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BEYOND THE SLEEPING SPHERE
Mourning dove is in the wood
sounding through my observations,
sunset
on the mountain top
giving back the constellations,
nightjar mimics in the air
round an empty house of prayer ;
wonder
fills an awe-struck mind
high above the sleeping land,
all is written out tonight
by another author's hand :
Energetic
patterns dance
stir the fire which forged the brain,
the brain which forged the world of man ;
who sees the
whole as the divine
has plunged the depths for the profound
and crossed the metamorphic line
where all
eternity is found.
My swinging pendulum is still,
as I observe beyond the veil,
a world beyond all measure,
with
stars, transtemporal as ever.
.....
ZEN PIPES
Clogged - up to the eaves
time to roll one's
sleeves,
is this the way of zen
raking the leaves again,
observing one's thoughts, but never
tying the two together
?
Asking of mother earth
what was ' I ' before birth
and of the autumn sun
what will ' I ' be when I'm gone ?
When
letting go would seem to say
dont grip your life as booty,
colourful hints of red
voicing a dying beauty ;
tossing
thoughts with the leaves,
clearing a way for Zen -
what I heave to the wind
the wind may blow back again
:
Fancy I hear a voice -
' You are the trees turned yellow,
turn
you to brown despair,
'til you are ripe and mellow,
three pounds of flax for a rope -
hang you on threads of hope
:
The whole edifice of belief
is built
on the ancient brain,
clear it away and let it flow-
rain, rain, rain ;
Love now, speaks through nature
with such
sad empathy,
and is this less than the swirl
of grouts, in my cup of tea.
.....
LOVING IT ! (For Alan Watts)
A moments youth, a wrinkled face
as on my hand the
line I trace,
and in between, so close, yet far
to seem that ' I ' was never here,
and rapid too
- that shooting star
resolving in the atmosphere ;
vibrations give the world to me
though other worlds I cannot see,
and
energy - the causal spirit
is playing games and loving it,
a hooting owl, a coughing rook,
an old man gazing for
awhile -
just three beneath a lunar hook
implicit in a cosmic smile.
.....
IT
It transmutes its life into this, my friend
and
this is it, this sunlit plain,
it is that dark cloud that appears above,
it is the nervous buffalo -
it takes
fright in them, yet it is
the lightning and the thunder,
it steps out of its own way
or is trampled and torn asunder,
and
after - in the distance, when it is gone,
it is the silence, my friend
and my waking thought, that all is one
;
it burns now as stars up there
and sees itself through my blind eyes -
allows us to be what we are not;
from
the depth and the greatest span
I say to you my friend,
it is the spirit that sleep-walks as man.
.....
THE LIFE
In my imaginative mind
the wind said ' break
away, let go
for what you are is never seen
the world is what you think you know,
you spirit, lighter than the leaf,
the
promise of a tender shoot,
be done with that that has no self
that grips so lightly at the root,
I'll sweep you from
this dormant scene
and drop you in the evergreen,
for what you are must wake as spring,
the life in every living
thing'.
.....
BLANK
(In the style of T.S. Eliot)
Will the score sheet be blank
as a loss of memory !
Will
the auditorium fill
with people, ‘ the faceless people ‘ !
Will I bow to me through you
a faceless maestro,
crossing
the floor with a candelabrum !
Will I be a dark corner, conscious of itself,
conscious as the notes appear, remembered
as
bars dancing an overture to heaven !
Will we applaud and rise together,
exit the wings as one !
Will we begin again
when we are done ?
.....
FRAMED
On the piazza down below
the green is pushing through
the brown,
where moving figures to and fro
and round the edges of the town,
a church - spire points the nascent spirit
above
the fog surrounding it,
figures painted with geist to be elsewhere
lost in the hour that reads the same,
stealing
tomorrow from the canvas
held by the clock in the painter's name.
.....
THE WINE
The broken bread my birthright
and the whole vineyard was mine,
and
still I see a brutal crown
in swathes of tangled eglantine,
and red poppies for Christ's blood
to mix with tears
that trickled down,
and vinegar in every soul
to soak the sponge and raise the pole ;
as now, we think
to
give triumphant love a drink ,
when all our murderous deeds
have shaped this mystic to our needs ?
Is
not a cup of eastern tea
enough to sup with the divine ?
For it is pertinent to me
how centuries have corked
the wine.
.....
WHERE IS MY CAT !
‘ Look at me ‘ said the full moon, -
‘
no moths circle my light
though they circle the lamp above you !
If you are patient for a while
I shall move
a little - round the corner,
along the gully where the mouse hugs the wall,
follow it to the drain where
Pushkin waits,
contrary to his predilection.
Sheet his black, stalking form
to portray him as the monster
that he is
pouncing to prevent life, -
life my light would dim and die for ;
do you see him now, running to
you
having cleared beyond your sight
the lowly life that feeds upon your waste,
ready to be fondled now for his nature
;
I will see you both tomorrow night -
phasing out ‘.
.....
I KNOW
In the blink of an owl
I would miss it,
save for
the eye - catching moon
to that shooting star, -
as the span of my life
to the age of the earth ;
from cradle
to grave
I would miss it -
that soil disturbed for no one,
the bat to the belfry there
is more akin to me,
more
than that clock-hand click
on the rotting flesh below;
the cause of all is hidden here
by virtue of what it has to
show, -
what the eye - catching moon
has shown me, I know.
