Here in the glistening, twittering light
Of a dewdrop and bird-call morn,
I think back to our meeting
And find I have not left you
Nor feel one increment apart
From the all I found
Inside my heart
And the camaraderie
Of friendship
Couched in being.
poems
Fresh Air
I breathe the life
In fresh air,
Close my eyes
And feel the space inside
As I feel the space without.
–
I smile at nothing
Feeling vibrant space,
Feeling being
Feeling the nothing of my self,
And tasting sweetness.
–
Who am I in this
With every idea cast
And separate from my being?
Who am I
In this?
–
I am space
And fresh air
And sweetness.
I am nothing
But being’s spaciousness.
A Bright New Day
Chittering wrens
Pick from the larder of cones
Clutched in the pine-brush
And absorb the awakening light.
Beneath, I sit and ponder
On the nature of being.
Some would speak of mankind
Separate from reality,
Somehow living above it all.
Yet, I am moved
Upon the turning of the world
In season’s gentle shift
Of early beginnings
And day pushed into night.
Surely this body,
As all walking free,
Feels the thrust of life
In the burst of the bud,
Unopened but profoundly expectant.
Surely all are moved
By the first warm breeze
Tickling the pine needles above.
Who is really alone
When life thrums
Through the body’s instrument,
When the very moon
Sways the water of our moods
And the constitution of our minds,
And new light shines,
Drawing us out
To sit absorbing
Like the first insect
Roused from hibernation’s
Torpid sleep?
I Look Into Your Eyes
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.
All Things Dissolve
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.
Picture
In the floor to ceiling window
Opens the picture:
The river
Glassy with the sky,
Smudged with autumn morning,
A pale blue glaze
In which mists cling
And spiral,
Calling back
The chill night
That stilled the dew drops
To a crust
And freed the tattered leaves
To mulch beneath the trees,
Sending out
A sweet and heady breath
Of spores
As life withdraws,
Releasing jealousies,
Indifferent now
To the russet matter
Discarded.
The Looking Of You
There is a looking,
A looking into yourself
Where the eyes
Become ever wide.
Ever and ever wider
Grows seeing
As though astonishment
Were limitless,
And what the self is
Is no less
Than all.
And yet there is greater seeing
And wider eyes,
As astonishment
Is refreshed with each
Step into yourself,
Each looking wider still,
Seeing drawn into
An infinite expansion
Into seeing itself.
Ever wider sees the I
Behind the eyes,
Ever wider
Becomes the I.
Do Not Fear
The heart says
Do not fear
Even if the danger seems imminent.
You must act
For the body’s safety
And as the conscience decrees,
Of course and most wisely,
But not from fear,
Not from an idea of future doom.
For the future is unborn,
Made of imaginings
And infinite potential
And all the combined karmas of the world:
And who can know that conundrum?
The now, however, is filled with love
And made of love
And witnessed by love,
And so too are all possible futures
Despite the dark veneers
That might come to pass.
And surely these dark illusions
Will tempt and prod
And precipitate
Any knot of fear held within the body,
Inviting the mind
To follow their bitter prospectuses
To a seemingly pitiful demise.
And perhaps you will be ensnared,
Caught fearful and flapping,
Making up facts
To fit the worry
You’ve whisked into a maelstrom.
Yet, you might pause
When fear offers its seductive hand,
Pause in the precious moment,
A moment with no past
Or combined future,
Just the here
In being and beauty –
A beauty never once touched
By fear’s tarnishing word.
And in this quite,
The heart’s voice
Offers silence
In a hundred multiples of love,
And fills the dawn
And itself in one
As love is unveiled
In its entirety,
Ever unfettered,
Never annulled
And never ever diminished.
Untethered
I hold my opinion
As you hold yours:
A collection of ideas
Raised on the twists and turns of our lives:
Individually accrued
And shaped into a weave
That we wear like coat:
A personality,
An identity,
Who we are, perhaps?
–
Can you be loose
With the luggage of the self,
This weightless stuff
Made of weightless thoughts
And thoughts amalgamated into belief?
–
How real it appears
How solid it seems
As if the weightless thoughts
And invisible ideas
Made something tangible,
A thing, actually there in the world.
–
Better to be loose
With opinion.
Better to see it
As merely a point of view
Among eight billion,
No more or less valid
Than the next,
No more or less serious
Or stupid or laughable.
–
Better it drift off in the wind
Better it evaporate under sunshine
Better it be like a friendly shadow
Whom you love
Despite its ignorance.
–
Be free unimportant opinion
Who I held so close,
Be free
Here in me,
For I see you small
And light and fragrant
And harmless,
A nothing who might alight
My indifference
And flit there unworried,
Restful for being wholly untethered.
Love
Cooling
When you are hot blooded
And wanting to the burn the night,
Love brings the flood.
–
Warming
When you are chilled
And lonely and dark,
Love brings you inside of itself.
distilledvoice 