Tuesday, November 26, 2013

River Time


Have you also learned that secret
from the river; that there is
no such thing as time?
That the river is everywhere at the
same time, at the source and at
the mouth, at the waterfall, at the
ferry, at the current, in the ocean
and in the mountains, everywhere
and that the present moment only exists for
it, not the shadow of the past nor
the shadow of the future?





Hermann Hesse
Siddhartha 
Photo:  Peter Bowers




Monday, November 25, 2013

Strange


The little river twittering in the twilight, 
The wan, wandering look of the pale sky, 
this is almost bliss.  

And everything shut up and gone to sleep, 
all the troubles and anxieties and pain
gone under the twilight. 

Only the twilight now, and the soft "Sh!" of the 
river.
That will last forever.

And at last I know my love for you is here; 
I can see it all, it is whole like the twilight, 
It is large, so large, I could not see it before, 
Because of the little lights and flickers and
interruptions, 
Troubles, anxieties and pains.

You are the call and I am the answer, 
You are the wish,  and I am the fulfillment, 
You are the night, and I am the day.
What else - it is perfect enough.
It is perfectly complete, 
You and I, 
What more-- ?

Strange, how we suffer in spite of this.




D.H. Lawrence
Photo:  Peter Bowers
















Love Frees


All day long a little burro labours, sometimes 
with heavy loads on her back and sometimes
just with worries
about things that bother only
burros.

And worries, as we know, can be more
exhausting
than physical labour.

Once in a while a kind monk comes
to her stable and brings
a  pear, but more 
than that, 
he looks into the burro's eyes and touches her
ears 
and for a few seconds the burro is free
and even seems to laugh, 
because love does 
that.

Love frees.





Meister Eckhart






I wish I could speak like music




I wish I could speak like music.  I wish I could put
the swaying splendor of fields into words so that

you could hold Truth against your body and dance.
I am trying the best I can with this crude brush, 

the tongue, to cover you with light.  I wish I could
speak like divine music.  I want to give you the

sublime rhythms of this earth and sky's limbs
as they joyously spin and surrender, surrender

against God's luminous breath.  Hafiz wants you
to hold me against your precious body and dance, 
dance.





Hafiz







And What is Time?


And an astronomer said, Master, what of Time: 

And he answered:  
You would measure time the measure-
less and the immeasurable.
You would adjust your conduct and even
direct the course of your spirit according to
hours and seasons.
Of time you would make a stream upon 
whose bank you would sit and watch its
flowing.

Yet the timeless in you is aware of life's 
timelessness.
And knows that yesterday is but today's
memory and tomorrow is today's dream.
And that that which sings and contem-
plates in you is still dwelling within the 
bounds of that first moment which scat-
tered the stars into space.
Who among you does not feel that his
power to love is boundless?
And yet who does not feel that very love, 
though boundless, encompassed within the
centre of his being, and moving not from 
love thought to love thought, nor from 
love deeds to other love deeds?
And is not time even as love is, undivided
and spaceless? 





Kahlil Gibran












Friday, November 1, 2013

In Blackwater Woods



Look, the trees
are turning
their own bodies
into pillars

of light,
are giving off the rich
fragrance of cinnamon
and fulfillment,

the long tapers
of cattails
are bursting and floating away over
the blue shoulders

of the ponds,
and every pond,
no matter what its
name is, is

nameless now.
Every year
everything
I have ever learned

in my lifetime
leads back to this: the fires
and the black river of loss
whose other side

is salvation,
whose meaning
none of us will ever know.
To live in this world

you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.





Mary Oliver