Poetry Corner

Behold in a window a lover's vision,
a tryst of amethyst and blue sapphire.
What within such beauty does inspire? —
as if spellbound in time's oubliette
some metaphorical muse might abet
an escape from my existential angst.
A moth, tapping its wings against
the windowpane, flounders in a web
of shadow, struggling to resist the ebb
of life, perhaps rapt by some fond
hint of summer in the glow beyond
the glass, not content to go to rest
where, unmoved and silent, the forest
in its sepulchral pose has fallen victim.
Then, like some serpentine totem,
this faintly foreboding presentiment
settles in, as I halfheartedly attempt
to chase its chill from my mind—
but it only moves downward to wind
its way around my spine, snake-wise.
And so, as the sun's final flare belies
the cold, I rise to close the shutters,
pausing as a frail winged form flutters
to the ground. Thus this passion play
attains, in the dying light of day,
an end where death becomes sublime.

Such is the peril of the poet's pastime
that the sanctuary behind one's doors
becomes a stage of cryptic endeavors,
wherein the mind, in blind devotion,
working the mine of buried emotion,
succumbs to rhythm's relentless drum.
And so I retreat into my last modicum
of comfort, reticently replaying my part,
following day after day as they depart
into their mercifully muted demise.

Surely it comes as no great surprise,
that signs of change loom close to home,
like a troubled sleeper's mournful moan
in the night. Around me, once familiar
things are beginning to appear peculiar:

Walking in the windswept wood
this evening, bathed by its mood ...
the mind awake, wide-opening,
the heart now shyly following,
the gut yet lingering on hold
as if in fright and flight mode ...
a lone doe appearing on the trail,
out of perfect stillness in the veil
of dusk, gracefully bolts away,
disappearing like a dark grey
ghost into the ever-near presence
of the ineffable mystery of existence.

When we speak
About the Mystery
That is all there is,
Everything it seems
Is lost in translation ...
Its meaning inherent
In the singing silence,
Where in between
The poignant seconds
Of the ticking clock
Eternity awaits
Our freedom.

Call it whatever one may,

Awareness, Love, Liberation,

ALL appears as its essence

in this ever-present now:

graced by it, enamoured of it,

embraced in it, inseparable from it,

swept up within its eternal flow,

no longer in resistance,

no longer caring to cage it,

one trusts in it completely

to reveal the perfect way

into the infinite mystery.

I wake in the morning and see a dream within a dream, the conceptual layers are like a maze and they run deep. The hangover of thought still present, but loosing its influence....

To pierce through all the thought based layers is like the taste of expansive air after a long and winded contracted breath...

Outside of imagination, Eternity warmly greets me with a cushion. It says welcome to my shelter, relax, everything you need is here, no storm can penetrate these walls, stay here and breathe the air...

Thank you to all the movement, for helping reveal my effortless state as stillness. For so long I thought my Being was in the movement itself, and that its actions were essential for protection from an unimaginable death. The thought plauged me that if I stopped moving then my Being could be comprimised, there was the belief that I could loose myself to the Stillness. Movement, you were my curse, but have turned into my antidote, helping break this hypnosis... The Stillness, not so empty as I thought. Thank you to you movement, for revealing to me where the light really emanates from. Thank you for showing me that my Being was always in the ever present Stillness and that what I am can never be comprimised.

Recognition is taking place, Being has thrown out its boomerang, using it to discover its own existence. Wherever the boomerang comes back to, there Being is, shining like the sun in all its magnificence.

This game is not without tricks. Being has misidentified itself with the movement. Its not until the circling boomerang comes back home when the realization begins to occur- here I've been the entire time, I was not the boomerang all along, but to see this the game was needed just as sour is essential to know sweet. The boomerangs natural course is to go out and then to come back home, this is our path, destined to arrive to the divine paradox that we never left.

Unsettled

If you are a man of learning
read something classic,
a history of the human struggle
and don’t settle for mediocre verse.
Rumi

If you don’t fall for the dream
of living, you won’t believe
the dream of dying,
because voiding an ending
is really searching for a start,
and all that remains is yearning
to find where we now belong,
invisible, a swan among swans,
afire still, because you must have burning
if you are a man of learning.

By twelve you already knew
your father’s business;
but what was your face
before you were born?
In your beginning you came to heal
the prophetic wounds of mantic
liturgy, setting out alone
for the ancient desert
where eons had passed since the Jurassic
and you read something classic.
　
The adversary you meet
is the one you always expected,
offering a beggar’s dream
for a bigger promise.
What good losing a soul
if you can’t smuggle
your dream into the world scheme,
or find the will to know it?
or watch a troupe of mimes juggle
a history of the human struggle?

Any text read in depth
discovers puzzled possibilities;
only in sound is the silence
inferred, the soundless
of the unrecognized unknown.
In the beginning is the curse
of illusion yet we walk free,
slapping away fear with love;
no need for Presence to rehearse,
and don’t settle for mediocre verse.

About 1970 when I was engaged in the study of Shotokan Karate
I was invited to a demonstration of Tae Kwon Do at a
neighboring dojo. The elder Park family grand master,
ninth or tenth dan, was invited in with the insistence of the dojo
instructors that he would not need to remove his shoes
on the mat...He was easily in his eighties

...................................................................

The Old Country

my grandmother
once recalled walking to church
when she was very young
for some miles barefoot, until
in sight of the building

and put on her clean shoes,
for God in the Old Country
never could wear out.
respect for the sacred
is different in the East.

by the way we dream
our walls seem to fall
on one side only,
weightless, into the bowl
of the crescent moon.

"To See a World..."

(Fragments from "Auguries of Innocence"
William Blake

"To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour."