beauty

Rich Moment

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The sea beeeze is thick

With the moment

As if time

Were the grains of sand

On the beach,

Granular beneath our feet

And somehow transmitting silence.

–

This moment feels pregnant

With the ocean,

Speaking through the surf,

And the traders

Shutting down their stalls,

Heeding the encroaching night.

–

The tea, served in paper cups

Is as warm as the moon,

And tastes as good

As if it wasn’t just the tongue

But the skin and the tide

And wild dogs on the beach

Which tasted it.

–

What exactly is this rich moment

In which the body feels

As if the sea had invaded.

Perhaps it’s the heart

Or the sun

Still invigorating the skin,

Or the mind’s relinquishment.

Perhaps it’s the echo

Of the argument

And truths spoken

That leaves us empty

And tinglingly receptive.

Stripped

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We are all stripped

Of our accumulations:

The stuff we call ourselves;

Hang ups, difficulties, resistances,

All that dogged memory,

And then we are washed in so many ways

Until the gleam of pure life

Shines in our eyes

And we come to each other,

Humbled and with love in our hearts,

A gleaming energy

Lightening our steps

And eroding further

The weight we thought was ours,

The weight we thought was ourselves,

The weight we carried and called

The inescapable gravity of our lives.

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.

Energy

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With eyes closed

And the subtle reach of my fingertips

I sense the quivering air

Alive with energy.

I hover there

In the organ of my heart

Tasting the unseen frequency,

Intimately knowing

My brother the dragonfly

Aloft those same ethereal strands

And darting above the pool.

The pure white egret

Still on the strand,

Eying the bubbling surge

For silver

Is no less my brethren,

Nor the prey fish

Cool in the brine

And quick in the throng,

Nor too the ants scurrying indusrious.

I could make a fine list of kind:

Beast, vegetative form

And stone

And all would be kin to me,

Sensing alike

The charge-thrilling space

In vibration invisible,

A force to which we are all yoked,

Bodily bound,

Energetically impelled.

We Are One

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I wish to share the truth

That we’re not separate,

And that the feeling of separation

Is purely hoax,

A myth upon the mind

Played by the mind:

The mind swallowing its own lie.

–

What it means

Is that this warm heart inside my chest

Is your warm heart,

And that the being we are

Is one beautiful being

Holding us in its arms,

Cradling us

Feeding us the gift of life.

–

The love I feel

Is the same love

Blossoming inside yourself,

The exact same taste

Of infinite being.

We are one in this,

And knowing that the root

Of our life

Is the same root

From which all draw sustenance,

Means we can go free inside our personalities,

Move easy in our bodies,

Express our individuality to its fullest,

And be wholly ourselves.

Walk With Me

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Walk we me a while;

The night is sweet with honeysuckle

And fragrant shrubs breathing out

Their gifts for nightjars

And moths intent on the moon.

We’ve walked this path

In times past,

Many times;

We are kin

Though perhaps you’ve forgotten.

Never mind,

For arm in arm

We remember our love,

The warmth of our hearts,

The friendship

Of warm human bodies

Strolling side by side.

See, with each step upon this magic

We are closer.

To what? You ask,

Still forgetting.

To the Now perhaps

Or the tangible moment

Filled full with the moon

And dark-eyed moths

Feeding on the celestial beams

And heavenly night-shrubs.

See, up ahead, the Seeker’s gate:

It has a powerful magnetism.

But do you not feel the lushness of the

Creeping vines around us?

Do you not feel the cool

Of night shadows

Seeping between the trees

Holding earthen scents,

Sappy grasses bleeding

Into the cradling gloom?

You wish to go through the gate, I see.

I understand.

Do you wonder at what marvel lies beyond,

What treat you could be

If only we could muster the key

To enter?

No, beautiful friend, no!

Go that way

And find only endless dissatisfaction

In search of the elusive end

That never ever comes,

Always a horizon distant.

No, we are here already

For we walk arm in arm

In moonlight,

Our bare feet touching the cool stones

Of a pathway wending between trees

With waxy leaves,

Fluttering in ever so soft breezes.

See, there is enough in friendship.

Do not seek to open the gate

But look into my eyes instead,

Savour the scent of the moon

And the flavour of a wood

Enshrined in shadows,

Ever calling the nightjar and the moth.

Be here with me

In this savouring

Of the life in which our hearts beat,

A savouring of the space

In which we inhabit,

And the love

That gathers and glows

Between us

In the lush garden of ourselves.

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.

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.

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.