These beasts
snapping from all sides
just before
they ate me alive
I sang a tune
they fell asleep
then dead
except for one
hatched in my head.
I’ll tame it at home– but
where is my staff
of light
where is the map
I had in my sack– lost.
Category: Mind
Motion
You have only to watch white clouds charging a moonlit sky
To know everything is change
Nothing is the same from moment to moment
Nothing exists as we think or feel but for a moment
And not as we feel or think
There is no stasis in darkness, not an instant, everything is motion
In dark and light, deeper than surface change
Being change itself
A reason we cannot feel nor see the Cosmos moving
We are all, each of us
The Cosmos moving at such speed the slow moving mind
Cannot apprehend its fury
Only guesses at its magnitude and beauty
The brain, a fleck of a speck of its dust
A tiny crab in this immense sea of stars
Is lost in its own shell of self– but what, how is it lost
In that which has no root in reality, who can find
What we call a self, place a finger on the unchanging soul
When all is motion?
The self, a soul-grasping bit of imagination, the self
The whiteness of clouds, a wind-ripped sky under a winter moon.
Reminiscence
Fishing at the river, some boys jump in
Swim across and back so quickly
It makes my head spin.
Were I as trim and lean as them
I’d join in–
I did when I was that age
Set down my rod
Shed my clothes
Took to any lake or stream
Swam my sweaty body clean
Lay on the bank and dreamed of love—
But I am old now, these days
I need prodding
Just to take a bath!
A boy needs no prod, only doing
Without hesitation or regret
Sagacious are the old men, but wisdom
Does not come
Unless the joys of youth are done
And as the mind goes under, we learn to swim again.
Waking in Hell
Hell is an island
In an endless sea.
The sea is myself,
The I-land is me.
Esoteric
After all, as you lie in my arms knowing all
needing nothing but what is, the earth rolling away from the sun
Thunder rolling in the distance
Can you hear the thunder of death, my dear?
Yes, I hear it and more, I hear a sound
Not everyone can hear, I feel an energy not everyone can feel — a Sound
Birth a note, Love a song, Death
Spinning days into silk, connecting man to men, men to women
Woman to every child, weaving nights out of the past –
The Dead speak to me
They are not dead; they are here
And with the silk of souls our future is woven, all that is
that is humanly good, out of birth this note, out of love this song
Little worm silken light little word OM
Japanese Garden Photo by Terry Busch
How Mind Moves
The splash of water on rocks
at the high end
vibrations move, ripple the surface
but not the sweet calm
a center of lotus and lily pads
like a quiet deep of sea —
But water arrives by many ways
to be a pond: fed by mountain-top rain
seeping to a circle of stone
where deer drink
turtles sun and dream white and gold
orange and black koi
rising and falling like ideas
frogs in a daze
noon only a notion here, and slowly
at low end, the water flows out
mind twisting through pines
senses thought concept reason time
enter the high end noisy waves
leave the low, fulfillment
running to the sea
Photo by Tom Gable Nature Photographer
