Haiku of Beautiful Names

Garden of hollies
By the pool near the Grey Fort
Music heaven sent ...............................Lezlie Celia



Aperie open
Kalmia Latifolia
Apollo hails Spring....................April Laurel



From Wales, Man of Earth
Teamhair, hill of Celtic Kings
A bright flame of fame......................Taran Robert

I Burn Candles

Cherita of Light for a Dark White Night

I burn candles

Radiant, knifelike flames of spirit and heart
Flickering, dancing, with the breath of hope

Transformation, translation, testified in hot wax
Intention illuminated incarnate
Light glowing from within: prayers made manifest


©Edwina Peterson Cross

Beltane Greetings

Beltane Dance

Rowan and hawthorn blossom in twain
The oak and the ivy in trance
The May tree is decked out with ribbons
Come wreath you hair for the dance!

Tie up spring flowers in bunches
Lilacs of purple and white
To be gifted with laughter and blessings
And found with the mornings first light

Deck the doorway with Mountain Ash
Stack kindling from nine sacred trees
Bring sweetcakes, new cream and honey
The sweet dripping gift of the bees

The Greenman calls from the woodlands
The May Queen answers his song
With a cup over flowing with Maywine
Clear and renewing and strong

For the fires will blaze on the hillside
The darkness bring riches and chance
The year turns fertile and giving
Come join in the Beltane dance!

©Edwina Peterson Cross

Artist - For April

Artist

I did not believe in the painting
The dance, the words or the song
But I believed in the Painter
A belief that was solid and strong

I believed in the Dancer
Whose movement was fire to behold
I believed in the Singer
Whose song filled the darkness with gold

I believed in the Actor
Who could move souls with her voice
And I believed in the Woman
When she spoke of a different choice

The medium never has mattered
To one who draws light from above
Who makes radiant rainbows of magic
As a prism of passion and love

I believed in the Artist
With a faith strong as heaven can weave
This giving soul suntouched with genius
I believed.

I will always believe.



©Edwina Peterson Cross

Skadi Speaks

“What did you think?” The spinner laughed
Like a shush of slithering snow
“You, whose hands are dyed with the craft
You certainly ought to know.

Stretch the heart strings then weave the woof
In colors that dream and fly,
Push out the walls and raise the roof
Burst open to cradle the sky,

Entwine the horizon with vertical thought
Wreath patterns in circles of song,
Then taste the blessed vision you’ve wrought
Much wider than empty is long

This room is not empty, but brimming with chance:
A bright womb of words that are waiting to dance.”


©Edwina Peterson Cross

Alchemist's Lair

Alchemist

Alchemist

At the top of the stair
Is the Alchemists Lair
But you may find
Nothing there
The whisp of a whisper
The pray of a prayer
A split deck spinning solitaire
A venerable vintage, old and rare
Caught in crystal whirled in air
A candle’s breath, that bright hot flare
Then suddenly . . . . there is nothing there

The students come and they prepare
Declare, compare, become aware
Then return to earth back down the stair
Leaving a mystery they cannot forswear
Leaving a shadow in the empty chair
An Alchemist in the Alchemist’s Lair . . .
Weaving golden verse from the empty air . . .


©Edwina Peterson Cross

After Revelation

Knowing doesn’t change being
What is at this moment splashing in your eyes
Strung across your forehead like prayer flags
Slapping your face with the smack of the present
Shaking your shoulders with the snap of now
Is not in any way modified or altered
By any kind of sapience
Of what will
Inevitably be

That you will open your eyes one day
And find them gone
Doesn’t stop the morning from crashing
Like a rhinoceros through the porcelain dawn
A future vision of vanishing tail lights
Empty chairs at the kitchen table
Tidy, dusty, silent bedrooms
Does not erase fatigue
Nor transform the existent ache
For breathing space
A private moment
The time to think

How odd to be human
When knowing the future
Being all too aware of imminent
Events, equations, emotions
Doesn’t change an iota
Of the dance of
Now

I remember mornings
That peeled my eyelids open
Like the rip of surgical tape
When two small girls
Shook the stasis of the planet
And threw it off it’s axis
And I was embroiled,
Consumed, absorbed,
Immersed in the
Immediate

I opened my eyes one day
And found them gone


©Edwina Peterson Cross

Album Cover for Ebony Raven

THE THIRD ROAD

THE THIRD ROAD

TWO ROADS DIVERGED IN THE WOOD, AND I, I TOOK THE THIRD, THE ONE THAT WASN'T THERE AT ALL . . . AND THAT HAS MADE ALL THE DIFFERENCE.