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This page has nothing to do with the Theosophical Society in Maryland except their being composed by one of its members who is the webmaster of this site. Dorian Borsella

The Initiation

I try to grasp the question, the quest,
but lethargy overrides careworn brain.

I want to train my senses to feel--to burn--to flame,
To shine like Venus on a chill night.
To give a rest to shame.

But let me cry or try with every sinew of lifestrain,
Like a match held against January's mean wind.
No zest can retain.

I lie drowsy and drugged in a forest of thorn
Until a warm rain falls and I, like Lazarus,
Take up my bed, reborn.

Tarot Dream

A staccato sense of wonder beating within my breast like a drum
As though I had glanced down from the High Mountain
During a Vision Quest,

And far below a straining hum,
A medieval market village
With dancing dogs and boys with sticks.
In the town's center, a fountain
Where one lone juggler plies a tattered bag of tricks.

Outside the courtyard wall, deep within the castle,
Gliding along a lantern-lit hall
A High Priest passes
A corporeal vassal, the Queen of Swords
And all Pentacle Pages,

Wise men, blind men,
Hanged men, beggars, sages.

Flora Fuller

Flora Fuller pulled the front room window shades
to measured length, six inches above the pane
on a steaming August Monday morning
as her digital watch bleeped eight. No hope of rain.

Flora wore comfortable shoes on her feet.
A cerebral sort, she crammed the New Yorker magazine
into her overstuffed tote.
If a freeway accident, she would be late! Wearing a yellow suit,
she began her commute.

Flora Fuller felt fine turning the key to her office door at nine.
Two hours later,
there occurred a cerebral accident.
They carried her down from the thirteenth floor.

********

A month later, in September's drizzle,
The neighbors fanned out before Flora Fuller's rented townhouse.
There were no unpaid loans.
People talk in respectful tones.
A moving man arrived in a monster van.

The window shades remained at measured length.
They allowed light just enough.

Delores Chesney

A playmate, a six-year old girl
pumped up with her mission
of conveying fresh, great, terrifying news,
spilled out the words: Delores Chesney died!

Accent on the DIED.
Quiet Delores had performed a trick that none of us had even come close to,
nor ever been sick.

All this was during the droning lull of a steaming summer
between first and second grades at St. Bernard's School,
many years ago,
when streetcars clattered down Gorsuch Avenue,
when deafening electric floor fans Sundays at church
stirred the dead air, the sun dust that streamed through opened stained glass windows,
drowning out the high pitch of the priest's voice
who spoke of Hell like he had been there, done that.

*******
We were not ourselves rich, except in a child's imagination.
We made mud pies, dug holes in back yards.
I thought a deep dig might take me to China.
At the corner shoe repair shop I'd beg for an old heel
to hit the eight-box in sidewalk hopscotch.

We jumped rope, didn't have play dates.
Yet we had fun.
But this dying, whatever it was, was something different.
This much, I could feel:
that when September came, Delores Chesney would not be at school.
She got hit by a car. Cars were scary (my family didn't have one).
If you crossed the street without looking, they killed you.

Now, when I'm old enough for matinee movies at the senior rate,
I want to shed a tear for Delores Chesney,
mulched by the metal monster with the cruel fender, the devouring grate.

Did she cry?
Did someone run to get her mother?
Did she know about “die”?

Winter Solstice

My body in twisted bedsheets acknowledges the morning.

I shiver, cold in the comforter.

A street light shadow jets across the ceiling, glittering in the frosty dawn, for the sunlight

Has traveled as far as it will ever go.

Icy chill coats the outside windowpane.

Across the narrow street, a curtain patch glows yellow, that grim first click of a lightswitch.

Crows emit their compelling shrill caws.

A dog barks from the stark and the chill of the no-longer night.

Phantom footsteps clatter on the sidewalk.

The Squirrel Lady

Late afternoon

On the last long day,

The amber, slanting sun

Tinting red-yellow toasted leaves

On my front lawn

And on the giant oak tree,

Leaves free-falling in the golden glitter.

On this very day,

Old Constance Crossworthy

Who fed fat squirrels from her sickroom window

Was taken away.

Yet only with the angled sun's retreat

Does gold or god or earth and heaven meet.

Mr. Little

Mr. Little, at six feet three, towered over many men
though later bent by the gravity of the atmosphere
pushing down on his sloping shoulders.
His waist size was Diabetes Two.
Yet, "Little" was no misname, a Sisyphus pushing a boulder uphill
although our man offended no gods, defied no Kings nor ever sought fame.
"Mr. Large" could not have carried the charge.
"Mr. Big," no one would construe.

