Tags
2019, 6*, identity, mother sentient beings, Priory, Sangha, self, self-image, Swarthmore Hall, thinking
went to Swarthmore Hall
brandishing my fragile self
to open up to all beings
went back to the Priory
with rising grandeurs
of delusion; shall I
relinquish this flaw
of expecting I am so much
more than I appear if only
I were understood …;
then perhaps I could be
more than I could ever
understand and recognise
these beings as already
my own and take
my one and lonely
place with a far grander
Sangha than I could ever have allowed
‘Swarthmore Hall’ is where the Quakers began, Carol did a course there; it is in Ulverston in South Cumbria where we lived soon after we married and started our family, we were aware of the place at the time, but not as students; ‘the Priory’ just outside Ulverston is the Manjushri Institute, a Buddhist college that we lived in; this was the first time I’d been back to visit in 32 years; and … this is the last poem I wrote – 4th September 2019 – I haven’t written one since, not seized to, not tipped towards; I have been letting a lot of things go during these beginning years of my retirement, even my Batman comics … maybe more a spiral than a circle …
————w(O)rmholes________________________________|—–
identity wormhole: ‘not sure …’
thinking wormhole: silence