Libation

A gift of time measured
yet boundless
Promise and pain
within its presence
Joy and love
within its sharing
Life and purpose within its passing
Within this abnegation
lies the secret of grandeur
The giving over for the having
The offering for the receiving.

Rose Marie Raccioppi



Evelyn De Morgan (British, 1850-1919) *Eos Painting, 1895 Oil on canvas. , Columbia Museum of Art, Columbia, South Carolina, USA

Known Be His Hand

If not for the depths of love and despair
Know I of God’s word and embracing care
Each moment of darkness, doubt or fear
Each loss, hurt, pain or tear
Awakens within a knowing sublime
God be ever present in blessings mine
A purpose unfolds, known be His hand
And held I in God’s loving command.

Rose Marie Raccioppi


The Creation of Adam (Genesis 1.26a, 2.7.) Michelangelo's portrayal of God's hand reaching out to Adam's
The Creation of Adam (fresco), detail from the Sistine Chapel ceiling.

Lure Divine

Pangs of a ravenous hunger pulse within this heart
Chambers void and barren when from you I depart
Prods of passion to awaken this questing soul
Yield I to the echo, the chime of the calling toll
Ascent these waves of emotion cresting free
From this depth of knowing I shall not flee
Piano, piano each key a seductive lure divine
Touch, and be known this heart, this soul mine.

Rose Marie Raccioppi


In Dedication to Sandro Russo on the occasion of his performance,
December 16, 2008, Bechstein Salon, NY

Life Times Unfold

Visions, shrouds, lifetimes unfold
Quest ever present, a story told
From torn and tattered threads of time
Woven new a swaddling divine
This silent call I am to heed
Revelation is Wisdom's way and creed
Cradled in TRUTH the muse is heard
Known is sweet slumber and known is God's WORD
Awakened by Spirit, Life's song to be sung
Each moment, each day, each lifetime begun
Memory of shadow, light ever cast
This melody of time now and past.

Rose Marie Raccioppi


The Protection of Baby Zeus, Rhea and Cronus

Heed Wise The Muse

Heed wise the Muse, your counsel of soul
God’s blessings to mark your goal
Another’s time and glory
And now ‘tis my story
Others have walked in the sun
My time has now just begun
Words of knowing within my heart
From this joy I shall newly start
Another’s creation in celebration
And I God’s eternal revelation
The plea from grace now known
I in gratitude for creation shown
The sculptor’s hand
In God’s command
Line and form to reveal
God’s beauty constant and real
Spectrum of color from a palette divine
Immortal the quest this moment be mine
The artist’s unveiling, the poet’s word
And the music, the music, to be ever heard
Heed wise the Muse, your counsel of soul
God’s blessings to mark your goal.

Rose Marie Raccioppi

Play I The Light

So sweet is this song of the winds I hear
Bygone yet heard within my heart so near
Strings to sound within this soul mine
Play I the light of the firmament divine.

Rose Marie Raccioppi


Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, best known as Guercino or Il Guercino, 1591-1666, Italian Baroque painter from the region of Emilia, and active in Rome and Bologna, St Francis with an Angel Playing Violin, Oil on canvas, 162 x 127 cm

Appassionata

"Appassionata"

This pulsating pleading passion

rapture and pain

ecstasy grasping for the eternal

fleeting frivolity

thunderous echoes of silence

maudlin, tempered and dark

despair dispelled

the sounding ascension

awakening

movements of innocence

joyful exuberance

the spirit as itself

all sound

all silence

being

quell not these passions

the yearning fires of the soul

devour pain and loss.



Rose Marie Raccioppi

Daughter Child of the Muses

Held in the arms of spirit
Within the refuge of light
Daughter Child of the Muses
Your lyre sounds in delight
Strum the chords of the heavens
In this moment of thought
Feel the concordant harmonies
For nothing is, that is naught.

Rose Marie Raccioppi

Parnassus or Apollo and the Muses (detail) by Simon Vouet French painter (b. 1590, Paris, d. 1649, Paris

A Rose

What longing lore of love do your petals enfold
Your sweet seductive fragrance I to behold
Bloom in rapture and radiant red array
The kiss of waters upon your petals lay.

