Guest guest Posted April 19, 2003 Report Share Posted April 19, 2003 39. In the heat of this summer afternoon I become a dark wet calligraphic stroke brushed onto a gray boulder canvas, a curiosity for future explorers to discover, wonder at, and catalogue in their inventory of inexplicable natural phenomena. In some distant birth perhaps I'll read about myself, and want to visit Cold Mountain, and maybe die there once again. Nothing will have changed, nothing will remain the same. ~Mazie & b Ryoanji temple - river of white pebbles, chanting cicadas ~Joachim Seckel 35. Glimpsing egg sacs ripe with tadpoles, my heart a bursting bubble of joy, I just might lie around this pond all day – the dragonflies like to play. ~Mazie & b evening chill the bonsai leans away from the door ~Carol Raisfeld 129. For numberless years I have wandered deep and far in this landscape of myself. I have waded out into the ocean of forgetfulness, swallowed up at last in that sea of mystery, and now I am washed ashore on the waves of your indulgence, singing my little songs of remembrance. Perhaps at night one of these tiny tunes may insinuate itself into some neglected pocket of your wonder, and you will awaken with a particular tear upon your cheek. In that tear is everything I have come here for, everything I am. Everything is seeking, yet from the shore, can you stop the boat gone out to sea? Beyond these words, persist. Unless you can get to the marrow, you will leave this table dissatisfied. The tear is a kind gift from you to yourself. Can you welcome it, or did you think that stepping off the cliff was perhaps a kind of metaphor? Choice or choiceless? Beyond the stalemate persist. Sailing off from the safe shore of certainty into the current of vivid life, whichever way you turn, you are confronted with the lies of what you know, and the truth of what you don't. Have you intuited yet your deepest yearning? There is something life wants to do with you. Are you willing to listen to your soul whisper, so familiar, like the evening chimes in some abandoned ruin of a temple, the temple of your heart? The ever-present music just behind your thoughts is the source of these tears that spill on your cheek, yet all you want to do is to go back to sleep. Don't go back to sleep! Stay here with me for a while, let your cares drop off like the weary rags they are. In our innocent nakedness, we can point like little children at the beauty of this brilliance pouring all around us, weaving shadow and light into colorful tales of lost and found, forgetting and remembering we are that. We can whisper all the questions the water asks the sea, and listen for the answers sung in seashell, tide, and moon. Songs love to be sung. Can you be the song your soul wants to sing? I am here to sing it with you. Our yearning is not different. We can remember our original voice together. It is the voice that has never been bound, never been limited. Never despaired at the fragility of what transpires from life to death. Never faltered, though the most delicate beauty seems to fall and rot. The closer things approach nothingness, the more exquisite they become. Your own exquisiteness makes me weep, and now my tears roll across our cheek. There is a gleaming, glistening in our eyes that only magnifies our tenderness. This magnificent tenderness is yet unfamiliar to those who entertain preferences. To those who would be strong and storm heaven's gates. To those who believe. We can relinquish such fantasies, because we have felt life's lips pressed against the vulnerable tissues of our heart, and not resisted. This is all we need to know, that knowing at last submits itself to that which open-armed embraces the unknown, and rests there, at home, at peace. ~Mazie & b moon flowers i remember a poem for mother ~deborah russell 29. I have mountains for shoes and deep blue sky for a hat. Crisp air is my coat, bright sunlight the shirt on my back, wet grasses my trousers and orange daylily my pendant. She has clothed me in her body of earth -- who can say I'm naked? What need of men's garb anyway? I bathe in sunlight swim in rainstorms sing in thunder. For new year I am costumed with reflecting moonlight streaming from my eyes, revolving at the speed of night. Peonies are my garland red pebbles my necklace a bird's nest my crown, my fingers decked in rings of butterflies and toes encircled with snail trails, the intricate web of spider is my mantle lilacs enrobe me in violet gossamer, a bird on each shoulder my epaulets stand O my mother earth! The compassionate seamstress cloaks me in her velvet kindness black, her nightly soothing smile! Let me be naked, world, if that is what you'll see -- my mother dresses me in her fruits and in her flowers, she jewels me with herself – I have a glorious inheritance, a raiment of light from head to toes in living love from mother, the grace of my mother -- this fragrant earthen simplicity. ~Mazie & b chill spring wind jade plant at the door it's leaves wrinkled ~Michael Rehling 37. After the rain, a phosphorescent trail left by a snail in the damp moonlight – a map on the moisture, our journey revealed. ~Mazie & b warm breeze - she pinches buds from the bonsai ~Darrell Byrd 36. A long hot walk through the woods. Bending over to drink from this cool clear stream, aching feet are forgotten. Looking up: all of these firs – so many million pine needles! ~Mazie & b afternoon heat tombstone shadows reach for the trees ~Carol Raisfeld 34. Come closer, my Friend and let me whisper to you about the world beyond Peach Blossom River - far from the scent of your awaiting funeral pyre, past the taboo place in the Forest of Ancient Light, across the cool Plateau of Mirror while Mara's Daughters' rituals spontaneously ignite. Do not be misguided - this nowhere place remains unknown to the Sorcerers of Attention and the Shamans of the Flower of Alchemy. If even the secret shout "O'Chi Wa!" cannot touch it, why cling to the lullaby "Wu Wei"? We can journey far from the domain of sad odd glances where things are and yet are not what they appear. You have toyed with relinquishing the ghost of the host, haunting you with the intriguing duality axioms, to the realm of imaginary playmates – perhaps this is a good time to just do it. Perhaps you have pondered the coincidence of seven valleys linked by one birdsong -- every stone's dream is to fall into the footprint of the bottomless, but in your pilgrim's progress there have been taverns along the way, filled with songs of stones at rest. Meeting at the White Lodge, twined as woodbine will, you have tasted the chemistry of nocturnal languidity -- it has never been enough. You have glimpsed the benign silhouette of the Invisible, though now the relics of old glyphs only hint at such aboriginal sensation – the subtle reluctance of those echoes patiently lounging on the cusp of your rapture, gradually, gradually dissolving. Listening to incense at the Shrine of Shine, rainbows arcing in curved air, you have seen the face in the fire foretold by the Red Hat, and in sublime lunar wave trance sampled the swoon of devotion. Neither destiny nor disguise nor any hopeful formula has long betrayed your love for the airborne luminosity lingering in caves of forgotten vocabularies. Now you seek only welcome rain in the banana grove, perhaps a soft seat near the water, at last submitted to the exquisite space infinitely expanding between thoughts. If there is a word that expresses the inexpressible, it might be used here. Captivated by the Vast -- Empty and Marvelous – in serene anticipation you now approach this final foretold gate to find my Friend, it has been ever gateless. Like minnows in the bloodstream of enormous starlit being, we circle by some mysterious impulse round and round the heart. The measure of our resistance is the design of our sorrow. But ah – foolish me! I have poured good wine through a jar whose bottom has dropped out. It splashes and pools at our feet, and yet – such an intoxicating bouquet! ~Mazie & b butterfly wing falls between window and sky a single chirp ~peigi 27. Snow is melting upstream, born from the mountain just climbed down. All I hear today is this river delivering birth notices and epitaphs, simultaneously. None are excluded. ~Mazie & b green bells of budding dogwood sun rings ~deborah russell 28. The sky-gray drizzle against the sky expanding -- this raining light pouring sky Out of the snowfield a diamond sutra takes form, narcissus opens Wisteria twine, dreaming of the Red Chamber an etched stone wakes up ~Mazie & b LoveEternal. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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