M E R I D I A N     M A G A Z I N E

Poetry: Dive In
Edited by Jim Richards, Meridian Poetry Editor

Diving the Wall off Anchor Point
            Grand Cayman Island

Beneath the sea's green breast, far
Where day and dark in twilight meet,
And with desire of moth for star,
I drop to where the corals greet
In timeless arms. Into a womb
Of living stone I narrow crawl,
Like dreams that pass through someone's tomb,
And birth out through the windowed wall
Into the things and thoughts of Time,
And that loveliness which alone
Knows joy in passion's fearful rhyme;
Abyss of water and black stone
     Below, and some song singing me
     Toward cobalt-blue eternity.

Ophelia

She'd draped her cloak above the bracken fern
Which in profusion grew near where she stood,
And the yellowed eye of day did warm it
Where with a warmth her flesh no longer would.
Beneath the remnant ringlets of the pond,
Cloud-still and cold fair Ophelia lies,
Beyond our breath, above the silted stones,
Like winter stars that sleep in winter skies.
Some spectral hand of fleshless flesh has cast
Upon the surface, in petaled showers,
Pansies and rosemary for remembrance -
Love's grief writ in the language of flowers.
    Where's the shame or limit to pain or tear
    So borne, so shed in grief for one so dear?

Old Men Dream the Best Dreams
                                       for Hugh

I think what we love most of poetry,
Hugh, is delight of lovely words, it seems:
Treasures of color, shade, warmth and earth sounds,
Secreted in wee rivulets and streams --
Beauties of expression and remembrance,
Adornments to our souls, both rich and fair.
The rhyming words are our own little fays
With gay voices and strands of laughing hair,
Dancing by some far, old river, splashing
Esoteric moon-glints into our eyes,
Calling us by the names we knew before,
Where magic dreams, undreamt, anew arise.
    We old men dream the best dreams, sure enough,
    Our thread-worn haversacks filled with life's stuff.

The World Is Not Enough

The world is not enough once we have dreamed
Dreams far beyond its realm of flesh and lies,
Past cosmic clouds, star-point stitched and seamed,
Where ancient things call out, and God replies
With new creation's hand: three feathered spheres
Hang veiled, in graduated fires refined,
Where God unwounds our wounds, uncries our tears,
Burns Stygian dross from hearts once blind.
The world is not enough to hide the face
Of God from any sweet-breathed child who yearns
For those fair-kindled flames of heaven's grace,
Or Father's love that like a candle burns
    More sweet, more hot than when summers have begun
    As smiles hanging in the bedrooms of the sun.

About the Poet
Bob Ferguson has published poetry in several journals, including The Lyric. He works as Chief of Staff to a Pennsylvania congressman in Washington, DC, and lives in Virginia. He is a member of the Mt. Vernon Virginia Stake, and has been writing for over thirty years.

Click here to sign up for Meridian's FREE email updates.