Brl
(listen to the poem, read by Diane R. Wiener)
Not the stars, but their mirror,
Not a poem, but the architecture of verse,
Not a melody, but the winged notes on which it flies,
Not a history, but all books,
Not a formula, but a mathematical universe,
Not a love letter, but its touch,
Not the internet, but connectivity,
Not for nothing, but for us.
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Colorado
(listen to the poem, read by Diane R. Wiener)
The Afternoon waits, with its back against the mountains,
For the lady on horseback, who rides into twilight.
The sun pours Colorado out from bottomless fountains.
Red into purple that heralds the night.
Those shades I remember in my head linger,
But not the tones between the tones at the tips of God's fingers.
Somewhere, along the trail, she lets the pace slacken.
There, she hesitates and tastes
The fading colors of the back end of day;
And does she wonder as the fiddle aspens play something soft,
What Divine Sentiment shaped the way the faces
Of unchanging mountains welcome thoughts,
Such thoughts as overflow the stillness of the horse, the trees, the painted languor
Of this ridden afternoon?
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About the Author
Nicholas (Nick) S. Racheotes, Ph.D. is Emeritus Professor of History from Framingham State University and a Research Associate of the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard. With his wife, Pat, he divides his time between Boston and Cape Cod. Aside from his scholarly works, the most recent of which is The Life and Thought of Filaret Drozdov, 1782-1867: The Thorny Path to Sainthood, Racheotes is a regular contributor to Vie Magazine, where his humorous articles on a variety of subjects may be read on line.