Poem of the day : The Kiss

 

by Robert Graves

Are you shaken, are you stirred

    By a whisper of love,

Spellbound to a word

    Does Time cease to move,

Till her calm grey eye

    Expands to a sky

And the clouds of her hair

    Like storms go by?

Then the lips that you have kissed

    Turn to frost and fire,

And a white-steaming mist

    Obscures desire:

So back to their birth

    Fade water, air, earth,

And the First Power moves

    Over void and dearth.

Is that Love? no, but Death,

    A passion, a shout,

The deep in-breath,

    The breath roaring out,

And once that is flown,

    You must lie alone,

Without hope, without life,

    Poor flesh, sad bone.

~~~

Waiting for the moon to rise

The azure horizon
is first lit up
by a white radiance
like a pale sunrise
or a sunset afterglow

I leave the drapes open
like a lovers’ signal
for a secret meeting
gazing out the window
shiny-eyed in anticipation

Clouds appear
silvery and succulent
like they have eaten the moon
are with bursting
with moonlight

An advance party
a nebulous cavalcade
pulling up the moon
from the pit of the horizon
on wispy reins

I grow impatient,
after all the moon is revolving
at this crazy speed
and yet it makes me
wait and wait

But all good things in life
take their time
when I look up there it is
all bashful, borrowed light
limpid, liquid smile

pouring into me
deliciousness
I understand now
why the seas heave
their forever sighs

~~~

To kill a grasshopper

I killed a grasshopper
it was eating my prize rose
I threw it into the Green Bin
together with the grass clippings
I thought it would be happy
in the dark
eating grass all the time
after all it has grass in its name

but it escaped

I found it on the toilet floor
so I flushed it down the drain
twice, for good measure
it must have tunneled with the turds
into the sea
to be eaten by a fish

I wonder if
tsunamis and typhoons
feel lousy like I do
sowing death in their wake
reaping the dead with their scythe

maybe not

I wonder if
I should let Nature do her job
instead off
killing grasshoppers
to let a flower bloom
killing weeds
to let fruit trees grow

in the midst of Nature
that prefers the jungle
should I be tending a garden?

~~~

What do we get when we give to a good cause?

Apparently, a story ....

Read Seth Godin's article here

~~~

Want to be happy? Be grateful

A riveting talk by Brother David Steindl-Rast ....

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.

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

~~~

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

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.

~~~

Consider this ...

Irony

The illusion of time

Think about this -

Friday funnies

An awesome display of dexterity, coordination and control, not to mention bodies :)

The incredible lightness of being a poet

Nothing repulses the poet-weaver like 'facts' or the cultural compulsion she feels to place her feet firmly on the 'ground' - for the poet is an offspring of chaos, consciousness dissatisfied, Maya playing in an orchard of mirrors. Reality is too small for her...too stifling. She knows there is no ground. There are no facts. She believes this - in a way that defeats the very idea of belief. Leave her to glide gracefully in mid-air - her feet brushing the dancing grass, disrupting the pollination songs of the fields, disturbing the smooth surfaces of the river; leave her to build sandcastles near the ocean; leave her to stand embarrassed by a falling leaf; leave her to mock your certainty, your assured creeds, your arms-akimbo-ed heroes and their moral games. Leave her to her fatal insignificance - away from your intricate schemes and grandiose plots; leave her to her confusing ambiguity. Leave her - and in time, or out of it, she will paint you stories that shake you, songs that undo you, and myths that strip life of its cocksureness. And you will see, as if for the first time, that your feet weren't and never were on the ground either. And you are flying.

~ Adebayo Akomolafe (Keynote Speech for EU-DEEEP Global Summit, 2013)

The man (or woman) in the arena

It is not the critic who counts;

not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles,

or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.

The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena,

whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood;

who strives valiantly; who errs,

who comes short again and again,

because there is no effort without error and shortcoming;

but who does actually strive to do the deeds;

who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions;

who spends himself in a worthy cause;

who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement,

and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly,

so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know

victory nor defeat.

- Theodore Roosevelt

Thought for today

you cannot make a mistake, you can only
make a decision that will be your next best step.

 

There is no reason to hesitate when you know

that you have nothing to lose. And losing is not

an act of God, it is a thought in the mind of

humans.

Get rid of the thought and you get rid of doubt.

your Wisdom to Victory.

~~~

 

The wound is the place

I said what about my eyes

God said Keep them on the road.

I said what about my passion

God said Keep it burning.

I said what about my heart

God said Tell me what you hold inside it

I said pain and sorrow

He said… stay with it.
The wound is the place where the Light enters you. 

~ Rumi

 

Stop being so religious

What do sad people have in common?

It seems they have all built a shrine to the past
and often go there and do a strange wail and worship.

What is the beginning of happiness?
It is to stop being so religious like that.

~ Hafiz (translated by David Ladinsky) 

Secrets of life - haiku

despair chews
at the edges of my mind
wanted : angel

~~~

a lone dewdrop
scintillating with sunlight
rapturous me

~~~

people come and go
with various kinds of baggage
railway station life

~~~



stream of visitors
some tarry, some don’t
life is an inn

~~~

if life had wings
broken and bent they would be
but soaring still

~~~

drowned in the din
of humdrum daily life
soul waits

~~~

so many secrets
mined deep from earth-life
precious I hope

~~~

Carpe Diem prompt - Secrets of life