A place I call home

Among the folds of the hills nestled
on the valley floor spread
a sparkling jewel, a gleaming gem
is a place I lovingly call home

‘Where is Middle Hutt’ I was once asked
‘this is Middle Earth’ I had said
should have said ‘A slice of heaven
about which stories are written’

Where my spirit sings to the drumbeat of rain
on the roof, and stands in awe to the sound
of the wind wailing against the walls.
and laughs as the Hutt river does

as it skips through meadow, hill
and vale singing a silver-tongued melody,
of mad longing to merge with the sea.
Where my spirit soars to the twinkling stars

And the moon rises laughing behind the hills.
Where my spirit rests in the hollow of the valley
Nestling among verdant hills lit up with the laughter
Of a hundred, babbling, sparkling brooks.

~~~

Today was National Poetry Day, so the local library had organised a poetry reading session, where poetry based on our city or location was read out. So I had my first public poetry reading with the above poem :)

 

May

The calendar 

I find today

sits on May when

it’s almost August

maybe it’s telling me

through all the days of

May and non-May

that I May let myself

take the lid off

my box of dreams

and believe in

their coming true

ease into life

let go of fear

trust my wisdom

go with the flow

unravel unspool

bring down walls

love like crazy

find myself again

~~~

The dance of housework

household chores to
music performed
becomes a dance

so play that CD
or befriend the
radio and

sweep away
cobwebs to
the sweep of song

stir in stirring
symphonies into
sumptuous lunches

trap-zap that dust
to the hip-swing
of rock-n-roll

let the lilt of
low litanies
lighten your load

let the rhythm
sweep and dissolve
the drudgery

let the music
your pulse enter
let the fun flow

~~~

Love After Love

by Derek Walcott

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

~ Derek Walcott

What to remember when waking

A mind-blowing poem by David Whyte

WHAT TO REMEMBER WHEN WAKING

In that first
hardly noticed
moment
to which you wake,
coming back
to this life
from the other
more secret,
moveable
and frighteningly
honest
world
where everything
began,
there is a small
opening
into the new day
which closes
the moment
you begin
your plans.

What you can plan
is too small
for you to live.

What you can live
wholeheartedly
will make plans
enough
for the vitality
hidden in your sleep.

To be human
is to become visible
while carrying
what is hidden
as a gift to others.

To remember
the other world
in this world
is to live in your
true inheritance.

You are not
a troubled guest
on this earth,
you are not
an accident
amidst other accidents
you were invited
from another and greater
night
than the one
from which
you have just emerged.

Now, looking through
the slanting light
of the morning
window toward
the mountain
presence
of everything
that can be,
what urgency
calls you to your
one love?  What shape
waits in the seed
of you to grow
and spread
its branches
against a future sky?

Is it waiting
in the fertile sea?
In the trees
beyond the house?
In the life
you can imagine
for yourself?
In the open
and lovely
white page
on the waiting desk?

~ David Whyte ~
(The House of Belonging)

Rainmaker

I love this for reasons I cannot even begin to explain!

Brings on tears everytime ....

The poetry that lies in fingertips

you face, your face

it’s always your face

I fingertip touch

in poetic trails

of heartbreaking joy

tearful tenderness

that trembles where

skin meets with skin

singing pulsating

symphonies of love

laughing exulting

rivulets of joy

that must be when

soul flows into soul

dissolves into God

surrenders in bliss

~~~

The world

The world is our escape
our chosen opium
we slide behind shape
hide behind form

We abandon luminosity
for mere glitter
forsake audacity
embrace cowardice

We give up our knowingness
in exchange for knowledge

We have traded our kingdom
for a few pieces of shininess
sold our soul
in exchange for the world

But at times the world slips
the curtain parts
and we are given glimpses
of eternity

We are never ever
the same again

We realise the void
we are trying to fill
cannot be filled
with the things of the world

Sweet is the bliss
of the awakening soul
the angels rejoice
at the homecoming

~~~

Follow your bliss

“Follow your bliss and the universe will open doors where there were only walls.”

 – Joseph Campbell

Words

“Words stand between silence and silence: between the silence of things and the silence of our own being, between the silence of the world and the silence of God. When we have really met and known the world in silence, words do not separate us from the world nor from other men, nor from God, nor from ourselves because we no longer trust entirely in language to contain reality.” 

~ Thomas Merton 

The dam

An avalanche waits
gathering fury
within heart walls

It’s only fear
that holds it in
of destruction

The dam bursts
debris washed away
new beginnings

Unripe

a blank page waits

words like seeds packed

the pod not ready to burst

It is strange

It is strange how
some people can talk and talk
and still not say anything
as if the words were
mere empty husks
falling to the ground
seedless, impotent
incapable of growth

It is strange how
some people can be silent
and you understand everything
as if the very silence
spoke in tongues
scattered seeds
that fell into your heart
and blossomed

~~~
 

The meeting

it must have been the rain

falling soft-petalled on the roof

the clouds in flower festivity

raining down their laughter

or the solitary bird

singing a single note after note

pulling in the reluctant evening

like a relentless oarsman

that my clouds of thoughts parted

and memories flooded in

and there you were

sandal-scented and smiling

your voice as you said my name

husky with tenderness

and I had simply melted

dissolved into pure joy

the world had ceased to be

time was irrelevant

there was no you or even I

just the lightness of being

One step to bliss

I surrender

in Your arms.

I cease to be.

Ego

Ego is the absence of true knowledge of who we really are, together with its result: a doomed clutching on, at all costs, to a cobbled together and makeshift image of ourselves, an inevitably chameleon charlatan self that keeps changing, and has to, to keep alive the fiction of its existence.

In Tibetan, ego is called dakdzin , which means “grasping to a self.”

Ego is then defined as incessant movements of grasping at a delusory notion of “I” and “mine,” self and other, and all the concepts, ideas, desires, and activities that will sustain that false construction.

Such grasping is futile from the start and condemned to frustration, for there is no basis or truth in it, and what we are grasping at is by its very nature ungraspable.
The fact that we need to grasp at all and to go on grasping shows that in the depths of our being we know that the self doesn’t inherently exist.
From this secret, unnerving knowledge spring all our fundamental insecurities and fears.

~ Sogyal Rinpoche, from Glimpse of the day