Who Is The Leaf?

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Leaves drawn of their vigour

Yellow in the chill light

And flutter down

With each stroke of the breeze.

–

Dying is a beautiful thing

When life’s sap is safe,

Eternal

In the trunk and the root,

–

Withdrawn from the world

Like an in-breath

Or tide, or season’s

Planetary oscillation.

–

Who grieves the leaf

Its turning or its loosening

On the branch,

Or its earthward mulch

–

Settling into new form?

No one grieves,

For the life in the leaf

Is not gone

–

But hides behind bark,

Gathers against the darkness

Of the shrinking wintery days,

And awaits the pull of the sun

–

And the soil’s warming

And the osmotic urge

To express itself again,

And again, and yet again.

Two Men Of The World

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One man

Is an individual,

He walks in the world

As a separate entity – of course,

Carrying his loneliness

Like an ever heavy weight.

There are things in the world,

Things that might draw

Attention from that dark void

In which he must not look.

And so he desires those things

For the momentary peace

He receives in their procurement.

–

Another man

Is joined to the world,

All the things he sees

Arrive to him

And in him,

Endlessly passing

And dying away:

Yet he alone

Never dies away,

For his watching

Is container for the world

And all within.

And if there is loneliness

It is brief as the seasons,

And if there is a void

He does not fear it,

Accepting all within the bounds of himself.

The Artist’s Way

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Immersed in the landscape

Or fixated on an object,

This artist does not paint

What his eyes see,

Rather, he absorbs the sight,

Places it

In the cauldron of his being

Where life seeps

As the language of the soul.

It is this he paints,

This aliveness

Mirroring landscape or thing:

His spirit

And God’s spirit

Dancing as one

Infinite being,

And reaching out

To his poised fingers,

To transform the inanimate

And deliver magic on the canvas,

Every stroke of his brush imbued

With the inward spirit he feels.

When The Noise Stops

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When the noise stops,

When the machine of thinking thoughts

Slows to a lull

Or is brought silent

In a moment of

Concentration.

When the worker sets down his tools,

Rests a while,

Leaves his ideas alone,

Then,

In this pause,

This relaxation,

The love that was always there

Is seemingly exposed,

And Life,

Beautiful and whole

Is known in fullness.

All Things Dissolve

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In love

All things dissolve,

Coming to rest

In the primary nature

Of being.

–

All that is apparent:

The forms in the world

Are melted

In love’s crucible,

Love’s home-bound heart.

–

There is nothing insoluble,

No behaviour

Or state of mind

That can stand

The yolk of the sun.

–

Love is indomitable

Yet gentle as warmth

Passed from father to son.

It encompasses all,

Leaves nothing

–

But tenderness, acceptance

And a wealth of connectedness.

It is the foundation we share,

All of us equally beneficent

And wholly unified.

The Morning Is Crisp

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On the first crisp autumn day

Dazzling light from the low sun

Guilds the forest,

Burnishing every leaf.

In hollows

There is the shadow of frost,

Grasses jacketed stiff,

But in the open

The sky is clean

And the distant rolling hills

Seem magnified.

After coffee sipped

With the sun’s hand on my back,

I amble through the farm shop

Selecting delicious items,

And while paying for my goods

A conversation spontaneously happens.

Like two old friends

Exchanging intimacies,

The shop assistant speaks

And I listen.

We share our truth

And as I look into their eyes

I see wisdom

Deep in their seeing,

As if the autumn light

Came from understanding

As much as from the sun outside,

And I am warmed

And touched by the moment

And brought wholly into the now,

An openness without resistance.

Picture

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In the floor to ceiling window

Opens the picture:

The river

Glassy with the sky,

Smudged with autumn morning,

A pale blue glaze

In which mists cling

And spiral,

Calling back

The chill night

That stilled the dew drops

To a crust

And freed the tattered leaves

To mulch beneath the trees,

Sending out

A sweet and heady breath

Of spores

As life withdraws,

Releasing jealousies,

Indifferent now

To the russet matter

Discarded.

Where Sanctuary?

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Where sanctuary?

In thought’s fickle materialisation?

In the world of passing things,

Ever dematerialising,

Always dying and slinking away?

In emotion’s slavery

To the fickle thought?

–

Where else is there?

–

Where else

But the nothing,

The dimensionless no-thing,

The substance-less non-realm

Of the self.

Where else but the self’s

Void-less void,

Thing-less thing,

The self’s changeless being,

Un-conceived

And un-manifest.

–

Where sanctuary?

–

Only in nothing:

Foundation found

Only in the

Self’s foundationlessness.