No More Longing

Yesterday I sat beside

a pristine mountain lake

where sky and pines and water

lost their names in Seeing,

where Listening became

a single bird-song, wind song,

water-lapping song of joy.

Today, there's no more longing,

no more pain inside the heart;

the devotee has disappeared

into the scent of Now,

and space has blown desire

from its latest hiding place

into the peace of being where I am.

Dorothy Hunt

Photo:  Peter Bowers

Word Tumbling

Every word is wordless

in its Source;

and no word can ever

speak the Truth.

But the poet's words

keep tumbling out of Silence

like snowflakes falling

unbidden from the sky,

landing for one brief instant

before melting.

Dorothy Hunt 

Photo:  Peter Bowers

Three Times My Life Has Opened

Three times my life has opened.

Once, into darkness and rain.

Once, into what the body carries at all times within it and

starts to remember each time it enters the act of love.

Once, to the fire that holds all.

These three were not different.

You will recognize what I am saying or you will not.

But outside my window all day a maple has stepped

from her leaves like a woman in love with winter, dropping

the colored silks.

Neither are we different in what we know.

There is a door.  It opens.  Then it is closed.  But a slip of

light stays, like a scrap of unreadable paper left on the floor,

or the one red leaf the snow releases in March.

Jane Hirshfield

Photo:   Peter Bowers

Listening



My father could hear a little animal step,

or a moth in the dark against the screen,

and every far sound called the listening out

into places where the rest of us had never been.

More spoke to him from the soft wild night

than came to our porch for us on the wind;

we would watch him look up and his face go

keen

till the walls of the world flared, widened.

My father heard so much that we still stand

inviting the quiet by turning the face,

waiting for a time when something in the night

will touch us too from that other place.

William Stafford

Photo:  Peter Bowers

At Our House

Home late, one lamp turned low,

crumpled pillow on the couch,

wet dishes in the sink (late snack),

in every child's room the checked,
slow, sure breath -

Suddenly in this doorway where I stand

in this house I see this place again,

this time the night as quiet, the house

as well secured, all breath but mine borne

gently on the air -

And where I stand, no one.

William Stafford

The thing about all this

... is that there is no

puzzle, no problem, and really no "mystery."

All problems are resolved and everything is

clear; simply because what matters is clear

...everything is emptiness and everything is

compassion.  I don't know when in my life I  

have ever had such a sense of beauty and spiri-
tual validity running together in one aesthetic

illumination ... I know and have seen what

I was obscurely looking for.  I don't know

what else remains but I have now seen and

have pierced through the surface and have

got beyond the shadow and the disguise.

Thomas Merton

Asian Journal

Photo:  Thomas Merton

A Vast Wardrobe

Look how this nakedness shows its vast wardrobe!
Here it dresses as a rose;
there it dresses as a car;
here the suit is Mother;
there the suit is Daughter.
Spirit does not inhabit these things.
Nothingness does not climb in and out.
The rose grows thorns
and does not bloom in winter;
the mother will one day sleep without waking
and her daughter will weep.

Dorothy Hunt

Photo:  Peter Bowers

When I Met My Muse

I glanced at her and took my glasses

off -  they were still singing.  They buzzed

like a locust on the coffee table and then

ceased.  Her voice belled forth, and the

sunlight bent.  I felt the ceiling arch, and

knew that nails up there took a new grip

on whatever they touched.  "I am your own

way of looking at things," she said.  "When

you allow me to live with you, every

glance at the world around you will be

a sort of salvation."  And I took her hand. 

William Stafford

Photo:  Peter Bowers

Remember Death

Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.

Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked.

There is no reason not to follow your heart.

Steve Jobs
From 2005 Stanford University commencement address

Photo:  Peter Bowers 

All Through Eternity

All through eternity
Beauty unveils His exquisite form
in the solitude of nothingness;
He holds a mirror to His Face
and beholds His own beauty.
he is the knower and the known,
the seer and the seen;
No eye but His own
has ever looked upon this Universe

His every quality finds an expression:
Eternity becomes the verdant field of Time and Space;
Love, the life-giving garden of this world.
Every branch and leaf and fruit
Reveals an aspect of His perfection-
The cypress give hint of His majesty,
The rose gives tidings of His beauty.

Whenever Beauty looks,
Love is also there;

Whenever beauty shows a rosy cheek
Love lights Her fire from that flame.
When beauty dwells in the dark folds of night
Love comes and finds a heart
entangled in tresses.
Beauty and Love are as body and soul.
Beauty is the mine, Love is the diamond.

They have together
since the beginning of time-
Side by side, step by step.

Rumi

Photo:  Peter Bowers



A Blessing For The New Year

Beannacht

 

 

 

On the day when

The weight deadens

On your shoulders

And you stumble,

May the clay dance

To balance you.

And when your eyes

Freeze behind

The gray window

And the ghost of loss

Gets into you,

May a flock of colours,

Indigo, red, green

And azure blue,

Come to awaken in you

A meadow of delight.

When the canvas frays

In the curragh of thought

And a stain of ocean

Blackens beneath you,

May there come across the waters

A path of yellow moonlight

To bring you safely home.

May the nourishment of the earth be yours,

May the clarity of light be yours,

May the fluency of the ocean be yours,

May the protection of the ancestors be yours.

And so may a slow

Wind work these words

Of love around you,

An invisible cloak

To mind your life.

John O`Donohue

Photo:  Peter Bowers

Sunday poem

Any poem could be the best

Any day the best or worst

A few butterflies in the garden or

the screech of brakes.  Not a breath

returns, not a blink of the eye, no

reminiscent smell or bright pebble.

Life comes

And goes.

It's that short.

Stephen Levine

Photo:  Peter Bowers