Disdain For Winter

Crispness cuts

Beneath my clothes

Burning ears and frozen nose

Thoughts transpose from summer mind

To winter’s grip and fold

The cold in my bones

Never abates

The mercury plunge;

Need to alleviate

The short dark days

With some sort of light of my own

The things in life we can’t control:

Getting sick or growing old

The weather and seasons past

Continuous momentum

Seems frozen, fast

The wrong moments lasting forever

This is how perception lies

Wind teared up, watery eyes

Being present, breath,

Nose drips on glove, slid on sleeve

The Tao teaches to go with the flow

Trapped in the cracks of ice-dammed river road

Paddles useless

Walk on water

Ego complex, messianic muse;

Waiting for the Spring

Which never really came this year,

Summer too

Dark, wet drear

Waiting for that time of year

For sun’s warmth upon my aging visage

Of singing birds and magpies call

So my limbs flow freely

Instead of stiff and dry

Thoreau’s Walden, Genesis’ Eden

The places I want to go

Walk along the Oceanside in San Diego or Mexico

A place of warmth, compassion and harmony

To mind the season’s as they come and go

The tuft of sheepdog fur

Massaged by my hand

Sat beneath full foliaged tree

A book, a drink, held in my hand

Blowing blooms of cloud into blue sky, free

And sit in the circle,

An equal part-

Not the begin or middle

The sound of kettle on the hob

Of bodhrans, pipes, guitars and fiddles

Away from the traffic’s roar

And congested streets which I deplore

The society that can be such a whore…

Need to alleviate

The short dark days

With some sort of light of my own

Nature is my source

To fan the spark is desirable,

With the right person of course!

Who will come with me along this way

Endure both bright and dismal day

To find piece in the affray

The heights of passion, lows of dismay?

Winter, welcome, again my terse old friend

Who marks the finality of Summer-Fall’s end

May the weary world rest while fixed

Within your grip

Until Springtime starts it’s hopeful drip

To bloom and blossom back to life

And mark the end of winter’s strife

As crispness cuts

Beneath my clothes

Burning ears and frozen nose

Grateful for every ounce of warmth

That radiate from parka, a smile

And the hope of acceptance.

Fan the spark into a flame; to light my way

And incandescence fill my being

As the universe guides my way

Stiff but yield unto icy current

Until a steady flow restores itself,

Unstuck,

And I begin to move freely once again.

Edmonton, AB, Canada

Thoughts On the Second Anniversary of My Mother’s Death

Thoughts On the Second Anniversary of My Mother’s Death

Two years today

You returned to the source;

Mother, from whence I came

My origins contained

In the crematorium urn; reminder of

Our dusty nature-

How parts of us emit about our world, clinging to all that we encounter;

Always leaving some of our selves.

The sperm and egg that begat my flesh and bone;

The universal spirit slides

Intentions and abundance

This is our life; brief in this case, vase, this form, this vehicle

But long after the dust is sealed by sandy tegument

Or polished, smooth urn rests

Our actions; our only true possession

Carries a legacy;

The DNA/RNA weave, serpent like ouroboros

Rainbows and rain; flowers mashed by manic storms

Slamming seeds into earth;

Violence of the big bang begets the beauty that abounds

In the brevity that is our moment; connecting us all

Immortal.

Edmonton, AB, Canada

Peaceful Journey

Each footfall

Is where you are going

The contradiction of movement and the present

Frames flicker as each moment

Begets the next; perpetual being

Briefly then gone but

Still here, caught from cagey eye corner

The complexity of motion when the present

Remains constant but

Nothing is standing still…. What matter is it whether my sole strikes

Mountain summit? Beginning, ending or middle of the trail?

Here is where we will always be

And Shiva destroys our illusions

Of permanence; “All that remains the same is change”

Om namah Shiviya

To be unsettled; to settle;

Convention’s contradictions

Always moving but always here

The dimensions helix-serpent coil around matter and thought

Wherein there is light

Penetrating dark

To be and not to be and to be again

Breath’s perpetual mating with universe

Until last one is drawn and we disperse;

Shape shift of form

Into new configurations;

No dying, death; all is life in flux

The great illusion we call life;

Often a tormentor, as we view through

Gushing water; rapids on the retina; emotions defining us

When they should be cast into the salient sea of tears

But, when we encounter the clarity of peace

Through pranayama – the breath unites us secure

And we can see that we have both always and never been;

The illusions of our perceptions flirtations with reality

And through the moments we reincarnate an infinite cycle

Within a universe that has created us and all things;

Breathe, be, see the light

That our life-force is; our truest nature;

Free of body and possession –  Spirit fueled

Shalom, salam, shanti, peace

Edmonton, AB, Canada

Breath of Being

Breath of Being

Follow the breath;

Friction of inhale

Through nose lining, warm and chaffing throat

With a gentleness like the river that flows through the valley;

Lungs expand with

Elastic tension, a tepid humidity, rising chest lifting torso

As if a balloonist rises in their craft

Belly inflates like a balloon

Hold and release…release…

In the positive and universal energy-

Exhale, disseminating the stress and shards of self

Back into

Infinite universe

To be re-charged

And join with the whole.

This connects me to you and eradicated space;

Joined as one;

Our minds and energy navigate

The flurry of elements conjoining all things

We are one

Connected by space,

United in breath

Connected through our energy

And our part within the circle’s infinite loop

That which divides us

Is as much an illusion

As all life tends to be;

The projector of our narrative;

The ego-self

That makes many believe

We are the circle’s center

Like the finger inside a ring

Separate from the object, easily removed

But denial begets not truth

And our beliefs are subjective to our journey

And we must realise

The worthlessness of material things

In our self-completion;

Our perspective shifts back to the breath

And that which unites;

The light… the light….

The light within us all

Requires the breath

As we are the fuel, hope sparks our fire

The breath fans the passion for life

And illuminates

To illustrate

The beauty in and of all things.

Follow the breath;

Friction of inhale

Through nose lining, warm and chaffing throat

With a gentleness like the river that flows through the valley;

Lungs expand with

Elastic tension, a tepid humidity, rising chest lifting torso

As if a balloonist rises in their craft

Belly inflates like a balloon

Hold and release…release…

In the positive and universal energy-

Exhale, disseminating the stress and shards of self

Back into

Infinite universe

To be re-charged

And join with the whole.

Edmonton, AB, Canada

Existence

Celebrate the Present; Be Grateful for the moment

I Am Water

I Am Water

Rain drop to river joins,
Routed to the sea
The drop journeys
But stays self-same
One can not be lost
When to the source
We are rejoined
Though our salientness
May alter and our
Temperature may adjust by degrees
Even when solid ice or wafting steam;
Mist or fog
The drop remains itself
The memory of water
Imprinted with silt and varied terrain;
Demonstrates to stone the stronger
Where soft sacrifices the solid, stone
Erode and shaping landscape
But without malice
For the flow and motion is what we are,
Like landscapes ever changing
Forced upon flames to extinguish the furnace of fires flickering energy
Spread into the atmosphere, the universe,
Earth, air and ocean
There within it all
A constant
The self free of rigidity
As even the most
Solid of ice surrenders itself
After holding for a short while
Vapor, condensation, the drop reforms
Falling to the earth,
Flow to the river
And join the sea
This is our unity
The whole that binds is as well
The surging surf or refreshing shower
The nourishment to all living things
I am water
Eternal I shall flow.

Edmonton, AB, Canada