photography

Fishing

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The Indian ocean,

In which the setting sun

Falls golden

To the wetted lips

Of waves infinite,

Speaks in white-water rumbles,

And the wind pulses warmly on my skin

And tussles at my hair.

–

These and much else

Call the mind to their sensational happening

And I feel my body in the world,

Sights and sounds

All around me.

–

But what is this me

In which the world appears?

What perceives

The golden mirror to the absolute west,

Laid upon the sea

Like an avenue,

The last light before dusk?

–

If, for a moment

I withdraw from my sun-warmed skin,

The buffeting wind

And my hair rustling like leaves,

What can I say

About being?

–

What can I say about the one

Who perceives these beautiful things,

The one who sees

The fishing boats heading out

To catch the night fish?

–

I try again,

Withdrawing from the worldly things,

Saying aloud “I am”;

Finding its resonance,

That to which the portal refers,

And fall from the sensational skin

And the light fading

And the wind’s playfulness.

–

I fall away into I,

Into dimensionless I,

Into love and well-being

And that which is indescribable,

That which defies the poet

And renders him

To nothing but inescapable warmth.

–

And then I open my eyes

To the perfect globe of the sun,

A ball of orange

Muted by the horizon’s haze,

And find being hauled with me

Like the fishermen’s silver clad nets

That come to the surface so bountiful.

–

Now, being seems wholly in the world,

In everything within earshot and gaze.

The waves are speaking

As if each drop were lubricated,

Each molecule part of the soft fluid whole.

And the wind too is a song

Of whispers gathered by the clouds,

Lovingly caressing

Those who’d be gladly touched.

–

Who is infusing

And who is infused?

It does not matter much

In beingness,

For no one but the One exists,

No one but the One

Is flushed by love,

No one but the One

Is as open as the universe is.

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.

Argument

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What is the waves’ opinion

Of the couple’s fight?

For before, during and after

The sea slid landward

Then slid back,

And white noise rolled

From left to right

Along the long shore drift.

–

And what is the breeze’s opinion

Of the argument,

High in the rustle-top palms

And blowing from the horizon’s depth

Where the sunset,

Kaleidoscopic in the clouds,

Breaks apart in hues of molten orange.

–

And what is the sand’s point of view,

Shifting and flat

With each sluice

And slap of the waves,

The sunset oranging

The mirrory film

Exposed at the ocean’s call back

And salty in-breath.

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.

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.

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.

Cafe

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Sitting in a cafe on a cliff

Overlooking the Arabian Sea,

Waves arrive,

Barrel and arrive again,

And an offshore wind strums

The palm fronds,

While a hippie flutters

Through guitar strings

Singing his spontaneity.

–

A fat, sleeping dog

Dreams of freedom

Beneath the table,

Limbs spasming,

Little yelps and joyful snorts

Heralding a youthful memory.

–

My love

Sits beside me

Lost in a book

And the hippie’s sweet voice

Just as I am lost

In the words of this Malabar place

That seem to come

As much from the palms’ rustling

And the waves breaking

As the instrument plucked

And the bitter coffee

Aromatic on my tongue.

Questioning The Beach

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My eyes are closed,

And in that seeing

Waves wash the beach clean.

I can hear them

Arriving,

Surging and falling away.

A salt laden breeze caresses my skin,

My T-shirt flapping gently;

The air is warm as a polished stone

Rounded to a pebble over eons.

Who am I

Who perceives the beach flies,

The waves disintegrating,

The claiming shadow

Beneath the outcrop

Of crumbling strata.

Who am I

On the other end of the world,

Sensing through the body’s

Fine and tangible medium?

Perhaps sensing is a sea-ragged rope,

One end anchored

In the matter

Of things so various,

The multitude names

By which the whole us spliced.

But the other end

Where the mind cannot go,

Where it peters out,

What is that?

If I tug upon that rope,

Draw myself

In the directionless direction

To the seabed of my self,

Who will I find

Dwelling deeper than depth?

Who sees from the ocean of being?

Who is

Where silence is?

Who knows

The creation,

Blessed to my ears,

Broken as wavelets

Rolling over stones,

And saltiness powdery on my skin?

Who is

In this,

Who is?