W H E N

A wonderfully adventurous day at Crystals on the Rocks and the Sanctuary in Nyack, New York... Thank You Kim Oleary and Laura Gould with treasures that have found their place home... Shared with delight, and in reflection...

W H E N

When the self bears witness to BEING
When wisdom is brought to the moment
When the silence is the teaching

A knowing IS, a knowing IS.

When the body speaks the mind
When the mind holds to spirit
When grace and gratitude are one

A knowing IS, a knowing IS.

When the past and future embrace the NOW
When glory and praise embody the Omnipresence
When the breath perceives the receiving and the giving.

A knowing IS, a knowing IS.

Rose Marie Raccioppi
Poet Laureate
Orangetown, New York

When WORDS Speak the Soul...

L A B Y R I N T H

This labyrinth of mind calls to my SOUL
To reach the SELF, a heartfelt goal
Enter this path to a center place
Hold to this knowing, your WILL to trace
The circle, the spiral, a labyrinth does make
A purposeful path, a journey to take
A circuitous travel to the center DIVINE
Within, without, be this journey mine
Know I of this center, its silent roar
Within, without, my SPIRIT to soar.

Rose Marie Raccioppi
Poet Laureate
Orangetown, New York

THE PULSE OF TIME

Certainty be an ever present variable of change
What lies ahead bears many a term and many a name
What with certainty can one with heart and mind proclaim
Be it that the breath present bears life its claim
The heart in its pulsing passion sounds its plea
This breath of life, the gift of time on to thee
Savor the ebb and flow of life and spirit within
Hear the rhythmic call beyond the oppressive din
Heed well the sounding glory sacred and divine
Hold in revered celebration life's gift, the pulse of time.

Rose Marie Raccioppi
Poet Laureate
Orangetown, New York

THIS POET'S WORD

These echoes of heart in sensibilities reveal
The TRUTH OF BEING bar conceal
Passions pulsing plea to be heard
And so be known this poet's word
Loss and lament a tear filled call
Joy and delight beyond befall
In revelation be known the depths of despair
All astride with blessed love and care
The rising sun and gone be the night
Held I in the embrace of the dawning light
The feel of the showering water sweet upon my skin
A baptism new, absolved I of all false sin
Judgments, reprisals, fallacious be their rein
For the SOUL'S PRESENCE knows not constrain
Confront and resolve the breath calls out
To purpose, to purpose, to purpose, devout.

Rose Marie Raccioppi
Poet Laureate
Orangetown, New York

Upon viewing anew, "Dead Poets Society."

English Essays: Sidney to Macaulay.
The Harvard Classics. 1909–14. 
A Defence of Poetry 
Percy Bysshe Shelley

"... But poets, or those who imagine and express this indestructible order, are not only the authors of language and of music, of the dance, and architecture, and statuary, and painting: they are the institutors of laws, and the founders of civil society, and the inventors of the arts of life, and the teachers, who draw into a certain propinquity with the beautiful and the true that partial apprehension of the agencies of the invisible world. Poets, according to the circumstances of the age and nation in which they appeared, were called, in the earlier epochs of the world, legislators, or prophets: a poet essentially comprises and unites both these characters. For he not only beholds intensely the present as it is, and discovers those laws according to which present things ought to be ordered, but he beholds the future in the present, and his thoughts are the germs of the flower and the fruit of latest time..." A Defence of Poetry, Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1792 – 1822.

A Defence of Poetry. Percy Bysshe Shelley. 1909-14. English Essays: Sidney to Macaulay. The Harvard Classics ~ Full text available at:http://www.bartleby.com/27/23.html

W O R D S

Words... be they the silence of thought 

and the resounding plea of soul...

 for this the poet's heart be known... 

Rose Marie Raccioppi

Language provides an echo - it is not the original - words are representations, symbols, utterances, that the inner spirit longs to be known - to self - to others and to the ultimate SELF. As a poet, language echoes my heart's lament, my soul's joy and my spirit's quest to soar, echoes holding to praise and gratitude, a sounding sense of purpose.

Words, those markers of thought, sounding within us, hanker for expression. Words, those marks upon paper, our own or that of another find their meaning within us. A poem, its meter, its rhythm, its rhyme, its structure, its pulse, calls for our attentive consideration. Within the words, the line, the totality of a poem, we to find meaning, inspiration, an accord, a resolve, and yes, another question. 

words and visions be they the start

from which pen and paper call to heart

the poet seizes precious moments in time

offers verse free, or with meter and rhyme

upon surfaces vast so does the poet place

words as sounding soul and expressive grace.

Rose Marie Raccioppi

Poet Laureate

Orangetown, New York

Why do we read and write poetry? (Dead Poets Society)

This Poet's Word

These echoes of heart in sensibilities reveal

The TRUTH OF BEING bar conceal

Passions pulsing plea to be heard

And so be known this poet's word

Loss and lament a tear filled call

Joy and delight beyond befall

In revelation be known the depths of despair

All astride with blessed love and care

The rising sun and gone be the night

Held I in the embrace of the dawning light

The feel of the showering water sweet upon my skin

A baptism new, absolved I of all false sin

Judgments, reprisals, fallacious be their rein

For the SOUL'S PRESENCE knows not constrain

Confront and resolve the breath calls out

To purpose, to purpose, to purpose, devout.

Rose Marie Raccioppi

Poet Laureate

Orangetown, New York

Upon viewing anew, "Dead Poets Society."

The Burning Paper

"And all shall be well and.. All manner of thing shall be well.. 

When the tongues of flame are in-folded.. 

Into the crowned knot of fire.. 

And the fire and the rose are one.” ~ T.S. Eliot

The body calling to its soul

A recounting, a recording

Words upon paper

And so delivered

Be the din of despair

The lament of betrayal

The echoing haunts of pain

Hushed they be 

By the consuming flames of faith

Burn Burn

The rising light alluringly alchemic

The sense of SELF newly embraced

This the Phoenix of BEING

Glory Glory hails the soul

The deep breath newly NOW

The deep breath newly NOW.

Rose Marie Raccioppi

Poet Laureate

Orangetown, New York

APOGEE Vibrational Art, Flames of Faith, ©Rose Marie Raccioppi, 2015.