Tread with me the yielding paths of my thoughts,
The shadowed paths of soft dear memories
That comfort me yet,
Even as I feel the chills of times to come;
The sighing of my years upon me,
The knowing of my path before me,
The hedgerows of time high to either side:
So too I feel with my foot-soles my very tread
Where my pace-scuffs mark a path that started so long ago,
That stays with me to now, and reminds me of
Moments I cherish, and in cherishing find warmth.
My path is always onward, my trace ne'er retraced, yet
The warmth is ever there for me to know,
And mark my soul with courage.
Now click right here ---> X
An introduction will appear for you to read .
This poem welcomes you into a glade of memory, where paths branch and join, where you may wander as you choose, your whim alone guiding you among the duff-strewn paths and branchings. Choose which branch to take in accord with your mood. Please let your reactions influence your choice.
If... you embrace your awareness of being while you stroll here; here where there are never more thanvirtual glades and shadows, think then what joy of friends you may have in the world outside where hands do touch, where your whim may bless someone, where your hand may bring strength.
To read this poem, start by clicking on the Child node "Amidst Warm Shadows" at the right.
Read the verse that appears. After you read the verse, click on one of the new child nodes
that accompany the verse,which then will take you to a new verse. Legends and hints are by
each choice.
Start Here ->
...If you want to know more about this new kind of poetry, click here ->
If then you want to retrace your steps, choose the parent node (above the child node,) which will
take you back to the previous verse.
Her lips smiled still, even as she died,
(For the small child's faith stayed with her)
Even as her Postmaster husband wept -
(Knowing now gone her simple pleasures)
And Bach, who knew her,
Composing her funereals
Soothed mourners with apt words
As for comforting a child:
"Goodnight all joys, all joys farewell!"
The genius of his spirit soaring
From night sayings for a child
Faithfully expecting morrow's joys,
To his own faith in heavenly joys awaiting her -
He as simple as a child in faith feeling freed
Freed for genius of harmony still sung today.
Why does loss have harmony - why not rage? ---->
How then softly tell a child of the final dark? ----->
In velvet night of quiet streets,
Quiet flowers, quiet stars -
When evenings drowse covers all,
When dawn's first glow is far away,
Then I awake like a white night cat,
Whiskers out, ears apeak,
Show me the rustle to chase right down -
And I am lord of the feast!
cannot my soft skin yearn for most quiet touch? ---->
Why must warm life be lost for eating? ---->
Music to make my skin tingle,
Words to enthrall my heart,
Hearing lonely pleasures Yes,
But none nor I
May feel themselves
tucked in lovingly
by their own hand.
And don't shadows deepen sooner more than later ? ----->
How then shall I rise up above the sense alone?------>
Why do such echoes rise from mute quiet? ------>
My heartbeat warms the empty shadows,
Echoing soft in uncaring gloom,
Sending warmth of glowing memories,
Giving caring faces to my shadows,
Bequeathing life to lifelessness,
My companions in my doom!
Why must always staring faces pin me to their past? ----->
Can not a tree grow taller than doom? ----->
On the table two candles glowing,
Two plates; two voices,
Two wine glasses now empty,
Sharing the quiet are two gazes,
Resting so gently on the candle's glow.
Does the glow within linger beyond the candle's life? ------>
Who seeks out anew no matter how deep the night? ------->
Slow hands gliding on my back,
Slow night time clouds gliding,
Slow sea-swell gliding on ocean's back,
Slow and I are lucky friends.
Slow builds the dancing floor for quick life. --------->
This breeze dances through bars of sunlight in my room,
Bringing through my windows its astonishing sweep
into my room and my heart - Let love enter now!
Let all the warm shadows that were, that are, and that may be,
Sing in harmony with my self striding forward, forward.
(And old Ecclesiastes wrote:
He has made everything appropriate to its time, and has put the timeless into their hearts, without men's ever discovering, from beginning to end, the work which God has done.... I recognized that there is nothing better than to be glad and to do well during life... What now is has already been; what is to be, already is...)
If there is more sorrow than joy in life, shouldn't joy be cherished?--->
Tonight the bones of my soul hurt,
Beaten by savages long ago,
Bullies who gladly hurt,
Bullies who fed on hurt,
Bullies who knowingly saw,
Their wounding gazes a mordant
Striking hurt so deep within my soul's bones
I feel it anew when I curl up tight
Against the loneliness of the night.
Will fiery rage assuage the hurts? ------>
Whence comes this yearning like a child for comfort? ------>
Who but I am Knight-Keeper of my instant,
Baron of my minute
Duke of my hour,
King of my day;
But That-of-God within me says:
His measure of my time is not clock-work,
But is in the flow of my time
As my heart opens to those around me.
But then can I decree the halt of time? ------->
Must I wait on the measured flow of time? ------>
Yes I dare to eat a peach,
My touchstone is no proof-rock;
The peachstone I touch bears life,
Even in my sticky warm fingers
A tree of life may nestle.
