WHITE GULLS AGAINST BLUE SKY AND SNOW
GLIDE THROUGH THE WINTER WORLD A-GLOW
THEIR BEAUTEOUS DRIFT TOWARD THE SEA
HAS FILLED ME WITH HUMILITY
LEROY PAYNE PEACH
A SPECIAL PROVIDENCE
These providential leaves
Conduct their own cantata falling:
Earth hugs her own
Silent and unashamed.
Suddenly, the spirit-wind
Scatters their flighty souls
Over the wide world
In an invisible liberation.
Through my spirit-window
I hymn this special parting primeval:
The evensong of a shortened voyage,
The anthem of an Eternal Heart.
LeRoy Payne Peach
Autumn Leaves
I never look at autumn leaves
Without a new humility--
Their rage, anarchy.last-ditch stand
Futile though it may be
Teaches of unyielding glory.
Tells me, in fact,
That each day's journey
Should blaze with a similar beauty
A similar truth.
LEROY PAYNE PEACH
A P0EM DEDICATED TO SNOW WRITTEN IN 1985. WITH APOLOGIES TO THOSE PEOPLE WHO HATE SNOW STORMS
Snowflakes chasing snowflakes
Low across the land.
Dazzing as they drift along
At the wind's command.
Sky has birthed them into forms
That dance and twirl and fall
To cuddle into beds on earth--Stark winter's all-in-all.
I sit here in my staid cocoon,
I sit and watch time go
But mark the peace both late and soon
That blossoms from the snow
LP Peach
A poem for lovers of snow!!!!!!
Thoughts In The Days Of A Plague (A poem in progress)
I look out from my window
A light snow falls straight down
In the offing a benign sea
Wears the silence and the smudge
Beauty, the beast.
The economy of nature
God’s greatest painting hijacked
Seagulls cry above empty tuneless streets
Invincible youth dance in the park
Bring forth their immortality.
Everywhere else mystification
Spreads and spreads and spreads
Commerce swallowed by a shuttered world
We are so small, we are so beat down
In our cells handwringing Confinement. “Distancing”
We are scrubbed, our hands chapped
Locked down in a spinning world we created.
The beast advances
We take stock: hand washing, panic, speculation,
The loss of equity, a falling sky,
A reversion to metaphor
Masks mask our ineptitude.
We plead: Rome burns.
“Things fall apart, the centre will not hold.”
“Take me to your leader.”
“Take me to your pundits.”
“What does Fox News say?”
“Hannity? Tucker?Laura Ingraham?”
Limbaugh? What does he say?
“
“There is no beast! All false news.” “
Gentleman start your engines again.”
“We are handling things beautifully, things
Beautifully. A beautiful call. There are millions
Of masks for those who want to be masked. Beautiful. “Everything is beautiful in its own way.”
Beauty and the beast. Possible at the same time.
“What is man that we are mindful of him?”
L.P. Peach
Thanksgiving
In the fierce light of this Thanksgiving Sunday,
I see the pumpkined fields, the ready trees,
Their scattered leaves—yesterday’s ecstasy—
Time-branded, coloured castoffs in the breeze.
And in the air at summer’s eventide,
There is a solemn chill, a kind of grieving.
In urban street, in rural countryside,
Some citizens would cling to what is leaving.
Yet in that rage of light and leaf there rests
A basic truth more comforting by far
Than autumn knell or winter’s snowy crests
Or spring’s sharp winds that sign another year.
That truth is this: though summer ends in in pain,
As sure as love, summer will come again.
LP Peach
Fine-tuned By Spring: Toronto, 1987
Fine-tuned by Spring, I revel in rebirth,
Emerge like groundhog, smell the happy air,
Watch for the robins, rob a little mirth
From busy birds, Spring’s antidote to care.
I see the gulls on green, their whiter white,
Imagine that I dwell beside a sea,
With lapping waves that sparkle and delight
That fill my soul with new humility.
I marvel at the pale-green leaves that grace
The ancient trees, secure in their belief
That life will once again emerge and race
Towards summer’s green domain—a dazzling fief!
I thank my God that I am part of this
Perennial certainty, Eternal Bliss.
LP Peach
Down Home: 1990
In sacred dawn when all the world is true
The sunrise pulls the sharded curtain back,
Gives us the headlands; then a boat or two
Sails into bronze, is silhouetted black.
Gulls whine and make me happy for that song
And I am one with all I hear and see.
Even the scheming crows that meet and throng
Add meaning to this sharp reality.
The art outside my window, in this hour
I contemplate the symbols I have known;
Apartment building, freeways, monied towers,
And waking early to the traffic’s drone.
In incremental daylight I decry
All that has kept me from my sea, my sky.
LP PEACH
FLINT ISLAND (FITZGERALD)
Sail me by Flint Island
On a sunny sea,
Broken sliver, my land,
Land of memory.
Blessed constant lighthouse
Winking all our days,
Honouring us and ocean
In its flinty praise.
A POEM ON THE DEPARTURE OF LEAVES, WRITTEN IN 1981 IN ONTARIO.
Providence
These providential leaves
Conduct their own contata
Falling.
Earth hugs her own
Silent and unashamed.
Suddenly,
The spirit-wind
Scatters their flighty souls
Over the wide world
In an invisible liberation.
Through my spirit-window
I hymn this special parting primeval:
The evensong of a shortened voyage,
The anthem of an Eternal Heart!
LeRoy Payne Peach
Thanksgiving. Toronto, 1985
In the fierce light of this Thanksgiving Sunday,
I see the pumpkined fields, the ready trees,
Their scattered leaves—yesterday’s ecstasy—
Time-branded, coloured castoffs in the breeze.
And in the air at summer’s eventide,
There is a solemn chill, a kind of grieving.
In urban street, in rural countryside,
Some citizens would cling to what is leaving.
Yet in that rage of light and leaf there rests
A basic truth more comforting by far
Than autumn knell or winter’s snowy crests
Or spring’s sharp winds that sign another year.
That truth is this: though summer ends in in pain,
As sure as love, summer will come again.
LeRoy Payne Peach
Autumn Interval: 1990
I love the changing season
It gives me ample reason
To speculate that we are put on earth
To keep that child-like awe we had at birth
Not of the things we own but what we see
The sights that mirror our mortality.
For in that focus is
That interval of bliss
Even when we are circumscribed by care.
For what in life can we discern more fair
Than nature’s glory in the blaze of leaf;
It teaches the essentials of belief.
Yet blind men mourn the year’s
Slow leave-taking as drear
And panic at the thought that summer’s leaving.
Life’s mystery is swallowed up by grieving
When that so sweet decay of leaf and tree
Should only body forth eternity.