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Friday, November 29, 2013

Ode to a birdcall


A single call it was -
four fluid notes falling
lucid and luminous
into the silence of the valley.

Maybe the bird was declaring
the departure of daylight now
crowning the edges of leaves
in brilliant swansong.

Or maybe it was light itself
tinkling out a farewell,
a limpid promise of returning
on the wings of dawn.

The silence was somehow sweeter
as though the call after falling
had burst into a million pieces
of joy. And spread across the valley.

Into which sparrows had chirped
and other birds chattered and
the winds that chased each other
had seemed somewhat raucous.

Alas! The bird had flown,
to fill some other valley
with its luminous song.
Or just that light had died.

But even though the night
had crept up sombre with
its shroud of darkness and
promise of shady secrets,

I sat wrapt in rapture, lit
with joy, changed forever by
the touch of a beauty so
ephemeral, yet eternal.

~~~

Insight of the day


It matters little what others think
it matters not at all what you think,

the real you is not thinking
the real you is just being.

Wednesday, November 27, 2013

Samsara junkies


Our whole world and everything in it can be viewed, simply, as an addiction. We were born as a sentient being, addicted to this samsaric world and to its wide range of colorful emotions, dazzling scenery, and tumultuous experiences. As one of my students so aptly put it: “We are all samsara junkies.”  Excerpt from an article by Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche

Read the full article here

~~~

Tuesday, November 26, 2013

Sleeping In The Forest

by Mary Oliver

I thought the earth remembered me, she
took me back so tenderly, arranging
her dark skirts, her pockets
full of lichens and seeds. I slept
as never before, a stone
on the riverbed, nothing
between me and the white fire of the stars
but my thoughts, and they floated
light as moths among the branches
of the perfect trees. All night
I heard the small kingdoms breathing
around me, the insects, and the birds
who do their work in the darkness. All night
I rose and fell, as if in water, grappling
with a luminous doom. By morning
I had vanished at least a dozen times
into something better.

Mary Oliver

Friday, November 22, 2013

Spring sweetly sprung


It's good to see, after a long time away from home, that spring has sprung while I was away. How else to celebrate but with a poem? :)




Where did you come from,
green buds and tender leaves?
Were you in hiding
inside gnarled trunks
and crooked branches?
Such unlikely birthplaces.

Did you know that the tree
sat dreaming of you
through the long winter?
Baring its heart’s desires
to a sun hardly seen.
Flinging your thoughts
at the wandering wind.
Did you throb warm inside it
as it stood cold and grey
in the driving rain.
Holding on to hope.

And now,
speckled with spring sunshine
your tender faces
glistening with newborn niceness,
do you see it smile back
at the October sun
and show you off
to the laughing moon.
Do you hear it singing to the wind
its songs of gratitude.
Do you hear it calling out
to faraway bees
and to butterflies still in cocoon?

Did you know, oh tender shoots
and buds bursting into bloom
that you were once a thought
in the tree’s dreaming soul
that it called into being.

Just as everything else.

~~~