Tiny black feet…

the way they walk along lame lifelines
spun of seconds, fragments, hours

leaving calenders like clotted little tears…
they’re bashful beadlets, idly rolling

round their few uncounted years

round far too loosely fallen stillness
or an unavailing pause in something grey…
                                              

the way they walk along lame lifelines…

helpless children without water, food and shoes…

the way their story ‘s being told in tenuous blues

in blurry worldwide languages that slide off

all their shadowtinted, unaccepted races

while their stumbling tiny black feet

print no traces on the mirror of today…

we seem to simply make their difference

invisible, unbearable or just a humble mark

of something misty, inaccessible and dark…

children without turns to take

existing for the smudging sake

of illness, painful poverty and death…

they breathe an atmosphere that dims

their timid angelvoices sooner than they talk…                         

the way they walk along lame lifelines

blindly limping round time’s stillness

or an unavailing pause in something bad

born to be the innocently sad…

Najade

© Drs. Rikki Keller

Sunday, 19 August 2007 

 

oh yes…

oh yes, my Lord…

I’m watching them

not quite like You, but still…

my humble eyes can see them spill

a million sacred lives…

I see the beehives they call towns

I see their fears, their pains, their frowns …

I see Your humans running wild

the tiny shadow of each child…

I see Your animals, Your rains

Your limping forests, drying plains…

oh yes, my Lord…I see You cry

and just like You I wonder why…?

I see the ailing birds and more…

the rubbish brought to every shore

I taste the poison in Your air

I sense Your nature’s deep despair…

oh yes, my Lord…I see You cry

and just like You I wonder why…?

Najade

© drs. Rikki

mother earth

the way our planet turns around

with boundaries and all –

the ones we made, the ones we found

by any secret call –

we never know which way to go

we search, we whirl, we fly

to get one place where we might grow

although we don’t sense why…

the way our mother earth abides

whichever storm will roar –

the ones that kill both grooms and brides

and children in a war –

we never understand her pain

we laugh, we love, we live

to stay the lightlinks of the chain

that used to hold and give…

Najade

© drs. Rikki

for humanity to sing…

Lord, let me be a while, a little while:

the river where she meets the smiling sea

the silver albatros that travels

on an ancient Liberty…

the dodd’ring hand that picks a snow-drop

in a snoozing Aprilpark

the tiny candle that enlightens

someones soundless, boundless dark…

Lord, let me be a while, a little while:

the mother while she feeds her hungry child

the swinging pendulum that swerves astray

from Sunday to run wild

the dancing feet that kiss a moorland

in a dreaming Irish vale…

the auburn sunset weighing nothing

on Your heaven’s holy scale…

Lord, let me be a while, a little while

Aurora when she paints a sailing cloud

the baby prairie-wolf that’s learning

to be fearless, swift and stout

the fairy naiad guiding poets

to her most inspiring spring

the slender quill composing lyrics

for humanity to sing…

Najade

© Drs. Rikki 2006

glissando…

here we are dancing on the utter edge of time

oblivion our shadow and tomorrow

the reflection of our dreams…

we borrow sunbeams from above

to help us bloom in blissful love

we drink the rain, we kiss the wind

we breathe the air…

where global oceans glide ashore

we’re building castles in the sand

amidst the dunlins and the plovers

and the tides…like little children

in God’s ever gracious hand…

here we are playing ‘long the waterline of life

the ageless stave on which the muses

draw the mystic notes of streams

the blue oblivion our shadow

and tomorrow the reflection

of our dreams…

Najade

© Drs. Rikki 2006

February 13th, 1861-1911-2006

these helpless hands caress

the sacred thought of strings…

life is a million, million

million, million things:

tempestuous symphonies

of Mahler, Wagner, Brahms

(an eagles wings…)

a yellow Aprilbird that sings

that sings, that sings…

a simple bird near ever hidden springs…

my ancestors adream in bluish spheres:

oblivion, a blistered vale of tears…

a woman, once a girl, I see her face

a timid servant to the higher bourgeoisie

she had no place, she was

she was, but not to be…

still she gave birth to those who’d mother

gals like her, my silver granny and my mom

so strong, so young…

a line of ladies to whom’s spirits I belong…

these helpless hands create

an everlasting song…

Najade

© drs. Rikki Februari 13th, 2006

Fleurs-de-lis…

today at dawn I watched a marv’lous fleet of geese

against the porcelain of the frosty winterskies

they sketched a dozen of their magic freedomvees

as if they flew there just for me, to please my eyes…

a gift of nature, this fantastic floating piece…

like fleurs-de lis, immensely highcomposed

the birds and I, we formed one prayer on the breeze

the world below a lonely head that hung and dozed…

today at dawn I sensed creation’s endless light

my humble figure felt embraced by heaven’s Hail

God, how You blessed me with this grand and holy sight

the birds and I, some of Your children, small and frail…

Najade

Drs. Rikki © january 25th, 2006

Bethlehemstraat 22

at grandma’s stately townhouse

grandpa’d invariably beseem

in frugal furniture and bourgeois drapes… 

he had so little selfesteem

yet sat there on his solemn chair

beside the muffled stove:

