to your house
And, sucked against the pane,
See you take your sewing up
And lay it down again.
And you will say, seeing me,
"What a strange thing!
Like a plum petal or a
Butterfly's wing."

And none at all will know me
That knew me well before.
But I will settle at the root
That climbs about your door,
And fishermen and farmers
May see me and forget,
But I'll be a bitter berry
In your brewing yet.

Oh....oh...
so cold, so dark
There’s a light over there,
Maybe warmth to share...
Oh...oh...
I know this place...
The lighthouse where I awaited.. waited..

Just waiting for my handsome Tom,
Beflowered in my bridal gown,
And now I learn his ship went down,
All hands gone!

Oh, dearest Mother, let me be
And sisters, you must surely know
There is but one place I can go;
To meet my love down in the sea,

I struggle up the spiral stair
And lift the window’s rusty latch,
The casement splinters try to snatch
The bridal wreath from my hair!

I fly to you my dearest Tom!
My wedding gown for wings must serve
To shape my death fight’s graceful curve,
And break the sea’s deceitful calm!

oh....oh...
so cold, so dark
There’s a light over there,
Maybe warmth to share...
oh...oh...
I know this place...

Ah, Sky,
Light,
Bright,
Golden glow!
Shimmer, glimmering path!
Facets refracting on crystal stairs,
I levitate on a sparkle!
Icarus, I care for us!
Maybe this time
My wings won’t melt!

I sing the delight of tiny things,
Those I can see and the things I know;
The fluff of a feather on finch’s wings,
The myriad crystals in a flake of snow.

The tiny veins of a lemon leaf,
The cozy construction of cellulose cells,
The dewdrop tears of roses moved to grief
By the epic tale the cricket tells.

I sing the delight of tiny things,
Those I can see and the things I know;
Pollen on bee’s foot, a honeycomb ring,
A seed deep in soil who decides to grow.

The earth just a speck spinning freely in space,
Our sun a mere twinkle in far off skies.
The laugh lines that sketch my dear one’s face,
The tiny flecks of gold in his loving eyes

The eye I see when I close my lids
looks knowingly into my mind’s heart,
my heart’s mind,
and sees you,
curled up, soft as a puppy
waiting for me,
dreaming of love.

What shall I sing today,
Oh, what shall I sing today?
With my own, prettily peripatetic,
Palpably panegyrical voice,
Oh, what shall I sing today?
Perceptive, I can be.
Persnickety, at every opportunity!
Persuasive enough to get myself in trouble,
Perambulating around the truth,
Then pouncing playfully in its puddled mud!
What shall I sing today,
Oh, what shall I sing today?