Boys In The Cascade

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In the falling freshness

We are at once

Energised and washed clean,

For in the frothing

We are nameless

And without language.

We know each as children

Playing in the stream,

Wet by the flowing moment

And doused

By ever-giving.

There are smiles

And gestures of friendship;

Locked arms to help traverse

The white water,

And brotherliness

In our shared refreshment.

All that we know of our selves

Is battered from our skin

By innumerable pelting droplets

And carried away downstream.

What is left

Is a thoughtless happening

Wetting us to oneness

And joining us

To the waterfall’s

Cool and cascading being.

Touched By Grace

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Who is touched by grace?

For that one,

Separate an isolated,

Is washed away

As every cell bursts forth exuberant,

Every cell

A sun in its own right,

Burning in conjunction

With infinity.

Who burns in cosmic nuclear fusion

But the cosmos itself,

Alive with life’s infinite potentiality.

–

Who have I been?

I have walked as a dead man,

Dragging the corpse

Of dull seeing,

Sluggish and blind to the truth

Of unknowable life

Electric in the creation of the

Mind/body/world.

I have walked without wonder

In the wonderful,

Walked barefoot

Dismissing the cool grass,

Breathing the divine essence

And calling it ordinary.

I have looked

But missed my astonishment,

Daubing reality

With the dank dross of ignorance,

Overlooking the immense power

Contained even within a simple seed.

Of course,

The quick and clever mind Conceptualised

The quantum physics of germination,

And I did not taste

The end of the world

Exploding in bud, shoot and inevitable tree.

Oh, life,

I glimpse

But do not know you,

I taste

but do not know you,

I feel

Only the minutest drop of grace,

But drop to my knees dumbfounded,

Zeroed in the face of it all,

Pulverised and purified,

Awed

And silenced utterly.

In Pleasantness

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I sit in pleasantness,

My eyes closed

And my ears open to the hubbub

Of a cafe crowd.

I’m not sure

If there are wandering thoughts:

If there are

I’m mildly disinterested,

Easy in the company

Of passers by,

Content in their presence.

–

Reality is a warm space

Pierced by light.

–

Where is my place

In the unbounded sphere of being,

For I am apparently turned inside out

And existence seems defiant

Of flesh’s hard-skin boundary,

The whole world as if remade

As one limitless happening.

–

I open my eyes

And feel my heart’s pleasant touch

In all I would typical dissect

From my person and call by other names.

I look at the people, the trees,

The plastic chairs

But feel only the warmth

Containing their forms,

A warmth

Reaching ever out and always.

–

Reclining in this luxurious bliss

Is the only possibility,

For love is truly uncontained

And truth is far broader

Than the personality’s curtailment.

–

Perhaps some live,

In and as

This sweet openness,

Pleasant wherever they find themselves,

Love always unveiled.

So let this be my wish, now,

To remain in sweetness

And naked to the world,

Free

And beautiful

And alive,

And in constant touch

With the divine

That dissolves all that seemed

So defined

And resolutely insoluble.

The Cow Shed

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She goes to the lowing,

Rustling, cud chewing shed

To absorb a bovine energy.

From their eyes she drinks

A liquid stillness, breathes

Their heavy succulent breath

And observes their due drop snouts

Nuzzling and inquisitive.

More than anything

She finds them quite, satisfyingly quiet.

Despite the constant chewing,

Neck rubbing, hoof stomping

And fidgeting on their halters,

They exude

The deep silence of the soul,

A calm watery expression

Of grass transformed

To sweet clover thoughtlessness.

She drinks this in,

Finds resonance,

Matches their quality,

Becomes equally

And sublimely still.

Drunk On Possibility

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I sip the sweet elixir of possibility,

Taste the unbound

And find there

Nothing but the self unshackled.

What can we be

When we step from the tight

Groove of routine,

The preprogrammed and forethought track.

I do not conceive the answer

But sense that which is not yet born,

That free form,

Unfettered and dreamy.

I drink of this possibility

Becoming drunk on love,

Bathing in the fluid of possibility alone;

A not knowing

As broad as a river,

Deepening and widening

And carrying me happily along.

Drinking The Ashram

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I sit quiet

On a stone structure

Jutting out above the pool.

In the foreground

Wading birds traverse

The lily pond,

Taking leafy, buoyant step

After leafy, buoyant step,

Picking between the protruding buds,

Ever called sunward.

On the far bank,

Peacocks own the roof of the cattle shed.

They strut, then stop,

Heads upturned and necks quivering

And release a warble of throaty calls.

When the moment is right

They extend their plumage,

Turn a full circle on the spot,

Shaking sporadically

As if to summon the gaze of the whole world,

Draw feminine kind to the chalice

Of one hundred iridescent and fine seeing eyes.

–

Beyond the groves of coconuts

And when the mountains rise,

A dense forests climbs steeply

All the way to the clouds,

Disappearing in the mist-shrouded peaks

To collect the silver life of dew drops

From those airy passers by.

And on return

The forest conveys first dampness,

Then sheds trickles and rivulets,

Then further down at the foot of the hills

Streams spill out on to the flat plain

To quench the thirsty farmland,

Where all life bends

Upon their knees

To sip

From cupped and thankful hands.

Remember Love

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Through the portal of the word

I remember love,

Step inside its resonance.

Truly it is unforgettable,

Yet what the mind says

In absence

Seems to veil

The unveilable,

Distract

From its absolute being.

–

I remember the love

That loves without question,

The love that simply loves,

Dissolves all in its recognition,

Ever brings forth

More of itself

In joyful abandon.

–

I remember love

That isn’t a memory

Or static thing

Locked in the vaults of my mind,

But instead

Vibrates with the essence of living,

The all of my heart.

–

I remember the place, shape

And flavour of love,

The being of love,

Always being

Always loving,

On which all find foundation.

–

I remember love,

That love

Closer to my heart

Than anything,

The love that does not stand apart

But enfolds

Simply everything.

From The Indian Ocean

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From the ocean’s far horizons

And through the haze

Of a lazy afternoon,

A breeze,

Sure in temperament,

Comes to presence

In the buffeted leaves

Of a salt-hardy species,

Rooted in sand.

–

My hair rustles

Like the broad-leafed trees

Of the tropics,

And my skin

Feels every pulse of the wind,

Every sun-warmed vibration.

–

The afternoon

Settles in the glimmering sea

And waves roll ever beachward,

Rising up

And falling,

Curled and called under

And then sluced forward

In the tide’s fluid sinking away.

–

I am yet again touched by constance:

The air, like reality,

Dynamic in flow,

The great liquid medium

Offering a soft percussion,

The leaves gently scratching

Their waxy neighbours,

Even the crows irregular calls

And eagles’ warbling cries

Speak of this singular theme

Of stillness in movement,

A happening in the heart of things,

A now containing all that could be.

–

What am I in this

Air-caressed and skin-warmed perception?

What is it that hears the sea

Cool upon the sand?

Who’s heart,

A sponge to the whole,

Drinks in the indulgence of the senses?

–

I have no answers

But for the slithers of light

Dazzling on the turbulence

Of the world’s

Blue-green globe,

Reaching beyond my understanding,

No answer

But for the soaring eagles

Expertly high on thermal wing,

No answer

But for the sway of branches,

Supple and bending

To and fro,

Chlorophyll fronds

Like my fingertips,

Feeling it,

Alive and inside

The whole

Of God’s own synthesis.

Dr Maya

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I do not really comprehend

What mysteries unfolded

In the heart of this place,

But what I can discern

Is that I am moved

In ways beyond my understanding,

My body and my mind

Touched by the work of love.

I feel it in the antenna of myself

And in the knowing

Where love meets love,

And in the opening to the greater union.

Some may let this seeing slide

And go unacknowledged,

But my heart swells

To say this truth out loud

And bow to the profundity

Come upon me.

I stand grateful before you

And thankful for the alignment of the stars,

Your lineage

And your guru’s touch

That saw you born as I am born

To the wonder of it all,

The blessed fall into the ground of being.