A Pause for Beauty:
An artist’s journal.
When you love, you complete a circle.
If the Earth is a woman
I have always been her lover.
Watching the little fish swim
in the dark rivers of her heart
touching the hidden flowers
of her lips beneath the rough bark
of cliffs above the sea.
If the Earth is a woman I have tasted of her salt
and of her honey too
and seen her face
beneath the moonlit mirrored ice
before she melted in the liquid
warmth of spring.
If the Earth is a woman
we have known each other,
will know again
until not even the wind
can separate our dust.
- John Squadra, from the book of poems entitled This Ecstasy, a book of nature and love poems.
If you listen,
not to the pages or preachers
but to the smallest flower
growing from a crack
in your heart,
you will hear a great song
moving across a wide ocean
whose water is the music
connecting all the islands
of the universe together,
and touching all
you will feel it
touching you
around you . . .
embracing you
with light.
It is in that light
that everything lives
and will always be alive.
When you love,
you complete a circle.
When you die,
the circle remains.
- John Squadra, This Ecstasy.
John was a friend and long-time subscriber. Heron Dance published This Ecstasy and it was a favorite of Heron Dance readers and staff. We sold out years ago and I noticed it was being offered used for $100 a copy on Amazon, so Heron Dance republished it.
This Ecstasy by John Squadra.