Centuries have passed

Dynasties have risen and fallen

History adds yet another chapter

As had you, many a spring bloom

You’ve out-seen them all

Fleeting beauties of the age

Not even your tears brimming

Can sustain them for long

All that remains is empty sorrow

Cosseted by your unfading beauty

Until the next spring, and the next

All desperately waiting for you

To honour their beauty

With your fresh tears and embrace.

Cheung-Ling Wong

A moment’s silence

For all that have passed

Mindful reflections

Sadness and regret

Joy and happiness

Yet, the future too

Equally deserving

A moment’s silence

For all things as yet

And about to

Mindful pauses

Before we irrevocably

Stain history’s page

But a mere moment

Presence of mind

Silent as an owl in flight

For our deliverance’s sake.

Cheung-Ling Wong

Like delicate bubbles

Floating in the ether

Dancing in the breeze

Spheres of influence

Orbs of luminous love

So brief, are our lives

With, slightest touch

A fleeting embrace

Like a blink of an eye

Gone, in an instant

But for clouds of tears

Fading as memory

Time caught in its flimsy

Slipstream membrane

To be on in harmony

Of endless, endless spheres.

Cheung-Ling Wong

Beware the devil within our midst

He’s been about, many places abound

Thus, a real charmer few can resist

Daring you to tango with him around!

Done his time, and again, age after age

Longer than you’ll ever know or muse

He’s got history, page after page

Daring you to delve and to peruse!

He’ll keep you captive in a glass box

A pretty little specimen for an old fox.

Cheung-Ling Wong

The sifting of desert sands

The crunching of autumn leaves

The gushing of the winds

And the seething restless seas

To the babble of politicians

Ambient noises whiling away

The endless cycles of time

Nature and human nature

Silently – my life traverses

Forging its lonely way.

Cheung-Ling Wong

Be careful this winter

Not to catch or scratch

The dreaded grump

It messes you about

Stealing your peace

And pieces of your mind

For a full possession

Symptoms are of woe

Fear and endless worry

A deep foreboding

With febrile delirium

Tripping you up

And all the way down

Doing the simplest tasks

Or walking an easy path.

Cheung-Ling Wong

When did it become music to my ears?

The cacophony of sounds and voices

When did it become art before my eyes?

Kaleidoscopes of colour, lives and forms

When did it become love in my heart?

The maddening despairs of Mankind

When I saw, heard and found myself

In the midst of the maelstrom spun.

Cheung-Ling Wong

The universe is humming along fine

Humming its Ohmmm – eternally sublime

Such depth of sound : but a depth of knowledge

Few are of privy to such privilege

Plucking at heartstrings of all existence

Effortless, pervasive – its persistence

Dulcet and divine a knowing to ear

In harmony with souls endeared to hear

Sweetest melody enchantingly sung

Thus all of creation upon it hung.

Cheung-Ling Wong

I walked side by side – with pain

Loyally keeping my company

Down decades’ path prolonged

So familiar it has become, by now

There are no more secrets hidden

No more surprises left in store

At last, a lifetime of patient love

Has truly discovered itself

Compassion – ever present.

Cheung-Ling Wong

It was a monster of our making

And a recipe for utter disaster

Feeding its rapacious appetite

Do you not hear its stomach rumble?

Yet, we set its table with knife and fork

Deadly, sharpened, poised and egging

Over mournful shrouds of starched linen

Its wineglass brimming, bleeding red

With plates ladened with freshest youth

To fill the foul stench of its breath and maw

Hungering no more – our cannibal of war

Yet, we deliver course after tragic course

Never to reach dessert – elusive sweet victory

But for midden spoils of bone and gore

Despite our prayers and graces’ implore.

Cheung-Ling Wong