POEMS: By RLH and favorites of others
THE DANCE
Whirling, swirling, dancing we go,
Ascending and climbing, life's juices aflow.
High with hopes, players we all,
Dancers as one to the music enthrall.
In hope we clutch one another,
Ignoring the truth, with sweet
thoughts cover.
The tempo jumps, the figures blur,
Discordant strains peer over our shoulder.
Faster! Faster! Our senses shriek!
Touching, holding, ... no time to speak.
Whispering...turbulent thoughts unkind,
Race across the channels of the mind.
We touch, we part, we touch again,
Stop the music! Is there no end?
Our load within, such fear and vanity,
We streak along the narrow halls of sanity.
What is life for? What does - - - - it mean?
Why . . . . dance the dance if we've not seen?
Bob Hurley
Copyright 1978
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WATERSONG (continued from "The Dance"
Features blur, focus oscillates;
Slowly comes clear...
...articulates.
Distant waters of hope now glint;
O'truth - hope swells, is
this our hint?
The "wise men” plant their seed...erudite folly;
Intoxicating but destructive philosophy.
In waves they send doubt - these sages; surely 'tis mad,
But you see, their great learning has made them sad.
Wait, be still!...now listen...a whisper;
what this - The Reason?
There is the One; so often.....out of season.
The One, in weakness, whose tears that fell,
Washed and made us well.
Yes, this dance of life is fraught;
The hurt, the sin.....we caught.
But now the Water radiates and lives,
A liquid fire that cleanses,
and Glory gives.
The promise is real - our spirit leaps!
We are His Glory, and if ... if you
Listen ... the Water speaks.
Bob Hurley
Copyright 1982
==========================
(My favorite poem, by my Uncle)
NOT THAT WE DIE
Death sometimes is sorrow, sometimes tragedy;
But all men blessed with seeing must go blind;
What flies must fail and fall; what laughs must cry.
For gladness must come sadness to the mind,
Not that we die, but that we live alone.
Since neither death nor life is right or wrong,
Not that we love, but that our hearts are
stone walls that reverberate no joy, no song.
Old battlefields come back in lullabies,
And courage is born in beauty left behind,
God is renewed in every man with eyes,
In birdsong in green boughs - and for the blind,
In rush of wings and warmth of sun - He's there.
He is reborn in every man who dies
For back to Him earth turns, paths twist, roads wind.
There is but one death only; that's despair -
Not that we die - but that we do not care.
Charles Lee Hurley
Copyright October 24, 1966
==========================
Geometry
LIFE is a straight line and a breath
Man draws between the points birth
and death.
Into the straight line love can swerve
The sharpest angle or the softest curve.
Charles Lee Hurley
Published
New York Times
============================
ODE TO THE commode
If your aim is amiss …….
We ask that you sit like a miss.
When you come to cop a pee
and
cannot hit the pot,
Then please, we beg, to cop a squat!
Robert L Hurley
Copyright 1996
==================================
SOMETIMES I WISH doing faraway deeds in a faraway land;
Sometimes I wish I was a
politician,
exuding power from every pore;
Sometimes I wish I was a
sculptor,
molding and forming a
shapeless mass;
Sometimes I wish I was a
teacher,
sculpting students with
fingers of the mind;
Sometimes I wish I was a
physician,
condescendingly healing the
halt and the lame;
Sometimes I wish I was a man
of God,
ministering and healing the
weak in spirit;
Sometimes I wish I was God,
with the power to
make things right!
Sometimes..........I even
wish I was me.
Robert Lee Hurley
Copyright l973
Copyright 1993, Robert Lee Hurley
====================================
LEVIATHAN
The rainbow reaches to the cross
But Noah's waters have subsided -
For Jesus walks where fear can toss,
And darkness rocks the heart divided.
Whose sparrow dazes half the day
Upon St Francis' bough of works?
Peter denies he knows the Way,
But one cock crows... the King of Birds.
Who breaks the holy bread of song
Which is the body of the Son?
Whose fishes feed the hungry throng -
Begging to consumed by One.
Why is it that the whale cannot
Savor the Jonah time has soured?
Where is the whale to swallow what
Cries out in vain to be devoured?
He comes once more on the midnight waves,
Sweet lost Leviathan of love;
He moves across the tossing graves,
- Now, the dead and drowned do hear his steps above.
Charles Lee Hurley
Revised
1987
Bob
Hurley
==============================================
ARITHMETIC
One and one are never two,
One and one are one and one,
As I am I, and you are you.
But, one and one is all alone.
One and one are never two, but one,
Except when we are two and touch;
when one and one are truly one,
Then, I am you - almost too much.
Charles Lee Hurley
Finished
1993
Bob
Hurley
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