Retiring at home after his job was taken,
(He left with a shopping bag and a vague grudge against the Mayor of the city.
New technology took his job.
Some said it was a pity),

He lived with a cantankerous older sister.
The pair drew energy from their fussing.
She nagged. He was passive-aggressive.
He took his daily doctor-ordered walks.

Big Sis had trouble with the stairs.
She rarely went out,
fearful of neighbors' curious glares.
She never answered the door

but one time, paramedics pounding,
the day Mr. Little was found on the floor

Still, life ticks on. A one-way street.
I get clues who I am by the people I meet.
Sometimes I laugh. Sometimes I sneer.
Other times I shrink with fear.

Tick-tick-tick. A one-way road.

Will the cars knock you over, or your cares,
Or, even more dangerous, not sensing the mode.

NOTHING IN THOSE FIRST EIGHT
Could have prepared me for the next fifty years.
From all the scares and the scars
And the wars and the bombs,
The spites, the fights, the hate.
For splitting the yin from the yang.
For "enlightened self-interest."
For the rants of the good and the merely great.

Tick. One-way road? Could it be a Path?

Tickticktickticktickticktick!

Instant information! Instant gratification! No time to reflect
Or you'll neglect something! No space! Cyberspace!

Tick.

I don't know what may await at St. Peter's gate.

Could the secret be the quiet sound between the tick and the tock?

Millennium Song

When I was barely four
My mother told me bedtime stories. I always wanted more.

When I became five, my burning question
Much repeated, much deflected, was
"Where did I live before I was alive?"

"What do grownups do?"
They get jobs, they get married,
They get tired, cross and harried.
They don't play - all day.

By the time I was seven
I guessed I was headed for jail or for heaven.

Life ticks on. When I turned eight, I added
Fifty years to my age. Even twelve, in those days,
Seemed mighty old.
By the year 2K I'd be close to mold.

Elegy for Enid

It was you, my foundation-friend,

who once explained

that publishers have no truck with dead poets.

Does the poem die when the poet does?

Is the poem the poet?

You re-created, riding the G train to Brooklyn,

more vividly than the riders knew of themselves,

spinning their hopes and dreams and fears and dreads from true seeing.

That November evening with me,

full moon magical,

two sixty-year-old schoolgirls sipping chamomile tea,

snuggled in teddy bear pajamas, we could have passed for six,

giggling over school stories. Tea cups and cupcakes

and the morphine bottle,

your mind starburst-brilliant,

your body ruined, metastatic,

You were ever hopeful

but I had already dreamed the dream

that you journeyed to meet your mother at the station.

Gerard Manley Hopkins Gerard Manley Hopkins, you caused your Jesuit brothers quite a bit of bother! What furtive fear or joy or terror or guilt, goaded you on to what hidden heart space? Was all this drama really about your father? Oxford christened you the “Star of Balliol” with honors, triple firsts, delight.¹ The earth sun is also a star, whose bright obscures the phantoms of a deeper night that later came to haunt and mock, unbidden. These nocturnal specters Paid you a call one night in far off Wales, denied your sleep's reprieve. you wandered, not yet dawn, into the cloister park. That hour, a crescent moon lit up your sight, a waning moon that moved toward the dark.² Another evening, on a lonely road, a candle in a window stirred your soul, curious always, first to fervent wish, then to self castigation. ³ What test could you have given to tax your demand for excellence and been contented with the passing? Why this anergia, this springing to fall?⁴ Who could even conjure the question to fathom such gaiety turned into gall?⁵ My belief is that you did wish to defy, But lacked the tools to grasp your own intent. Your examined conscience might recall an occasional uncharitable thought, a young man's vague carnal desire. You had the passion, but no key to unlatch the what or why, self-analysis not then being in fashion. At Oxford, Michaelmas term, you flourished in freedom, before a cloud descended like a pall, the Question ever hanging. To go to Rome or no? Decision can be both torment and titillation and only, after the Act, deflation. Birmingham and Newman's school¹ soon robbed your zest, and then the Jesuits, a trial by fire, in your case, a flame that failed to sire a phoenix, that flared and flickered, never to attend, in Wales, Liverpool, Farm Street, hither, yon. The sinking of the Deutchland, the tall nun,² came to replenish inspiration, perhaps recall another drowning of a cherished friend?³ And you, Gerard. You failed to wax, but gave up the ghost all too soon, a fevered body and a careworn brain, your life-juice seeping in a spare, dank Dublin cell-room. Like water down a fetid drain. So much for the harvest! You planted seed. Your poems are prayers and pictures and dark descants, for later generations who have the greater need.