.....
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HAIKU
Mother earth rolls on
like
dog, snoring peacefully
in perfect silence... ...
.....
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CEMETARY
('Let the dead bury the dead' said Christ)
Why do we cling to these names so
in such maudlin
contemplation?
Have we no faith at all now
in creative, transformation ?
Look for meaning on headstones
scan
for something profound,
not reminders on old bones-
while daffodils trumpet new suns;
those that
are carved here in stone
have willows to sweep their ground
they lived life and moved on
as
green shoots from dying brown,
and this old, hopeful church
that left my spirit in the lurch
up
there with the gargoyles,
at least allows me peace here
with only birdsong for a choir
still points me upward, to
aspire.
.....
TO MY LOST GURU
(Sage philosopher Alan Watts)
Is that your blackbird note
with nothing right
or wrong,
save only simple joy
that gestures with a song ?
Is this your summer space
to flutter by and close
in
butterfly of lace
on buddleia and rose ?
This questioning of life
the winnowing from chaff,
when
in twilight arbour
the echoes of your laugh ;
are those your mottled shades
where passiflora run -
her foil of
crowns, that bleed
into the dying sun ?
.....
' NOW '
Through parted curtains,
as if by a magnet,
I
am drawn to the window
by the pull of the full moon,
slowly filtering, distilling
from my brain, all sense of time;
her
stark, barren presence
through aeons, endless ages
dissolved in endless space,
and the endless hours, turning
round
my ticking, measured clock
chiming on the midnight hour,
as if it borrowed tomorrow
from her light and shade, -
time
is the maya, the illusion
gone forever to the drain,
as yesterday's rain;
by her lifeless, embodied dust
and hollow,
hypnotic sway
the restless oceans move
and as the tide proves
when the sun sheets her most,
an apparition like
a ghost
haunting with her steady glow
echoing nothing but ' now '.
.....
NO-ONE
Under the anaesthetics
there was nothing to know
for
we are all ultimately unborn ;
in a dreamless, deep
unconscious sleep,
unaware of transcendent life,
on
a ghostly turning world -
its passing hours, the surgeon's knife.
the miracle of seeming to be here, is this -
our archetypes
do not leave heaven,
enter not the stream of time
to cast their shadows through each birth,
or think the thoughts
that make us all
those who must surely die.
.....
CAGED
(Prodigal)
Tenant of a sheltered house
daydreams in a 'sleepy
corner'
gliding through those 'windy straits'
with life's hand upon his shoulder;
his time ebbing with the tide
folds
his clothing tidily,
footprints covered by the sea;
ageless as the cause of him -
gazing through the eye of one,
like
a comet on its way
burning brightly from the sun!
.....
NOT OF ERGOT
(VISION)
Am unready for the substance
of the
bodhi tree,
I will drink the cactus rain
and wait for glory,
but is that water just the heat
tempting
me to cross,
are those desert blossoms my
infinite regress ?
And will I ever be the same
where
those sand dunes blow,
if my time has come and gone
will I ever know ?
Will I be lost unto my self
if the
vision stops ?
I will lay just where I am
‘til the penny drops !
Seeing through the unborn self here
Through the unborn eye.
made that green oasis, my
caravanserai,
at one to leave or part with ease,
set down the camel
on it’s knees.
.....
TRUTH
The truth is like a dream
where nothing has a name,
as all our tomorrows
are that which never came ;
she punished as the sun
who sought her on the earth -
through
myths of Acheron,
the mystic’s desert dearth.
In vultures on thermals
I seem to read her mind -
she
travels with spirit
but leaves the flesh behind
and hides between heart - beats
that drum her narrow ledge,
a
bottomless chasm
that hugs the razor’s edge.
.....
LIFE IS SHORT
Remember time, remember place,
when feet to knees
seemed like a mountain,
that smile upon your mother’s face
up to her eyes your living fountain,
when life was
yours - a world unspoken
when on all fours your ' glass ' was broken,
that bright surprise - a robin show -
how everything
was there, to know ?
A life - time sits here in recluse -
the wood-seat
waits to be of use
and mocks my age with Poke - the tortoise,
happy, crawling to have caught us
underneath an ageing
sloe,
with nothing more, or less to know.
.....
MY ATHEIST FRIEND
His mind, scars my landscape,
a depleted
quarry -
‘don’t look at the stars‘ he said,
‘and don’t worry ‘ -
a lead sky in
an oily puddle
or just grouts in a cup
in the ‘ Greasy Spoon ‘
on a wet afternoon ;
like that
moon, uncloaked,
nothing to say, barren, silent :
‘A meaning to life ‘ he inferred,
' there
is none' and I thought with sadness
what a song less nightingale he is ! -
If there ever was one.
.....
AS IF
Forked lightning,
count the number,
a clap of thunder
- rumbling on,
a long, pregnant pause
before torrents of rain -
bouncing delight
on arid desert ground,
from
distant hills
comes rushing down a flood
to dormant dry seed,
almost instantly blossoming,
from the dust a myriad
colourful
flowers, rise up,
an aftermath - a beautiful amen.
As if a God in passing, had left
the evening sky, to dry again.
.....
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