Frederick Turner

My loved one sleeps and softly just respires,A strange and intricate consort of cells.Each does exactly what it most desires,In love with all its neighbors, like matched bells.We never understood that odd commandTo love each other—wanted it to hurt,Thought that a serious god must needs demandSome . . . . Continue Reading »

A hippie peddles jewelryBeneath a poinciana tree,A mother picks her daughter upBacklit before an endless sea.All of this life of business,The local news, the cheerful mess,Takes place within these sixty miles—Limit amid limitlessness.And is this Earth an island too?—A grain of sand, a drop of . . . . Continue Reading »

My plane was late”I’ve missed the evening Mass; So now I take a walk and try to pray. The sky is vast, a dome of marbled glass Where shoals of vapor slowly drift away. The first few stars ride in the rifts of blue. Again I wonder at the grand conception That must have so intoxicated You . . . . Continue Reading »

They tied Saint Piran to a great millstone And flung that good man in the Irish Sea. But the stone floated, and he stood alone Upon the Cornwall shore in victory. The church he built was buried in the sand. Twelve hundred years it lay there quite unknown. And then a great storm fell upon the land . . . . Continue Reading »