beauty

Morning Stillness

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Stillness settled with the night

And did not leave,

And now a windless, blue sky

Brims with spaciousness.

Birds, twittering in the skeletal trees

Dissect the quiet, but not the stillness,

Their tongue’s music

Is the sharp edge

Of reality.

I lean against a wall

Bathed in fresh light.

Things happen in the stillness:

A car passes,

A faraway motorbike on a faraway road,

Blunter than the birds,

A squeal of a refuse truck, ever hungry.

But the stillness remains,

Deeper and more broad

Than the mind can conceive,

Deeper and more broad,

And deeper still.

The tree, standing elegantly tall

Knows the stillness intimately.

It stands beside me, thrumming

With a soundless resonance.

In the patch of sunlight

I lean against the wall,

Listening to the birds,

Knowing that stillness.

Sometimes The Storm

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Sometimes the storm

Is turbulent

But when the gusts calm,

When the fearful thoughts

Settle down,

The love we find is serene,

Bright-eyed and beautiful.

All that was tumultuous

And all that raged

Was but a movement

In love’s dream,

A squall playing on the surface,

A temporary disturbance

On the facade of our lives,

Fleeting and momentary

But unable to touch the depth of us.

What Does Love Say

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What does love say

To the mind’s swirling creations,

To its entrenched angst

And to all that ails

And seems intractable?

Love says nothing,

But like a tide of warm indulgence,

Love flows as the body of the boundless self,

Flows unstoppable to bitter ills

Dissolving all but itself

And freeing that self

From the illusions

That seem to bind it.

I Look Into Your Eyes

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I look into your eyes

And find my joy brimming,

For I could fall inside

The clarity of your seeing

And swim free

In nothing,

Buoyant in the being we share.

You told me of a Tuscan life

Picking olives,

A world where obstacles

Had dissolved

And all that evolved

Was the beautifully self

Looking at the same time

Both inward and out.

I tasted the olive of happiness

And lived your life

As my life

Dwelling in kinship

With you,

Where you were nothing but myself

Looking kindly from another perspective.

Chopping Winter Wood

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Last night

Brought a frost,

A coating of crystalline white

Drying the air, stiffening every leaf,

Crisping every damp thing,

Stilling all life

But for the sparrows.

Into this

Plooms my breath,

Brought momentarily

From the invisible;

I feel wonder at the breadth

And reach

Of the ether if my being.

I select a log,

Choosing one with flawless grain,

Straight lines, unknotted,

Placing it upright.

I lift the axe, aim

Half heft and half let it fall.

If it is true

My kindling spilts with a snap

Akin to the most beautiful synchronicity,

The grain parting

As if only a thought’s worth

Cleaved it separate

And clean.

I cut more,

And while I swing my axe

And watch my basket fill

With rough cut pieces,

I listen to the sparrows

And the stillness,

Enjoying my breath

Realising wintery all about me.

The Moment Is Fresh

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The moment is fresh

As dew-lubricated leaves

New from the womb of the world.

Oh, this sweet, empty moment,

Virgin as the first born thing,

How can I describe your unresistance

With but the clumsy word?

For you are nothing:

An endless, friendly nothing

Holding me in your arms,

Tender as the loving heart

Welcoming all that is.

You, who is no you,

You, who is everything

Seen and unseen,

Everything unformed or dwelling unchanging

In that which is not yet made.

–

The moment is fresh

And alive with infinite spirit,

And while the dogged mists and moods

Of false thoughts,

So seemingly bonded and glued,

Drift upon me from time to time,

Obscuring your brilliance,

They too, are born in you,

They too, arise in the light

Of awareness’s presence,

Taking their life

From the very light that you are.

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.

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.

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.