Journey

Tags

2018, 8*, birds, blue, breeze, Buddha, city, clouds, day, death, departure, eclipse, evening, fire, flame, form, Ganges, gold, grass, green, hills, horizon, India, Kusinagara, life, looking, morning, night, salvation, sleep, sound, speech, stage, step, stone, stream, teaching, time, town, trees, Vaisali, valley, voices, walking, wandering, wondering

                        the evening before when at length he’d departed,
                Vaiśālī no longer glowed
        like some future city –

                        recent stones of monument
                seemed already unaligned,
        boroughs swallowed by evening hills;

                        we walked wide by the trees across the Gangetic plain,
                robes flupped with each step,
        we lost form as we wandered

                        and we wondered ‘born but to die’,
                still wanting any intoxication
        before the execution;

                        but he looked, always bittersweet,
                to the next horizon – this
        vast and empty stage;

                        in the morning he’d said
                ‘always bite and heat your gold’ and ‘never
        hold the sword by the blade’;

                        ‘I shall lay between those two trees’
                he said in the evening – forks
        around which the whole of time tuned;

                        I prepared grasses about
– I never usually made particular preparations for the night, he would end the day sitting by some copse or stone, away from where we slept glowing like embers,
        as we turned through the night –

                        but he pillowed his head on his hand
                that night, the grasses
        preened green and blue

                        the birds stopped
                as if there were eclipse, the trees ignored
        the breeze,

                        and with shaking headdresses
                dignitaries came to visit from the town
        supplicating –

                        but he spoke with a voice like a cloud, both proximate
and spanning valleys, yearning and teaching to lay down this dried and splintered weight, ‘salvation does not come from the mere sight of me’,
        ‘control the mind’ –

                        and the flames of the fires were low
                as they returned to Kuśinagara
        as if against the stream

                                

Postface Overduction: end of life of the Buddha; narrated by Ananda, close attendant; itinerant life teaching from town to town, area of a few hundred kilometers around central Ganges; left Vaiśālī last, stopped just outside Kuśinagara, town dignitaries came to honour him, had known him before; ‘two trees’ are ‘sal trees‘ tall trunk, no branches until the canopy, northern India, 6th-5th centuries BCE (although there is dispute about this);

        

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

birds wormhole: threshold to behold
blue & city & horizon & morning & time wormhole: under the blue and blue sky
breeze & clouds & valley wormhole: here today and …
Buddha wormhole: eyes like petals
death & speech wormhole: travel // when I die
evening wormhole: nowhere / that can be seen
grass & life & trees wormhole: sweet chestnut
green wormhole: ‘she shook the sweets …’
hills & sleep wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – valley
looking wormhole: looking hard enough
night & sound & stone & walking wormhole: meanwhile
teaching wormhole: c’mon – keep up
voices wormhole: travelling / back

        

Advertisement

Sheffield Park Gardens

Tags

2016, 9*, air, black, blue, bluebells, branches, Buddha, Carol, children, contemplation, copper beech, creation, daffodil, dandelions, discovery, duck, eyebrow, face, family, fields, flag, future, garden, gem, girls, glance, green, hair, Have, humanity, India, kalpa, lake, land, life, limbs, living, mauve, May, name, passing, petals, plants, pollen, primrose, promise, rhododendron, seeing, serendipity, settlement, shade, Sheffield Park Gardens, sitting, society, stone-chat, talking to myself, transluscency, tribe, voices, walking, water, yellow

                Sheffield Park Gardens

                we walked
                upright
                across wide fields

                in scattered groups,
                family and tribe,
                private longing

                under shaded
                brim for a land
                of silk and money

                8th May 2016, with

                only childrens’ voices
                we walked into
                the garden

                dispersing to
                our hides to make our own
                discoveries

                by happenstance
                and peripheral glance
                held cold and fresh

                before name:
                that stone-chat
                that makes the

                copper beech
                transluscent;
                the cool stretch of branch

                yet to bud
                before the haze
                of dusty pollen;

                what to make
                of the solitary dandelion –
                butter yellow life –

                amid
                fain clusters of primrose; and
                there in the shade,

                mauve-bells and
                daffodil stalks make in-
                visible a steely blue;

                bluebells
                like raised eyebrows, relaxèd
                to see a future;

adult voices pass, now, talking ways of life; young girls practise handstands and routines in the fields;                

                let’s sit by the lake awhile:
                where a duck’s
                head

                sits
                just out the shade of exotic plants
                (let’s say, from India)

                the water lapping
                anywhere (let’s say, oh,
                 two thousand

                 five hundred
                 years ago), tucked
                immaculate

                black
                letting nothing out
                but the feint

                of blue
                or green that will form a gem
                in kalpas

                of contemplation;
                across the water a willow rests
                like a flag

                (girl’s hair
                 recovers from each upswing from each
                 hand-stand);

                turning home
                Carol stooped
                to smell the rhododendron flower

                “oh, …”

                pushed her face
                into the petals with lust
                was it

                because I’d
                said the branches
                were an orgy of slippy limbs

                or was it just me
                making things up
                as we walked along?

