Poetry

An Emanation of Prayer
An emanation of Prayer

Breathe gently, breathe quietly

Burn
steady as a flame

Your alone Breath pervades

As we strive toward a dimly envisioned prize.

Moment by moment
carried by the breath on a wave of possibilities

Pioneers of transformation
like seeds awakening with the dawn 

Hold steady in the light
as we labour
under the silent force of the incarnate word.

anna farrell  22/3/2021
Anna Farrell
LIGHT

LIGHT

In the infinite cold vastness

the brooding dark frequencies of deep space



the endless whale song of all creation

beyond dancing interfaces of seen and unseen



light rays forth

to the furthest reaches of immeasurable



stars shine suspended

in universal candle light vigil



to a Presence unseen

whispering to all creation



“I am here

Source and Substance



I hold you in Love

beyond immensity’s reach



a timeless fidelity

to all dimensions as One



and know that My Presence

is evidenced as



                       Light”.

Ron Friedman
IT'S PANDEMIC TIME
Songs boomerang
in my head
Cock-eyed Optimist vs The Eve of Destruction
There would be time
I imagined NOW
to BE to do
all the unsaid and unrequited.

To burrow into the souls of trees
and drink nectar from now-clear streams
to meditate away
from Samsara pain
to pedal-push sweet lilting lyrics
that would transform the planet.
To paint a masterpiece for forever.

To come to peace with that rascal
Death    who stands smiling skeletal
He knows his catch is huge
His nets are bursting
So ready to scoop some more.

But ennui ensues
The couch beckons
screens flicker
Zoom voices
boom like prophets
of Apocalypse
and perhaps
they are.
The blinds are drawn across
the street
The grass high and unattended
No one comes out,

Beyond the raging headlines
the questions   the fear
Mistakes pile up like the
lifeless bodies gathered in the dusk
Missing protection    missing masks
Health workers working day and night
Exhaustion and fear crease
their souls
Celebrations for those they can save
The lost and losses haunt
the empty sidewalks.
Grief washes down like grey rain.

But here it is    still there
Hands pump to restore life
Feet march to deliver food
The young look after the old.
The friend who delivers baby goods
to destitute mothers
The friend who started making free masks
in our town   gathering volunteers
all of us making masks
first a few   then hundreds
then thousands
one hospital  then three
then for everyone  everyplace
flying out like doves of peace.

The children sing with balloons
pastels and open faces  laughs like
silver bangles
ride in cars past houses
sing Happy Birthdays and Congrats
Thousands march against injustice
risking illness and arrest.

The neighbors children
paint in dayglo colors
LOVE EACH OTHER
FIGHT THE VIRUS
shines and shimmers on the sidewalk
We sit far from one another
and warble our hellos
muttered under masks
Gardens sprout
eating is conscious
savored not gulped.

I live now
in the present,  only now
no future, the past hazy
like my dreams.
What meaning in this
new beauty  erupting
on the streets roads and forests
Trees like guardian sentries, sparkly water
the sky more blue and clear
And we humble creatures of God,
of Earth of whatever strange Creator
envisioned this
feeble human experiment
We limp on feeling our way
through millennium
repeating endless boomerangs
leaving flotsam and destruction
in striated
layers  anger war hate and greed
but    there it is there it stays
sneaking through
laughter, hope, beauty, compassion
kindness and love….
 
 

C. by Ellyn Joyce Rabinowitz 2020
At the Still Point of a Turning World

At the still point of the turning world.
Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards;
at the still point,
there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement.

And do not call it fixity,
Where past and future are gathered.
Neither movement from nor towards,
Neither ascent nor decline.

Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance,
and there is only the dance.
T.S. Eliot
blessed mourning
Father, my brother Steve stepped through the door this blessed morning.
My heart is so heavy.
Father, so many are dying from this blind and careless virus
My heart is weeping uncontrollably.

