Oh, mystery, that from dark and emptiness,
can come such joy, and with it endless
bliss.
With faith unquestioned, we can in loving fly, from star to star across the endless sky.
Beyond the intimations, of your fear, lies joy to carry you across the years.
So, would you live to love, and not to grieve,
in truth you have, but only to believe.
And here, the old barn,
reflecting the light of a hundred
summers,
Yellow red and brown rainbows
glowing in porous wood.
Iconic, timeless, it Iingers
reminder of another age;
falling, it’s last act,
returning light to the earth.
All the world’s adjectives have been twisted.
They did it to create patterns which suited their desires
 And having forgotten love, broke everything.
I have been practicing silence that I might:
Hold you in my attention, like sunlight reflected on the waters,
See you, like a lion,; wild, strong, and fierce,
Know your spirit like a butterfly; beautiful, miraculous, fragile and yet as inevitable, as unstoppable, as metamorphosis.
To do these things is to become them; that I might reflect back to you, the exquisite beauty of your emanation, and so, remember the beauty of my own.
It seems to me a poem is an affirmation,
the light of my soul bursting into the world of words.
I sit, in the troubled theater of my mind.
watching it weather it’s pleasures and woes;
Its helter skelter dashes, uncertain pauses, and endless concerns.
Stopping from time to time, like a mother with her babe I take a moment to quiet it.
It’s a small town, we have Community suppers, had one tonight, sharing the warmth of friendship.
The Palestinians are dying
I’ve been meditating for many years, and I live in peace, in the quiet of the country.
Their children’s blasted bodies lying broken on the streets.
I don’t have much money, but I have a home and it’s warm and there’s food in the kitchen and I’m content—— except
They’re performing surgeries without aesthetic, without hospitals, without medications, without hope.
And though I cannot help it, I am complicit, so I give it what I can; cradling it within me between the lines, between rising and sleep.
I chose the cat, though I myself am far more hound than feline.
A cat lies, contented, licking its whiskers, as if each one could be savored; containing its own unique flavor.
So I, old hound that I am, lie cat like;
Savoring the flavor of each memorable moment of the day:
Industrious, contented, touched, intimate,
playful, and wistful in returning home.
Life moves so quickly now, and I find few with whom to share the deeper things and look with sadness, upon that, which all this maddened rush has wrought.
I have been many things.
A success, a failure,
rash, thoughtful
compassionate,
Insensitive,
worried, confident,
well that’s enough,
You understand.
Tonight alone At 62
In a farmhouse
on a dirt road in the woods
Writing, I can feel my dream
moving closer as I’f it might
drop in to greet me.
I think that writing,
like all art,
is for healing;
all that’s forgotten,
in the souls first
touch of earth:
The incarnated, a reflection,
of its birth song;
celestial, eternal,
instantly evocative,
of that beauty, which can
only be retained,
in this crude soil,
by twisting the hearts
of poets
into those lines,
the ones that stretch
beyond human hearts,
back into eternity.
Bird songs grace the day,
coyote voices ripple through the night.
The Sibilant sounds of tires approaching,
crackling gravel and dirt.
The anguish of power steering
forced into obtuse angles.
Rain drumming on the metal roof,
snow sliding toward the edges,
the whomps as sections fall
piling snow up to window sills.
The whisk of slippers on bare wood floors,
A chorus of water from: kitchen facets,
the porcelain WC, and fiberglass stall.
The scratchy sound of broom bristles,
Their short staccato strokes, sweeping;
The rattle of china and silver bathing together; the whispering stove burners breathing flames,
the bubbling of boiling broth,
and the ladle’s scrape in the Dutch oven.
Later: Hot water hums in the baseboard pipes, creaking bedsprings, the rustle of sheets, the sound of my heart beat and slow breaths, slipping uninterupted into sleep.
So my home accompanies me through the day,
embracing me with familiarity,
I move, surrounded by the songs of the days;
each act, individually articulated, familiar,
Welcoming me again.
TAO. (Edited)
Let me stand in stillness, alone,
but for the sound of my own breath; grace,falling from heaven like motes of light,
I had forgotten, again.
It is not mine to create peace, nor I who must find every solution.
I have only to walk the road that is given, the one that appears before me when I follow my breath,instant by instant, into the perfection with which my creator has gifted me.
Without fear all pains are small, Within it, none can be endured.
It takes little strength to keep faith, but much to find it.
With my brain I can fix things, but only with my heart can I truly help people.
If you teach condemnation you will harvest only bitterness.
Once we were a part of something together, yet now we have forgotten what it was.
Teach trust in life and reap joy.
(A quote from my dream): “Reach not into darkness for strength but into life.”
Pendragon's Poetry & Ponderings 