Things

How do we let go —
we who have in a lifetime
brought things in —
collected,
gathered,
polished,
dusted things
to build our house against the wind?

How do we say now —
wind, come in,
disperse
to a heartless earth
all my lovely garnered things?

How do we let go —
after we have thought,
labored,
sweated,
toiled
to gain possessions,
locked our door against the night
and now are we to say —
Thief, come in — take it away?

Eternity — you say — has all the answers.
These are the shadowlands
where we have played
for just a day
as children do with toys,
sulking when night comes
and we are told — Put them away.

How do we let go? — we don’t —
like children — must be pulled away.

— © Shirley Anne Leonard

Path of Dreams

There is a landscape in my head
with every kind of winding road
that I may travel as I’m led,
set free of every tiresome load.

It runs through sky and star, through gale,
through forest path and tumbling rill.
But I've not gone the length at all
for want of courage, lack of skill.

So in my muse the quest goes on
and reaches almost — then the day
comes, dimming visions with the dawn.
Which road to take? Which path, which way?

— © Shirley Anne Leonard

A Noble Proverb

“Iron sharpens iron,”
so they say.
But what if I
am only made of clay?
Obliteration —
if I get in the way!

Iron sharpens iron.
So does stone
if rough, and with a
hardness all its own
to grind the weapon’s
cutting edge, and hone.

Iron sharpens iron.
Make me so
the wheel will grind
deliberate and slow,
and sparks will not inflame
emotion’s glow.

Iron sharpens iron.
Let us talk
and mind the words we say,
lest they should walk
toward battlefields
and kill us on the way.

— © Shirley Anne Leonard

Tell Him Slowly

Threatened
by things he does not know,
like the man with the hoe
in Millet’s painting,
he lives in his world laboriously
and with much pain.
His back is bent
and the heat of the sun
numbs his brain.

He has no time to reason,
no time to dream.
He sees no heaven,
knows all he wants of hell.
He knows no God
nor does he ask to know,
has no awareness
that mankind fell.

Tell him slowly things are not
as they should be.
Give him time to think,
to dream.
His way is hard
and filled with strife and pain.
He dies before his time
always, always threatened by things
he does not know.

Tell him slowly things are not
as they should be.
Give him time to think —
to dream.

— © Shirley Anne Leonard

Poem Trees

Shall I pick them like the apples
hanging red upon the boughs —
these little gems with blazing lens
for kindling fire out of prose?

Shall I pare them like Miss Dickinson,
impatient so with frills,
disclose the core and seed within
to scatter broadly on the hills?

And then, should one forget to dream,
he may discover on his way
a full-grown tree of rhapsody
to lighten up a dreary day.

— © Shirley Anne Leonard

Without Words

Made into a song by Richard Silkebakken. To download and play the music, choose MP3 format or M4A format.

I cannot tell you,
words will not come,
but if soul should speak to soul
what need for tongue?

Let my eyes tell you
when they gaze into yours
and my soul gets lost
in their deep corridors.

Let my lips tell you,
barely touching yours,
of the tender love
in a heart that adores.

Let my hand tell you,
clasped into yours,
while love speaks
without words.

Let your music speak,
with the setting sun
in the soft hours of twilight,
that we are one.

— © Shirley Anne Leonard