Father, you have made us for yourself,
To know and to love and to cherish
Each moment, every moment like the sweet fragrance
Of our red roses in Spring.

Father, why is so much dying necessary?
Why do I need to weep so wildly?
Why do the roses need to wilt?
Why have you made such tears?

In that place of tears and mourning
In that place of emptiness and despair
I am learning to greet you, to be embraced,
To feel the fulness of your Presence

In that place of tears and mourning
I have discovered a key to an enchanted garden
That has opened my heart, such fragrances,
A gift that has brought me to YOU

In that place of tears and mourning
I now see the despair of millions, before I was blind.
I now feel so many broken hearts, before I was blind.
This is all a gift that has brought me to YOU.

In that place of tears and mourning
You have revealed compassion,
To see a teenage suicide, to hear the cry of the homeless, the elderly,
To feel the anguish of my black brothers and sisters.

In that place of tears and mourning
You have rescued me from me
To know that I am born again
To know the fulness of JOY born of blessed mourning

Glory be, and thank you, Steve, my brother
F. Gard Jameson
Our Light Bodies

I am disappearing
into my Self
is disappearing
into Isness

The world is
disappearing
and doesn’t know it
yet

Myriad species
know it
and are leaving
leading the way
out of this
into the vastness
in which perhaps
some other small
island awaits

I have lived
my life trusting
some large scale
betterness will
emerge as sovereign
love prevails

Do I still trust
and what difference
does it make

I would live
my life the same
either way

Light from light
light in light

The Earth is dying
and so am I
though we both
will endure forever

May we work
as one in and from
our light bodies
Charles Gibbs, 15 October 2019
Of Love
I have been in love more times than one,
thank the Lord.
Sometimes it was lasting
whether active or not.
Sometimes it was all but ephemeral,
maybe only an afternoon,
but not less real for that.’

They stay in my mind,
these beautiful people,
or anyway beautiful people to me,
of which there are so many.
You and you and you,
whom I have the fortune to meet,
or maybe missed.

Love, love, love, it was the core of my life,
from which of course comes the word for the heart.
And, oh, have I mentioned
that some of them were men and some were women’
and some – now carry my revelation with you –
were trees.
Or places.
Or music flying above the names of their makers.
Or clouds, or the sun
which was the first, and the best,
the most loyal for certain,’
who looked so faithfully into my eyes, every morning.

So I imagine such love of the world –
its fervency, its shining,
its innocence and anger to give of itself
I imagine this is how it began.
Mary Oliver
Earth Spirit
O, dark holy magic,
To steal out at dawn,
To dip face and feet in grasses
The dew trembles on,
Ere its might of spirit healing
Be broken by the dawn.

O, to reel drunken
On the heady dew;
To know again the virgin wonder
That boyhood knew;
While words run to music, giving voices
To the voiceless dew.

They will make,
those dawn-wandering lights and airs,
The bowed worshipping spirit
To shine like theirs.
They will give to thy lips an aeolian
Music like theirs.

A .E. (George William Russell) in The Avatars
Catching the Light

Carefully rooting out
weeds, twigs, thorns,

it is with ourselves
we must be finally firm  

no motive unturned
no hurt too dear      

to hold onto. Let go,
let go, let go, I hear          

the Siddhas sing –  
in place of bitterness      

plant an imperishable tree.
Then go quietly        

leaving it small and green 
to catch the light.


Sw. Shraddhananda Saraswati
Entheogen
On winter's night in a cove remote
dance the midnight moon and the sea,
Writhing in their blind embrace
caring not which the victor shall be.
Half-buried on the distant shore
is a mirror encrusted in sand,
Its jagged patterns, sights obscure
awaiting a polishing hand.

That hand with sweeping gesture grabbed
the looking glass and touched desire;
In wondrous ethers rose the steam
of Other, Self, and Fire.
Though we might pray for gret or grace
it's Choice alone we bear --
Misguided fools.. we cannot pray!
We must BECOME the prayer.

