~
Pileated laughter
jostles the morning mist
I run my finger along the boundary line
enjoying their agreement
~
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Meher Baba Retreat Center. North Myrtle Beach, SC
Category Archives: Poetry
In my house of open windows
~
“…. for a conditioned love loses its infinity, and in losing its infinity love is no longer love. In short, the highest expression of love as found in Hafiz’s poetry – is for love to create another perfect in its composition, without any bounds or conditions, infinite and completely, eternally free.”
~
her waist
that God
created out
of nothing
is so slender
none created
can embrace it
In response ….
In my house of open windows
When you enter the garden
and sing to me of your sorrows
in harmony with the songs
of the night birds
I weave each sorrowful note
into a carpet of prayer
for us to lie on
praising
our Beloved
~
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Photo: “Deep South” by Sally Mann
Translation of Hafiz by Peter Booth
“Dante/Hafiz Readings on the Sigh, the Gaze, and Beauty” by
Franco Masciandaro and Peter Booth
I send my voice out until breathless…
~
There is a mountain
within me
An inheritance
that has now become a polished stone
nestled in flesh,
in blood rich organ
~
A nameless sadness, it nestles close
real as the moon’s rise,
born within
a pit in the stomach
a seed in the heart
~
“Take this strange sorrow from me. It is bottomless,” I cry
as I walk up and down
the mourning side of my mountain.
~
At the top of the mountain
I yodel like a fool…
sounds and sobs issue with spittle and tears
I send my voice out
until breathless
~
But not spent
~
In the quieting down
I understand this weight is a broken seam
that can not be healed
It is the rend in the garment
of the turning in and the turning away from.
~
This broken seam can only be mended
cauterized by the flame that burns
in an open heart
~
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Artist: Johan Christian Dahl 1821
becoming Beauty
~
Becoming Beauty
face up floating
in a sea of glass
~
Beauty lies below me
in the elemental caprice of
sunlit patterns reflecting sky
~
Beauty circles above me
in clouds collecting salted tears
We all become the ocean when it rains
~
Beauty walks behind me
with gravity leaving footprints
Its strength the shifting sands
~
The wind of Beauty
blows quietly within me
ever seeking itself without measure
~
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The source of this gorgeous photo is unknown
Fragile still
~
Fragile like smog shadows rifling valleys
the mountain holds its breath
~
Fragile like feverish water
the ocean aborts the moon’s children
~
Fragile like bees loosing direction
and stamens playing their last hands
~
Fragile like children born overwhelmed
by viruses perplexed
~
Fragile still
like a flower
self-sewing in the garden
in blooming will make no mistake
intelligence in its unfolding
~
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Artist: Max Ernst
The unbearable awkwardness of three
~
Doubt and Belief silently argue
as they sit upon a box
~
Trust joins them
adding 3 wheels to the box
~
giving much needed mobility
to their ping-pong debate
~
everyone’s muscles still tense
when they pass Hope or Violence
~
as they meander
around the countryside
~
looking for the exact spot
where their grief is buried
~
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photo credit: unknown
The nimbleness of intelligence
~
How many times
will I shed raw and return?
Or is it a stronger current
amorphously assembling and deconstructing
in circuitous layers of attendance
as I unwittingly rally
behind the porosity of thought
the seduction of knowledge
~
I am a small planet
a symbiotic microbial world
my mind’s peripheral orbit
has flung so far out
in its trajectory that now
my axis seems nearly invisible
but I can still feel it…
this bright nucleus of love
teeming with life
~
Tepid fleshed, soft and juicy
I navigate through
this microbial stew
with winged thoughts
a heart that prisms lightning
and opposable dancing thumbs
exploring this finely tuned internal edge
tingling with the emotive tracings
of “new” frontiers
~
While underground
the nimbleness of intelligence
arises in quietude
fervent, listening
patiently listening
for openings of emergent steam
clear signs of the heat of engagement
~
I look “out there” from inside the swarming warmth
positioning myself in the spaces in between
practiced in resistance to the consistent hum of patterns and static
The quietude continues to rise from its circuitous path
this time through the soles of my feet
rising to the opening in my sky when I hear
“Out here! Out here! Not out there! We’re right here!
We’re all right here… playing in the fields of wild light”
~
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Picture source: Teach the Microbiome
Mamma clock
~
You were never adventurous
insisting on sticking to interaction
proscribed a sure thing
trying to be a “good girl” but always told
you were never good enough…
I was the one thrown into the air by each season
intoxicated by a flower’s breath
building new homes out of cardboard or snow
exhuming pets I was curious about death and bones and teeth
climbing trees listening to their heart sap
nipping change from Norman’s penny jar just for the sneak of it
not caring much about showing my girl parts to the neighbor boys
my anatomy a fire fly in a jar
And there you were pushing me off
unsteady on two bicycle wheels
as if your moods weren’t the day’s bad weather
and me always approaching you with the caution
of the kid held flat out in high winds
and now you were casting me off like a baby bird
as if you yourself knew how to fly
Well…little did I know your strange insistence
was giving me more than wings
your internal Mamma clock was saying
it was time I learned to fly
sending me on my way
with all you had learned of trust
and the red apple of your love
watching me
as I took off and kept rolling
~
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Artist: Terry Turrell
Verde Corazon
~
my sleeping fingers hear night rain
they sweep wide
opening a window
my waking skin is dampened
smelling wakened soil
~
my blood is pulsing
melting runoff
~
breathing it all in
deep as my lungs will take it
tender buds
unfurl in my brain
without thought
~
full to bursting
~
………………………………………………………………………………………..
photo: nezartdesign
Finger prints
~
You were imprinted on my fingertips
written as dim memory
in line and skin
~
I kept your image at arms length
or balled it into a fist
A turning away
from the violence
As if there is no real death in ascending?
~
As a child
it is true
I was taught to expect some relationship
while being impressed into the feverish tribe
of Jesus watching
~
Before me
pale lipped men
created tension
bells ringing
Climaxing
with a tiny chaste taste
~
Who clothed me
in this rag tag skin of living words?
Held hostage
~
Until
I fall pummeled and wading
in the waves of this unexpected birthing
Free now to love you simply as a man
~
A man of flesh and bread and wine
who once lived to turn the world.
~
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Artist: Caravaggio
The Poetics of Light 