Author: distilledvoice

Single Eternal Note

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I won’t go into the day save to say it was grim as an overcast sky, hungover and car sick. But now, on a beach polished golden by late afternoon light, two cold beers – my companions, refreshment beading bottle-green glass and glugged so thirstily, the whole of reality is changed, altered.

The wind moves constant through the pines, and unseen birds twitter: Vibrating needles hum a single eternal note.

The tide is in, lapping gently in the push of cool waters. Oystercatchers shrill low over the glistening brine, every wavelet capturing the blinding sun.

Moored sailboats jostle anonymous, swayed by tide, current and breeze, their lanyards chink, chink, chinking, tolling a finger-tapping rhythm, a morse code of freshness.

The wind moves constant through the pines, and unseen birds twitter: Vibrating needles hum a single eternal note.

The sun is on my back like a hug from behind. I look up, and the beach is near deserted. My companions are spent and silent, drunk.

The sunbathers have packed up, leaving but a memory’s shape pressed in the sand. Only a lone young woman remains, sitting on the wall, reading. There is a deep silence inside her, a peace made of the ever-flowing wind.

The wind moves constant through the pines, and unseen birds twitter: Vibrating needles hum a single eternal note.

Behind the woman is the row of trees from which the birds twitter. Their trunk-bodies are sculpted by the air; their faces swept clean; their hair creaking; their needles vibrating with the sound of reality.

I can taste the world, the whole world, brought by the wind and the twittering birds, constant in the fronds of the trees, creaking gently.

The wind moves constant through the pines, and unseen birds twitter: Vibrating needles hum a single eternal note.

I can feel the world, the whole world, called by the wind and the bird’s constant twittering, and the oystercatchers cutting the sunlight from the waves, and the chink, chink chinking of lanyards drumming on aluminium masts.

I know the world, the whole world, found in my broadening heart’s cool waters and the sun’s hug from behind. I know the loving world contained in the constance of silence as the wind moves through the pines and unseen birds twitter; Vibrating needles humming a single eternal note.

Gift

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I dropped into myself

Settling into stillness,

Falling deeper

And ever deeper

Until I touched the reverent moment

And disappeared.

–

And now I rise

Back into the body,

Up, up, up and up

Into the world,

Wet and frictionless as a new born

As if my slick skin

Were a lung

And could drink

The divine osmosis,

Every molecule freely interchanged,

Undone in form,

Beautiful and borderless.

–

Oh, how warm

Have I come clothed in nakedness,

How touched

I am;

Come home

From home

To home,

As if when I drank from myself

The whole universe

Became a vast and comfortable blanket

That I did not drag

Upon my back

But which bore me

As though a wave of lightest medium

Harnessed me to its being

And brought me surging,

And painted gleaming new.

–

And so,

What thing I am,

What movement in which I move

Is bowed

To lowest bended knee,

And from the eyes

Tears stream

In bountiful gladness,

Lubricating the offering

I offer whole and entirely:

My heart held out

In the palm of my hand

As a gift to you,

My love,

A gift for you.

Lullaby

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It begins

With a strong focussing mind,

A me behind the eyes

Looking out,

The contracted energy

Of a self

In the grip

Of wanting to be.

–

And maybe there is a way in that,

A way through the puzzle

That cannot be solved,

Frustration

Burning so bad,

The mind freed

Through absolute futility.

A way, perhaps!?!

–

But when I turn my gaze

And relax,

When I unfocus my eye

And breathe out,

When I do nothing

But be

It’s as if I’m reclining

In the feather bed of myself

And bathing

In a bath-time of being,

Absorbing sweet ubiquitous sunshine,

Something and nothing at all.

–

And where is mind?

For his blather has faltered,

His voice has lulled to an easy quiet.

He now slumbers,

Rested in the greater bed

Of borderless life

Upon which the warmth of love

Flows simultaneous

To everything,

And where there is no one

But the one

Being its ever present lullaby.

Looking Deep

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Looking deep

Inside myself,

I find things

In all degree of

Colourful multitude.