My fingers touch;
Shall my fingers love?
Shall they clean, and plant,
And cultivate?
Shall I hope for
A newcoming?
Isn't the laughter of life that we are in it, and it is in us? --------->
This poem written on Kayuda displays an entirely new feature for poetry: Kayuda enables the reader to encounter various parts of a poem one after another by choosing a branch leading to different sections in the poem. (This is reminiscent of a technique devised by writers of interactive novels. But here the flow of involvement is free of interruption from the need to flip to a different paginated section of a book.) In this new poetry style the choice of the reader in the moment influences the poem as the reader encounters it. This new ability to choose and involve oneself is a departure from centuries of poems written and printed on paper. Unlike poems printed on the page, there is no single set sequence for the Kayuda poem. One poem may take many different paths, depending upon the choices the reader makes as he goes along. Parts of the poem consequently may remain unread, waiting for a second reading, with different choices that bring fresh parts into view - or perhaps altogether waiting for another time and another mood.
Now poets sensitive to evocative patterns in words can add another dimension to their work, another sort of sensitivity to evoking multiple patterns of response in the reader. This flexibility implements a new greater literature, a greater potential for expression and for the poetic construction of meaning - for sheaves of meaning. The poet can express implications of any aspect of the poem by providing branches and describing aspects that inform the choices. The poet also can configure the pace of reading by varying the amount of text in a node the reader can see and consider before moving on.
The present poem is but an experiment to demonstrate a proof of concept, and has all the troubles of a first essay. Any merit here is in the hint of inspired marvels to come.
To read the poem, click on Amidst Warm Shadows under Child nodes to the right.
Sober, sober, sober,
Mene, mene, tekel;
No clock knocks
like mine own woe's works
with a Leaden escapement!
A leaden bed makes squalid repose,
And smothered by my own dross,
I breathe in my own toxicity.
Won't fire melt lead and free me? ------>
Must it be me who brings myself peace? -------->
Searing fire renders the meat,
Tries out the fat,
Blackens the red;
From food's partial destruction
Comes devouring delight:
So might my raw mood be tempered
As upon the Saint's gridiron
That my flavor might please others.
Can I enspell myself to healthier times? ----->
And how do I find my way off the gridiron? ------>
What then means death
To the unknowing child,
Who sees dark as warm:
Who knows no loss,
So dreams no loss;
Who thinks few thoughts,
So feels without words -
And knows no end
To the whole skeining
Of thoughts and all -
Who am I to tell the child?
Who makes a child's hot tears fiery? ----->
And does the living child tell of life? ----->
Spin, say I,
So the heavens swoon
As I look up to them;
Dizzy my stars, that they
May not guess my fate:
Let uncertainty be my joy,
And unknown be my doom.
Then will I dance anew,
And order my speck of time!
How slow spin the celestial spheres? How slow spin the seasons? ----->
Can my spinning, spinning come out right? ------>
Why, Why do I see so farther than I feel?
What trick of God's whim's gift
Lifts me splendid high to see so far,
Heights so cold a devil grins,
My self blues, my heart chills
And cannot say nor feel.
Let my feet touch earthen paths,
My eyes see small,
My heart feel large,
And my being journey forth
At peace.
How enlarge the moment so peace endures? ------->
Can growing green leaf match beating heart? ------>
All rights reserved by William B. Sawyer, with the exception that
William B. Sawyer gives express permission
to Kayuda to publish this poem in whole or in part,
in perpetuity, in any Kayuda workspace.
A Kayuda poem is to a conventional poem
as a walk through the woods is to a picture of woods.
What an improbable claim! But...
You can't just read a Kayuda poem, can't slickly parse it;
You have to involve yourself, like it or not!
And you may find out more about yourself by this
'than you imagined.
And then if you read it a second time, with this knowledge -
Well, have you ever played with a kaleidescope?
Time and path, here and there,
I sense, I remember;
These inform me, and so I am:
My wanderings define me,
As a meandering river
Defines the land through which it moves -
While flowing on beyond ken.
That is enough; I am content.
Would you like to read the poem anew? ------->
.
By north woods lakes the sunset hush
Rises round the emptiest quiet,
Stilling all of nature's noises,
Calming all the living life,
Quieting even smallest winds
So all the sweeping pine needles' hiss fades to naught.
Lapping waters at the beach
Go quieter than the very air,
Turning from their busy licking,
Fed to sleepy satisfaction,
Glassy with full satiation,
Mirroring now the still of all,
Reflecting doubly quieted shore,
The image of celestial calm.
Can so quaintly grim a joke be borne? ----->
Why then must a raucous loon
Break the peace with madness? Then how shall my heart bring calm? ------->
Can the sacred not endure
His long wails and his sadness?
Is his own peace so quickly lost
As the peace that would enfold him?
A single bird more truly strong
Than all the nature round him?
So as my inner world
Mirrors that without,
Again my grieving thought intrudes,
My loving calm is broke,
And calm and wail and love
All echo confused in my being,