Doris Deleuze Raffaele
2011 Rhode Island Senior Poet Laureate

Doris Deleuze Raffaele, 87, Lincoln, returns to reclaim the Rhode Island Senior Poet Laureate title she first won in 2009. A retired feature writer, she worked for a number of years with the New Bedford Standard Times, New Bedford, and taught metaphysical courses “Life after Death” and “The Power of the Mind” at Bristol Community College, Fall River. Doris shares this photo with her lookalike grandson Maxwell Blais, now a college student, on his graduation day from high school. Her sun sign is Libra.

THE TENDER HOUR

There is a tender hour
When vapors rise to kiss the flowers.
The sun sweeps the earth and green stems of fertility.
Weave to a melody hummed in tune to God's will

Whispering, sighing, soft, the tender hour,
When ears listen, eyes see, and senses feel
Time holds to itself the secrets of infinity.
Beloved, betrothed to a silent determination
To live, to survive, to be!

Life does not die,
It rests to its own dust,
To rise anew to another sun!

Pleasure my spirit to my need,
Hold my heart firm to the beauty
Of all that is mine, for in its truth lies the future.

Let me in my final hour know,
That flowers will press the earth to be free
That green tendril leaves will bow
To the murmuring winds
That the seas will govern,
Mountains reign,
Skies comfort and the earth hold

And love, that benign gift of light,
Shall be retrieved from the shallows
And held once more to the heart of man!