a friend and I watch
out for daily festivals –
here is one of themSRM – MM Haiku 74 Day 104
inner life
Interlude | just for the joy …
‘Do you ever just close your eyes on winter evenings to remember summer?’ my friend asked me, earlier today, with a wistful look in her eyes. ‘On winter evenings, certainly,’ I replied, ‘and pretty much most mornings, too.’
Sure enough, I’m an advocate of living in the present, but part of the joy of living now is time found here to re-member the past, thereby inspired to breathe deep today, and begin to imagine and to shape the next second or two, as we do.
So here’s a little revisiting Summer ’16. You’re invited to stay here, now, for a little space, and – hopefully – some present grace …
I’ve tried to count
your petals but lose
track each time
around and recall
that numbers never
touched my senses
with clarity of cold
or warmth or taste or
touch or sight or
scent or sound and
after rain this late
summer morningI note that tall
and elegant you’re
not much of an
accountant either
and for you too
life is celebrated
sometimes by each of
these but in the main
by radically returning
your searching face to
life-raising energy
in sunlightSRM
All in all
nanoseconds and
aeons point to connected
universal wholeSRM – MM Haiku 31 Day 61
Cave painter
Rembrandt | The Artist in His StudioCave painter
in his studio
his eyes
are blackself portrait
requires
hand onbalanced
brush or
dust forblowing
and an
inwardturned eye
the depth
of parietalart’s mirror
to espy and
translateto white
canvas
or cavewall to
speak of
community’snecessity
without
which thereis no
life or
growingneurological
pathfinding
at allin his studio
Rembrandt’s
eyes areblack as
also the
cave painter’sforty
thousand
long yearsbefore his
yet no
insightdo they
then or
todayour own
inward
eyes seeingto the
back of
our soul’sdeep caves
ever
lackSRM
We walked, still
We walked, still, even
after her energy had
waned far, unreplenished
by the ordinary grace of
food once consumed easily
and by most simply taken
for grantedAnd in the walking saw
and felt again and again
that nourishment may
be drawn for the soul
though the physical frame
tires and slows and evening
firelight glowsilluminating kaleidoscopic
memories and warming
hopes long held and yet
aspired to. Yes, we walked
still. And as though they had
been aware of a greater than
usual urgencyon Christmas Day in rain
around mid-afternoon and
a five mile tramp from our
beloved fireside she stooped
to feel snowdrops newly
raised from earth between
her fingersNot too late this arrival –
not too late – it was a
timely coming
and is now a photograph
developed upon the backdrop
of my mind. Souvenir
We have come. We rememberAnd we walk, still
again and againSRM
Then and now and will be
for JMT, 1960-2018, on the eve of her birthday
And on the hillside
where we stood
elevated
the something that passed
between us
as though it were a
tidal current was already
as old and as new as the
Ancient of Days – in the
retrospect and in the
there and then and now
and in the prospect of
all eternityThat light, that current –
illumination and anticipation
launched a something that
is the everything
Immortal –
Yes, something to be
heard
like a song among the
stars, laughing and crying
held safe and aloft and
flying –
on that hillside
held and holdingSurprised
you and I encountered a
Divine Love and knew it to be
an Undying
in us, primarily
in those graced moments
but also in whomsoever –
and all are ultimately
capable of simply
letting go, and smiling and
then the final thankful sighing –
oh, little one, yes, you
great oneElevated, celebrated: I love you
SRM
Memories of chewing the cud
Pipe in hand
There was once an old man lived on Martyrs
Bay who, pipe in hand, told of a foot tall
soul whose hair was green, and – many a long
year since – skittering about the Old Nunnery
garden, he had seenquiet as a mouse and quite inoffensive, she
whispered in human ears: ‘I’m come from a
schlemaig just West of the highest mountain on
Mars by way of light years, aeons, suns and moons
and starsand I whisper a missive from Mother
who sent me: though legend and myth
may sometimes purport otherwise, nothing
in the Universe is ever wholly ruined – for
every atom retainspotential, giftedness and grace, ever cheered
anew by Wisdom’s breeze across its face: so on this
rock though your roof be blown off and you’ve
neither window pane nor door, allow the little
one from a Martian schlemaig a paean to more –for you came here to learn that not only is She
our family name, but Wisdom, dear taller siblings,
is eternally ours, and Her Source, the Same.’And I honour the old man on Martyrs Bay sand, who
content with tobacco and pipe in his hand, speaks
gently even now of a skittering he had seen, and of
whispers shared with a delightful pint-sized sprite
with hair of Iona greenSRM