But who sees those things,

And from which vantage

Are they lit

And wholly perceived?

And so I turn around

And face the formless face of myself,

The placeless place

Lacking evidence

Of all but being’s

Un-identity.

Am I really nothing

But the looking,

But the seeing,

But the loving

Which loves itself

And loves

As a star illuminates?

For with each glance

The scent of something comes

Which fills my heart,

And when I see the love pass

I look again into nothing

And yet again

I am fulfilled.

And then, not dwelling,

I lift my eyes from the love

Which became alive,

Glance once more

To that which I cannot perceive

And look…….

Thank You Lord

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Thank you Lord

For my heart floats free

In the amnion of love.

I feel it there

Breathing borderless being,

A fluid bathing

In the broad waters of the one self.

Thank you Lord

For with eyes open

I see through a lense of love.

For so long I mistook you

In the world

As flat and featureless

And ached with every minute dull,

Yet now I see miracles:

The mosquito feasting on my skin,

The church lit yellow in the night,

The drone blinking high above my head,

The crickets chirruping,

The dogs barking to their fellow mates,

The simple pleasure

And description of my pen,

And all myriad things unnumbered

And unrecountable

In scope I could not list

Nor tell,

Nor ever find

Unreachable end,

For none seems untouched

By light of life,

Enabling the whole its happening,

The dancing now

Filled beyond truly reasonable.

Oh thank you Lord

For allowing me life,

My old and static heart

Dissolved to but a current,

A brief shimmering,

A joy

Thrilling loose in spirit,

And bringing deepest recognition

That there is nothing

In all this

But you.

You Call My Name

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You call my name

With the music of your voice

And now I am falling……

–

Falling into your voice,

–

And……

–

I am….

–

Lost in the falling,

Adrift in beauty’s placeless place;

In love with love…

–

Oh, I am….

–

Speechless ………..and wordless

–

Stripped of my meaning

And brought to my knees

Before God….

–

Oh, I am

–

Silenced

–

Silence

On A Balcony

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On a balcony

Breakfast set on a small table:

Strong, bitter coffee in paper cups,

A croissant, a white roll, milk

And jam in plastic packets.

The near world:

Weathered stone buildings

With Terracotta rooves

And balconies from which

An array of washing dries,

Narrow alleys webbed together

By cables and telephone wires,

And covered terraces

Festooned in succulents

And semi tropical flowers.

–

Ratcheting Cicadas

Unseen in the trees

Haul the just so-ness,

Drawing it with percussive song

Until it miraculously oozes

From the pores of all things,

No one

More or less steeped

In equality’s being,

Reality broad and encompassing,

Presence vibrating as a unified field,

Every tangible element

Totally equanimous.

Where To Dwell?

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You can dwell

In the world’s messy configuration

In the constant push and pull

Of competition,

In its hurts

And blame’s countless catalogues

Of responsibility

Reaching far too far back in time.

–

Or

–

Recognise that love is here,

The source and solution to it all:

Love in your being,

The very being of the world

And heavens inconceivable,

The being you are

When all else is stripped bare

And you are clean

As the baby you once were,

With your heart on fire

With truth unthought, unmade

And unblemished.

Why Look For The Cause

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Why look for the cause

When the cause is the whole universe

At this very moment,

Karma’s unnumbered strands

Fast in a knot

The shape of reality

Right now!

–

To look for the cause is madness,

When love stands by

Neutral and beneficent,

Allowing the knot

It’s imperfect-perfect life,

Accepting the conundrum

And shining through the unreality of it.

With A Sudden Thud

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With a sudden thud

A robin

Hit the pane

And dropped.

It brought me from my chair

To cradle its tiny frame

In the cup of my hand.

I watched the last few moments

Of light in its eye

Before it faded away.

What is that light

So easily uncoupled

From the loose body still warm?

What intangible element

Glowed so fierce

Then dimmed over a long moment?

What miracle

This tiny death,

The being unsheathed

With but the stroke between a heartbeat

And the final fall

Of a red breast

That barely made it through a season.