Beware that love's entheogen
brings warriors to their knees,
Betrays the holy, crushes time,
Imperils the birds and the bees.
It also is the drug of choice
for those who would wrestle the gods --
As aeons, cultures, planets shift,
We humans are playing the odds.

In midnight cove a vigil stands
o'er treasures wrought with tears --
The righteous causes, symbols loves
compiled throughout the years.
The sea, the spirit's churning depths,
Reflectors of a beam
Above, within, without whose light
the mirror is a dream.

Barbara Ellen Fields
For Equilibrium, a Blessing
Like the joy of the sea coming home to shore,
May the relief of laughter rinse through your soul.
As the wind loves to call things to dance,
May your gravity be lightened by grace.
Like the dignity of moonlight restoring the earth,
May your thoughts incline with reverence and respect.
As water takes whatever shape it is in,
So free may you be about who you become.
As silence smiles on the other side of what's said,
May your sense of irony bring perspective.
As time remains free of all that it frames,
May your mind stay clear of all it names.
May your prayer of listening deepen enough
to hear in the depths the laughter of god.

From: To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings
John O'Donohue
To Whom it May Concern

Wherever you are, you give me life.
To remember you, makes me smile.
Whoever you are, momentary apparition,
you illume my oblivion.
 
When I find you, my night fills up with light,
and a renewed outpouring of sparks,
makes me alive again amid my entanglements,
of pleasure, duties, talents and complaints.
 
Whenever you appear, like a bouquet of smiles,
you bring serene breezes of God’s breath,
and we laugh briefly in an eternity of always.
 
Life becomes anew, recreated in your dancing eyes,
gliding unheard like the notes of a silent song.
Whoever you are, flash of hope and joy,
you make bright days of my dark nights.
 
However you materialize, in blue or green,
dressed in clothes of blooming spring,
or naked as a starry night.
 
You are everything for me, with or without a name,
within time and beyond time,
in any color of the rainbow.
Whoever you are, you animate my soul,
when you come close,
and leave me colorless when you depart.
 
Then, you take away, even my pain,
my poetry, my laughter.
You take away joy and sadness.
 
When you are not here, when you are not,
when you go, when you don’t come.
 
Whoever you are, nameless one,
I am grateful for these moments of being.
Wherever you are I remember you always.
 
I am yours without complaints or fanfare.
Naturally, like sand to the shore,
like clouds to the sky.
 
My reality is defined in contrast to your passing by.
You are the love of my life, the theme of my stories
the context of the path, my destination.

Arsenio Rodriguez
Where Is God?

It’s as if what is unbreakable—

the very pulse of life—waits for

everything else to be torn away,

and then in the bareness that

only silence and suffering and

great love can expose, it dares

to speak through us and to us.

It seems to say, if you want to last,

hold on to nothing. If you want

to know love, let in everything.

If you want to feel the presence

of everything, stop counting the

things that break along the way.


Mark Nepo
Fragrance Bound

Fragrance bound
We cling to this hallucination,
possessed and possessing.
Yet we suspect, we intuit who we are,
we infer the light beyond the flash.
 
Our genes, twirl and curl,
as currents from the silent surge
spill over the sacred, within our hearts.
 
And we find each other again,
and decide to walk, hand in hand,
while time lasts.
 
Fragrance bound. 

Arsenio Rodriguez
Hide and Seek

How can you capture the light of lightning?
It passes by like we do.

Today we meet, we exchange glances and smiles
Perhaps share a thought,
maybe a dream or two,
but do we really know who is me,
and who is you?

This passing through is ubiquitous,
we all seem to suffer from it.

Yet, some are more self-assured than others.
Some are not even sure of anything.
Some do not even think about the merits of this knowing.

Still, we have to move in this forest,
and love and enjoy,
and pretend and posture.

Till we merge with the urge
that brought us forward,
and meet the source of the whim
that love be expressed.

