beauty

While The Sun Set

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While the sun set

Our thoughts got caught

In the sticky thorns

Of the news

And we all remarked

On how terrible it was.

–

And as the sky became redder

And wider and filled

With darting bugs,

Feasting bats upon the wing,

We said it was a travesty.

–

And when the moon,

A slither in the vastness

Of horizons broad as beginnings,

Slipped from behind an effortless cloud,

We continued with our worrying stories.

–

And at last, with but a pale glimmer

At the most western face of the day,

The final moment

When night was not yet night

And day still held sway,

We woke up,

Realised everything was alright

And that life was in fact joyous.

Identity Trap

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You sit there

In your skin of ideas:

What you’ve learnt,

What you’ve imbibed,

Parroting out

Your culture

–

Just as I am spewing mine.

–

And in all this soup of thoughts,

A million-hand reused,

We take our arbitrary stand

Against each other’s placards,

Clinging upon the cliff edge of identity,

Fingers bloodless

In the fear of where we might fall.

–

But if we were loose in our thoughts,

Seeing them as harmless

Products of an endlessly spitting machine,

And not really ours at all,

Might we see

That the apparent void

Into which we might fall

Is no void to be feared

But an endless source of spaciousness.

The Great River

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I lie back

In the great river,

Its warm waters

Lapping at my cheek,

My chin and my forehead.

The great liquid of the world

Holds me with a tenuous grip,

Perhaps only a nudge

Upon a gently idling whirlpool.

My chest holds my heart to the sun

And I am open as a child

Yet to learn.

There is sunshine on my thoughts

And eyes, closed

For the meandering of the heart

And wisdom’s language,

Subtle as the currents

Baring me.

I am alive in trust,

Surrendered to the water’s movement,

Guided by it,

Content to be borne

Where its great waters will.

A Dove Coos

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A dove coos

In the the bell tower,

Soft and throaty

And warm

For the chicks

Loved in to the nest.

–

The Scots pine,

Lofty in the graveyard,

Stands still and magnificent

Exuding presence,

Shining with silence

And oblivious of time.

–

The woodland,

Dotted with ewes

And skewed graves stones

Chatters

In warble and whistle.

In the canopy

Birds flap and flutter unseen.

Potential

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Turn

From the tired old trudge

Into limitation,

Where the mind conjures

Ever decreasing lack

And multiplies of hardship.

Turn towards

The vortex of love

Spinning perfect

In the centre you forget

While straying in the dream

Of you as lonely entity,

You as lonely, separate fact.

This infinite you is limitless

And born anew,

Fresh and ever fruitful.

It calls the thoughts,

Enrobes them rich,

Colours them

In love’s ubiquitous energy,

And spins them

In upward spirals

Bringing more and more

And glorious more

In never ending

Expansion of being,

A potential

That cannot be reached

But can be

Reached into

And rode:

You,

Forever uplifted.

No Need To Love

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You need not love the self

For the self loves you.

Relax, forget about the work

Of loving, it’s not yours to do,

For the self loves

Your every limitation.

Stop attempting the impossible:

You cannot conjure love

Through will and the toil of thinking,

Just chill

For you are loved already,

Wholly and infinitely,

No part of you left out.

See you are bathed in love,

See that, only see,

Then sit back

And do absolutely nothing.

Wonderful Space

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The garden is ripe with being

For sunlight

Diffuse through haze

Illuminates

And encourages

All green things

To be

Ever more themselves.

And like the plants

I expose my skin

And open my pores

And breath in

That light,

Absorb

The sweetness offered

Unconditionally,

And drink in life

Knowing, as it is mine

So it belongs to all

Whose hearts beat

And in whose veins sap rises,

And in even the static selves

Of soil and stones

And things thought inanimate,

Nevertheless

A pulse of being still thrills.

The Measure Of Happiness

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In the wind chime caressed

By a breath,

And in that very same breeze

On which birds chirp and caw

And flute about the day,

And in the corrugated iron roof

Tink-tinking with a lungful

Of sunshine,

Expanding its sun-trap back

And stretching like a luxuriant cat,

And in the lofty Scots pine

Whose needling fronds

Reach like sensing fingertips

Deep into the infinite:

These all

Are the measure of happiness.

From Soil

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February mizzle wets

The lights

Of snowdrop, crocus

And eager daffodil,

Soothes and lubricates

Their birth

Through soil

Mulched humus rich

And frangranced sweet

With spore’s mycelium.

To think,

Some slander this complexity,

Call it dirt and mud

Overlooking the quantum truth

Of gardeners’ gold,

Both foundation

And sustenance

For all.