two silent crooked shapes…

the brassy bracket

waved away their winter’s light

in such a lethargy that would

soon leave them lieing still –

from left to right

from left to right…

tonight we saw

the grizzly old façade:

a lifeless tombstone

pointing down into the blind

and blank abyss

of modern arbitrariness…

the nameless door

did not reopen to the time

that left them lieing still –

from left to right

left…right…

left…

Najade

© drs. Rikki 2006

Daddy’s house…

The house was standing

at the hush-end of the street:

a closetongued book,

in which someones words

had overwritten ours…

No punctuation mark pointed at me…

The dead passed me by

in such an line that laces itself

‘round a reopened  wound…

I longed to ask them if they could see me,

crawling back through our olden days,

right along the once determined border

of my daddy’s land…

And my eyes kept burning

over their tired heads,

untill they rested in my hand,

so that I could send them away

on the winterwind, one by one by one…

I found his footsteps at the hush-end

of a sleeping labyrinth, still runnig wild…

They fitted me: his lonely lastborn child…

Drs. Rikki

© 2006

Angin…

is she real…?

or just a rumour, true or not…?

her blue appearance like a hue

of time and stillness, gently breathing

through the winter’s subdued smile…

one magic mile or millions

unseen distances, a lonely silver tear…?

Lord, is she near…?

is she an angel wearing wings

that warm the wind?

a hint of faded golden cultures

lost conventions, or a name

that no one mentions, or a plea…?

her silent screaming sounds like poetry

and ever whirling snow…

oh… is she real…?

or is she someone’s secret dreaming

someone’s origine

or just a flying child…?

I sense she’s wild, I sense she’s free

she might be me…

Najade

© drs. Rikki 2006

evening mystique...

a slate-grey evening slides across the sleepy town…

an ageold habit, sowing moods from house to house

(by silent softthrows of a nameless hand…)

beyond each window seasons come to pass

predictably, oh yes…they measure lifelengths

‘long no line…look: one arrives and one departs…

one leaves a teartrack, hushing

some forsaken candleflame

but leading to no warmer, younger place…

slate-grey dusk aslides ‘round stiffened shapes:

dark trunks and hagues and remnants of a ‘sleeperdyke’

that has to carry nothing but a speechless sheep

a clump of knotwort and a sluggish shadow

on a rusty bike…

something puzzling encompasses

circumscribes, concerns and flows again

flows out… without a sound and sensed

but by the one who is allowed to know

how someone, once alive here

sought his last support…

a hue of snowwhite mist

breaths from the chilly soil…

Najade

© Drs. Rikki 2006

My silent spirit hides a dream in ageless blue:

oh I would love to dance on ultra-tender toes,

where ‘long the flanks of mount Parnassus music flows

and I would wish to mail this fantasy to you…

Your words are jewels, sparkling talent shining through…

They lift me higher than the breath of winter goes,

upon the wind, by which sweet inspiration glows,

a blush to share: Apollo’s truly blissful hue…

You are a poet on the threshold of his times

and I receive the soft reflection of your chimes:

this distant melody that moves my motherheart…

I know the way within the Eden of your rhymes…

I read your youthfulness, your wisdom, free and smart,

for you, my friend, I’ll always have a warm regard…

Rikki

A sonnet for ZEB

this is the page he yearns to study on today…

his fingers linger on the first (forbidden) lines

his mind is searching in it’s own peculiar way

he knows he’ll find the hidden enigma’s, the signs…

the sea of ages rolls her strength upon his shore

he sips her salt, her spring, her spirit and her Light

he feels her timelessness just longs to give him more

and in his soul her selfless Love adds to his might…

Lord, let him drink, oh, let him taste, yes, let him be…

he’s young enough to play his part in this: His Time

he’s smart enough to play his role in history…

Lord, let him write, oh, let him think, yes, let him rhyme…

(or not…)

Drs. Rikki

for Zeb, my Friend in Dublin