When yesterday came

Photo by gfs – Haleakala Sunset, Maui HI

There was a story
Told by sages
Of times
And trials
Lost to memory
Written in stone
Broken into
Forgotten sands
Such are the pages
History told
In voices
Long silent
Language unknown
Ears shuttered
Truth is not words
The best evidence
Only found
In the fires
Of mind!

 

tears of glass

Tears of Glass

part of all there ever was
rings between the me and you
dreaming into this creation
what believing never knew

sands shifting into days remembered
lies were told against the grain
the ebony that fades in daylight
as memories come round again

from summer days and winter fires
embers cooled and swept away
grace the garden greening over
where willows whisper to the day

of hands once holding onto moments
days and times now come to pass
a songbirds tune rolls through my ears
and down my cheeks in tears of glass


Image: http://volcanoartcenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Darren-Goodman-Natures-Gold.jpg

Fire in the Mind

hollywood-elsewhere.com/2010/09/fire_in_the_min.php

Reach out to another
and find what was sought
Something unknowing
throughout endless thought

What we should realize
though never kept
How love it came calling
at times when we slept

And never believed
we ever would find
That burning unceasing
a fire in the mind

Until in consuming
all we’ve become
To realize unending
life in One

A River Runs Through It

What cool water there must be in Montana, as the crystalline mountain snows melt into streams and make their way down river, leading ever to nourish the landscape, and ultimately after thousands of miles to their home in the sea.

Norman Maclean was fond of the water, and was graced in knowing the land and the water and the air the way he did. Without ever studying Zen he became entranced by these elementals, and came to know his God on earth in a way that would make many of us envious – jealous, and in so doing we slip farther away from our own salvation.

In his lifetime the analogy of the water is rich with meaning. We view a pond and standing at the shore we cannot see the bottom, since there is a wind and the waters are stirring, there are waves on the surface, ‘ripples on the water’, and these obscure what is below.

The mind is like the waters, deep, often dark and mysterious. Nature, the world around us, the senses and the perceptions are the wind and the waves, and the bottom of the pond is our destiny, our true self, the one which we seek, and are bound to know.

Looking at the water in this way we can see that until we still the waves, the constant motion of the mind flitting from here to there and back again, then the bottom will always be obscured, and our journey will be long and restless.

When we can rest on the waters edge, and the winds calm, as the sun shines warm upon our skin, the surface of the waters become a clear glass and the bottom … our eternal spirit … comes into view. Fleetingly at first, but evermore we are changed. In the moment of serenity, we know our God is within, and live renewed.

This is the Spirit Norman wrote of, and sought in the rivers that parted the earth throughout his boyhood, and to which he returned in old age. This is the Spirit the Native Americans knew. This is our source, the place we are bound, the place of our origin.

“I am haunted by water …” (Norman Maclean)