Rose Marie Raccioppi

Rose, Photograph, Collectible Clicks, ©Rose Marie Raccioppi, 2008.

Favor On To You

God's gifts to be known

By the bounty of earth shown
God's voice to be heard
In the hearing of his Word
For life given unto me
For flowing waters of the sea
For the feel of your love divine
For this moment in grace mine
For the budding of life in Spring
For the beauty Summer does bring
For colors in splendor each Fall
For the snows of Winter blessing all
Each moment, day and passing year
In gratitude for life evermore dear
A knowing of an inner spirit of calm
God's love shielding me from harm
Cold be winter's winds now that blow
Upon my face sun's noon warming glow
In joyful reverence this day gifted new
God's love, praise and favor on to you.

Rose Marie Raccioppi

Quietude, Watercolor, 2000, Rose Marie Raccioppi, www.apogeeart.com

Cloak Undone

Trees in such lavish array
White with hues, tones and shadow gray
Nature's brush strokes all through the night
Illumed by the early morning light
Gentle winds and the warming mid morn sun
Soon the snow cloak of trees undone
A bird song impels the cold winter air
And all be known in God's loving care.

Rose Marie Raccioppi

Review of
Rose Marie Raccioppi’s
The Wind and the Willow

“Are these assumptions of reality/The shackles that need to be broken[?]”queries Rose Marie Raccioppi in “Possibility,” from The Wind and the Willow, her first collection of verse. The line is emblematic of her core pursuit to pierce beyond the illusory veils of the material world while paradoxically being dependent upon reality for drawing imagery to provide intimations of the “Beyond.”

A non-denominational devotional poet with fervent pantheistic longings, Raccioppi’s metaphors and unpretentious affirmations appeal directly to the heart. In this volume she creates a metaphysical poetry and is content to take her simple Shelleyan imagery wherever she finds it within nature’s bounty.

The Wind and the Willow consists mostly of brief meditations and what Raccioppi calls “mindscapes” which constantly seek calming epiphanies of self-recognition in the fleeting moments, even in the midst of turbulent and painful experience. At her best, in works such as “This Night Knows No Sleep,” “This a Winter’s Night,” “Away You Fly,” “Descent No More,” “But Can I Share,” “The Wind and the Willow,” “Swaddling Divine,” and “Now and Ever Blessed,” Raccioppi attains perceptual clarity and an incantatory music that might remind readers, by turns, of Henry Vaughan’s devotional lyrics, Walt Whitman’s celebrations of the unbridled Self, the near-improvisatory freshness of D.H. Lawrence’s “Pansies,” and William Blake’s “Songs of Innocence.” This is poetry that is designed to reach a broad audience.

John Ballard

Available at Barnes and Noble and online booksellers nationally and internationally.
Pub. Date: June 2008
ISBN-13: 9781604744545

The Wind and The Willow

The Wind
all pervading
free
one with all direction
The Willow
rooted ever in search
branch and leaf so humbly bend
holding to the wind
the light
and the unseen Presence
Wind and Willow, so I am
thought, mind and spirit
all pervading
free
one with all direction
holding to the unseen Presence.

Rose Marie Raccioppi

Wisdom of All

Oh how the mind conceives the thought

With restlessness your heart is wrought

For there is a just and kingly goal

Distant yet touching your crying soul

Be burdened not by task and deed

Lest you be lost to the greater creed

Inspired by self and the knowing within

Shall you pass the haunt, the doom of the din

Listen dear child to thy self sovereign and wise

Heed not to temptation, deception and lies

For it is the tear of joy that you shall weep

When the Promise you vow, you do keep

And when you reach and court the dream

With God's love stand thou supreme

Deception takes not your abiding soul

You have reached a kingly goal

As many may doubt and may berate

You shall prevail for love is thy fate

Guide the children, know their call

With God's tender love and wisdom of all.

Rose Marie Raccioppi

http://www.apogeelearning.com