..                           Shine The dawn argues away the clouds, becomes emphatically bright and gold in the far distance of wonder from an ordinary life and its rays are close like the wonder of an ordinary life (we are blinded by the trees of habit planted by Good Intent--we thought they were flowers, once). Life is not what it is: what we feel is not what we feel, what we see is not what we see, what we say is not what we say, what we want is not what we want. Parallel to every scheme's run is the angel which pulls the string that we believe no string is being pulled. And calmly, thoroughly, the five fleeting moons of our dreams wait to see with which one, distraught voice we will to birth another infant night. In death, I think, every soul who begs to be free must discover twelve senses, twelve different rhymes of doubt to clear the soul of self-deception. Else, the cages of fascination repeal the faith of this, our generation, and we sink into the light until we are blind--Hell is the action of ourselves left to ourselves without an intervening World. And Heaven is the darkness God called Night solid with stars. Instructions to the Lost are woven in the cry of the eagle, in the symmetry of the snowflake, in the thrash of the lightning, and in the invisible caress of the breeze--- and the architecture of a sunset sky, its grand brimming of golds and silvers, emblazons into our essential selves the solemn promise of another day. © 1997                            John H. Doe