 

I know, I know, it’s mid February, and the poem was written and set in a May; it’s not seasonally right, but this was the next in line to be printed: them’s the chops …

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

air wormhole: Batgirl –
black & blue & Carol & passing wormhole: travelling // arrival
branches & voices wormhole: Plumstead – Woolwich – Plumstead 220211
Buddha wormhole: om muni muni maha muniye soha
family wormhole: out
garden wormhole: slightly / uphill
green wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J Redford – Working
hair wormhole: two profiles
Have wormhole: Coleton Fishacre
life wormhole: sweet chestnut
living wormhole: ‘still …’
mauve wormhole: snapshots about Totnes
seeing wormhole: glide
sitting wormhole: amid
society wormhole: green and / luminant / to behold
talking to myself wormhole: ‘God, who am I …?’
walking wormhole: loss
water wormhole: without any buffet at all
yellow wormhole: greedy

 

David Bowie – Iris

Tags

2014, anxiety, arch, blue, Bowie, carpet, eyes, India, iris, lemon, lime, mauve, mist, portrait, sky, south, stone, time

 

 

 

                                Iris

                on the wide steppes
                swathed languid and anxious
                in belts of lime mist before
                an open stone archway

                eyes raise dreadful
                through lemon carpets
                to blueing sky and – mauve –
                washes southwards

 

I wrote this of an iris I found in Darmstadt, Germany; what drew me to it was the notion of the Aryan peoples of central Asia who penetrated into the Indian sub-continent and flowered the Upanishads; but the poem still didn’t feel quite complete until I heard of the death of David Bowie this morning

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

anxiety wormhole: Eridge – Cowden
blue wormhole: “walking …”
Bowie wormhole: New York Movie, 1939
carpet wormhole: sit
eyes & mauve & sky wormhole: ‘in clear oil air …’
lemon wormhole: Le Pont des Arts, 1907
lime wormhole: [start where you are III] – delve
mist wormhole: Jackie’s slight smile
stone wormhole: the silent night of the Batman
time wormhole: Seven A.M, 1948

 

– sigh! –

Tags

2014, 7*, attention, awareness, balance, being, Bodhichitta, confession, conscientiousness, dark, dharma, doing, effort, emptiness, faces, giving, identity, India, institution, jewel, joke, living, meditation, Nalanda, paramitas, patience, posture, practice, realisation, Shantideva, sitting, sky, society, speech, step, talking, voices, vow, wisdom, words

                                – sigh! –

they built the throne high
                homage to the words which reach to the sky
                                homage to the words which dissolve into sky
                                              due and proper

                they built it too high
                                              with no steps
                                              with no steps!
                                                              the worst sort of idolatry
                                              all homage and no practice
                                all industry and no yield
                all protocol and no truth
                realisation stuck in amber
                                              the way of all institutions with walls

                                they seek to expose indolence
                as earnestly as if it were true practice
                                              for the sake of the Teaching
                                they would renounce even eating sleeping and defecating
                                              for the sake of all beings
                                the Teaching cannot be besmirched

                                              wide sky everywhere
                but it is so dark …

                                              the throne is not high
                                I am not low
                                              I shall sit on the throne
                                I shall sit on the floor
                                              shall I give them a talk
                                or shall I talk
                                              I shall talk

                of jewels in refuse
                     and refuse in hiding
                          of vows to pause
                               and pause to keep finding
                                    of finding to step
                                         and stepping with poise
                                              of poise to balance
                                                   and balance to sit
                                                        of the sky the sky the sky
                                                             of the sky and everything

                look at their faces –
                                some of them got my jokes
                                              (a few of them saw them coming)
                most looked around the place to see where my voice was coming from –
                                all of them are so perfect
                                              but variously blind

                                              anyway
                                I’m off to the South now … oh!
                                                              I never left!

 

if you’ve made it all the way down here it might make fuller sense if read before or after this, or this, or this; or it might not, or it might both alternately, or it might neither permanently; either way, or not, I am happy to have propagated the name of Shantideva

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

attention wormhole: sunny morning
awareness wormhole: no biggie:
balance & voices wormhole: should is good when / too used to cruise
being & doing & emptiness & realisation wormhole: that
Bodhichitta wormhole: may the supreme and precious jewel bodhichitta … // … take birth where it has not yet done so … // … where it has taken birth may it not decrease … // … but may it increase infinitely
faces wormhole: tag cloud poem VII – form new freedom:
giving wormhole: the utter beauty of giving when receiving
identity & living & sky & speech & talking wormhole: Plumstead – Woolwich 121114
meditation wormhole: posture
posture wormhole: smiling
practice wormhole: poessay IX – … just saying, is all II
Shantideva wormhole: multifarious: the Dark Knight Returns (1986)
sitting wormhole: there are patient listeners
society & words wormhole: Dr Strange III – the needs of billions