So, my dear other,
let’s just embrace and try to be happy,
while we decipher,
the riddle of this infinite game
of hide and seek,
that we play with ourselves.

Arsenio Rodriguez
Out Beyond Ideas

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field.  I'll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase each other
doesn't make any sense.
Mewlana Jalaluddin Rumi
Becoming Luminous
Inspired by the painting, "Becoming Luminous," by Marika Popovits

Becoming Luminous

Despite turbulent seas

aflame with wave upon wave of imploded desires gouged in history’s scar tissue

layered across terra nostra, washed in blood and seething water,

beauty’s enchantments still flourish in these green hills of our Earth home

where we struggle to reveal how healing takes softer, subtler shapes from shared breath

and outstretched limbs of coexistence, calling us now to dance a new community of being.

We rise through this our suffering. We rise from loam to light. 

Lux aeterna, the spiraling pool of luminescence in the heart of all being, the light

that crawled out of primordial seas and flew its way to the human soul, the light

that could not be extinguished by every hell we invented

until we were ready to come home, to bear our breasts

in final exaltation of the light that we are – at last made visible by the light

that magnifies the miraculous conjunction of Heaven and Earth

and which shines its guiding radiance

on the fierce journey to becoming luminous.


James O'Dea
How I Go to the Woods
Ordinarily I go to the woods alone, with not a single friend, for they are all smilers and talkers and therefore unsuitable.

I don’t really want to be witnessed talking to the catbirds or hugging the old black oak tree. I have my way of praying, as you no doubt have yours.

Besides, when I am alone I can become invisible. I can sit on the top of a dune as motionless as an uprise of weeds, until the foxes run by unconcerned. I can hear the almost unhearable sound of the roses singing.

**

If you have ever gone to the woods with me, I must love you very much.
Mary Oliver
Who We Truly Are
Stop.
Listen.
Slow your self down.

Drop deep into
The soul of the world,
Where the words are already written
And the future is already spoken.

We are, cause we are, cause we are. 
(Cosmos we are. Yes, stars!)

This night is getting late
And it's still just morning.

Our task is the incarnate fully
To discover our soul’s gifts
And deliver them to the world.

At the still point, we remember.
Our wild roots.
Our ancient selves.
Life's original nature.

And who we truly are.
By Joshua Gorman (from the liminal space of late nights and newborn humans)
Soul receives from soul
Soul receives from soul that knowledge, therefore not by book
    nor from tongue.
If knowledge of mysteries come after emptiness of mind, that is
    illumination of heart.
Be Lost in the Call
Lord, said David, since you do not need us,
why did you create these two worlds?

Reality replied: O prisoner of time,
I was a secret treasure of kindness and generosity,
and I wished this treasure to be known,
so I created a mirror: its shining face, the heart;
its darkened back, the world;
The back would please you if you've never seen the face.

Has anyone ever produced a mirror out of mud and straw?
Yet clean away the mud and straw,
and a mirror might be revealed.

Until the juice ferments a while in the cask,
it isn't wine. If you wish your heart to be bright,
you must do a little work.

My King addressed the soul of my flesh:
You return just as you left.
Where are the traces of my gifts?

We know that alchemy transforms copper into gold.
This Sun doesn't want a crown or robe from God's grace.
He is a hat to a hundred bald men,
a covering for ten who were naked.

Jesus sat humbly on the back of an ass, my child!
How could a zephyr ride an ass?
Spirit, find your way, in seeking lowness like a stream.
Reason, tread the path of selflessness into eternity.

Remember God so much that you are forgotten.
Let the caller and the called disappear;
be lost in the Call.
"Love is a Stranger", Kabir Helminski Threshold Books, 1993
There is a community of the spirit
There is a community of the spirit.
Join it, and feel the delight
of walking in the noisy street
and being the noise.
Drink all your passion,
and be a disgrace.
Close both eyes
to see with the other eye.
From Essential Rumi by Coleman Barks