WHERE IS MY CAT !
‘ Look at me ‘ said the full moon, -
‘ no moths circle my light
though they circle the lamp above you !
If you are patient for a while
I shall move a little - round the corner,
along the gully where the mouse hugs the wall,
follow it to the drain where Pushkin waits
contrary to his predilection.
Sheet his black, stalking form
to portray him as the monster that he is
pouncing to prevent life, -
life my light would dim and die for ;
do you see him now, running to you
having cleared beyond your sight
the lowly life that feeds upon your waste,
ready to be fondled now for his nature ;
I will see you both tomorrow night -
phasing out ‘.
----------
IS IT NOT
Is it not odd that our world
should turn and roll through a void
with nowhere to go, but round
and round in elliptical circles
when the void requires our attention?
My dog does this but not for stillness and for joy
like the whirling Dervish in Konya,
while that hypnotic moon, haunting us
with it's gravitational tricks,
that sticks to us like invisible glue,
it's constant presence, phasing in and out
seeming to be a kind of cipher-
a quiet voice, mourning
or even warning in the night
with it's embodied dearth;
Is it not odd- tellurian -
with all our frenetic purposes,
to travel thus and say
we travel through a futile way
when still we say we seek to travel far
when we already are among unnumbered stars?
Surely it is not what the void contains
to our finite eyes, but the void itself
that is the face of infinite meaning ?
Have we forgotten who we are
to travel endlessly around a star?
Is this not odd?
----------
FLORAL YELLOW
So it seems to the profound
that love grows upward from the ground,
as slowly as that ice thaws, but then
mid closed buds, the odd one open
that tries to rush the spring,
or so it seems to touch the heart
as if risking it's life to greet me,
and how it tugs my tendril spirit
fearing the sun, too weak to save it
and all the rest, the waiting wise
or so it seemed to my surprise,
along the old track to the mere
with Wordsworth, singing in my ear.
----------
LOVING IT ! (For Alan Watts)
A moments youth, a wrinkled face
as on my hand the line I trace,
and in between, so close, yet far
to seem that ' I ' was never here,
and rapid too - that shooting star
resolving in the atmosphere ;
vibrations give the world to me
though other worlds I cannot see,
and energy - the causal spirit
is playing games and loving it ,
a hooting owl, a coughing rook,
an old man gazing for a while -
just three beneath a lunar hook
complicit in a cosmic smile.
----------
THE SEER WITHIN
The ego mind - impostor
distorts a sacred vision,
clings to the body
as ivy to the growing tree,
using the strength of the bole
stifles the flowering soul ;
as the witness within
with the true branch, reaches
for nothing but the light;
it thinks - to walk on its own ground
set on concrete, but alas
its self -deception
is composed to decompose,
when it will find its true self
or die, - as the tree does.
----------
FRAMED
On the piazza down below
the green is pushing through the brown,
where moving figures to and fro
and round the edges of the town
a church - spire points the nascent spirit
above the fog surrounding it,
figures painted with geist to be elsewhere
lost in the hour that reads the same,
stealing tomorrow from the canvas
held by the clock in the painter's name.
----------
OLD TOM AND I
To the corner of my eye
fleeting shadows pass me by,
in old - time forms from past tenses
when mystery surrounds the senses ;
the moon, in arching like the cat
shone silent, reigning down on that,
old Tom was wrapping round my feet
in dim light in a gas - lit street,
indeed, I heard that clattering
from horse and carriage - flesh and bone,
out of time yet here post mortem -
an isolated wind had brought them
to echo on the cobblestone,
all unaware that we were there :
As all dissolved in midnight air
I thought, are we the ghosts at large -
the phantoms of our own longing
that never stop to take us elsewhere ?
A spirit that will always roam
innately feeling far from home?
----------
‘ Look at me ‘ said the full moon, -
‘ no moths circle my light
though they circle the lamp above you !
If you are patient for a while
I shall move a little - round the corner,
along the gully where the mouse hugs the wall,
follow it to the drain where Pushkin waits
contrary to his predilection.
Sheet his black, stalking form
to portray him as the monster that he is
pouncing to prevent life, -
life my light would dim and die for ;
do you see him now, running to you
having cleared beyond your sight
the lowly life that feeds upon your waste,
ready to be fondled now for his nature ;
I will see you both tomorrow night -
phasing out ‘.
----------
IS IT NOT
Is it not odd that our world
should turn and roll through a void
with nowhere to go, but round
and round in elliptical circles
when the void requires our attention?
My dog does this but not for stillness and for joy
like the whirling Dervish in Konya,
while that hypnotic moon, haunting us
with it's gravitational tricks,
that sticks to us like invisible glue,
it's constant presence, phasing in and out
seeming to be a kind of cipher-
a quiet voice, mourning
or even warning in the night
with it's embodied dearth;
Is it not odd- tellurian -
with all our frenetic purposes,
to travel thus and say
we travel through a futile way
when still we say we seek to travel far
when we already are among unnumbered stars?
Surely it is not what the void contains
to our finite eyes, but the void itself
that is the face of infinite meaning ?
Have we forgotten who we are
to travel endlessly around a star?
Is this not odd?
----------
FLORAL YELLOW
So it seems to the profound
that love grows upward from the ground,
as slowly as that ice thaws, but then
mid closed buds, the odd one open
that tries to rush the spring,
or so it seems to touch the heart
as if risking it's life to greet me,
and how it tugs my tendril spirit
fearing the sun, too weak to save it
and all the rest, the waiting wise
or so it seemed to my surprise,
along the old track to the mere
with Wordsworth, singing in my ear.
----------
LOVING IT ! (For Alan Watts)
A moments youth, a wrinkled face
as on my hand the line I trace,
and in between, so close, yet far
to seem that ' I ' was never here,
and rapid too - that shooting star
resolving in the atmosphere ;
vibrations give the world to me
though other worlds I cannot see,
and energy - the causal spirit
is playing games and loving it ,
a hooting owl, a coughing rook,
an old man gazing for a while -
just three beneath a lunar hook
complicit in a cosmic smile.
----------
THE SEER WITHIN
The ego mind - impostor
distorts a sacred vision,
clings to the body
as ivy to the growing tree,
using the strength of the bole
stifles the flowering soul ;
as the witness within
with the true branch, reaches
for nothing but the light;
it thinks - to walk on its own ground
set on concrete, but alas
its self -deception
is composed to decompose,
when it will find its true self
or die, - as the tree does.
----------
FRAMED
On the piazza down below
the green is pushing through the brown,
where moving figures to and fro
and round the edges of the town
a church - spire points the nascent spirit
above the fog surrounding it,
figures painted with geist to be elsewhere
lost in the hour that reads the same,
stealing tomorrow from the canvas
held by the clock in the painter's name.
----------
OLD TOM AND I
To the corner of my eye
fleeting shadows pass me by,
in old - time forms from past tenses
when mystery surrounds the senses ;
the moon, in arching like the cat
shone silent, reigning down on that,
old Tom was wrapping round my feet
in dim light in a gas - lit street,
indeed, I heard that clattering
from horse and carriage - flesh and bone,
out of time yet here post mortem -
an isolated wind had brought them
to echo on the cobblestone,
all unaware that we were there :
As all dissolved in midnight air
I thought, are we the ghosts at large -
the phantoms of our own longing
that never stop to take us elsewhere ?
A spirit that will always roam
innately feeling far from home?
----------