You, you hold a mirror
watch the slight presence
–breath on the surface
Movement occurs again
and again within stillness
I, I see the dance
the dancing partners
I, I – you, you – we, we
leaning in, giving way
leaning in, holding
Movement, motion is
–no disturbance
while All arises
stillness dancing
of surface and within
Mountain, mountain reflects
Instead of twisting
and spinning in circles
trying to grasp
your self, keep still*
*quote from Hilary Barrett ~ I’Ching Hexagram 52, Stilling
if I could open all the mysteries that daunt
would there not yet be another mystery lain
at yet another level or circuit of my being?
what of this earth and sky that is not seen
but felt in the bones and in the electrical pulses
throughout this finely tuned cutting, this scion
what am I cut from and what does carry me
in these ways that have many names, one
of which might be apocrypha or rubric lost
we have come upon things inexplicable, yet
somehow we are not at peace nor openly greet
that which is beholden to vastness and fire
we have looked upon our own center, that void
where the eye cannot see nor rightly focus
something of what we are, a purity in depth
and simplicity simultaneously defies convention
all things gathering and also falling around
this shockwave that has no compass or steer
perhaps that is the mystery, somehow we are
free of place and time yet conjure it still as
everything we do and say, playing at substantiation
we catch ourselves again and again in the folly
of needing to know how to come and go
when in coming there is the going ~ no distance
The tides turn and turn, shifting
but still there is little to scour
Flotsam is not splayed about
upon the beach-like shores
Yet light glints off a found face
sparking brilliantly its presence
This seeing is by an eye observed within
of the heart cracked with a new interiority
What of this seeing when it doesn’t match
any concentrated sense of what it is to exist
Does that suggest that this light, the glint
from within, is false or imagined somehow?
Heartily no! This shine is even brighter yet
as it is seeing that has gained its illumination
We’ve somehow always known we see partially
whether we look closely or beg far-sightedness
What once remained mute in its invisibility
cascading like dark matter in vast space
Now is our epigenetic wonder and remaking
solace of grace and forthrightness of splendor
Dear Followers of Contemplative Fire,
Thank you all (especially for the recent followers in 2015, who I haven’t had a chance to thank yet!) I have just created the above collage version of a poem of mine from back in February to share with a community, which I am part of, who are meeting in person soon. This photo collage version of my poetry is BRAND NEW for me.
Thanks for the help in getting it posted directly on the blog, Adam!
Blessings and love to you all!
It arrived as seeming magic yesterday morning
like a new reality being seen for the first time
and remains today sharing its glow still.
This touch comes via its recognition –cold but not
A distinct warmth arrives unbidden. The eye
is relieved of its usual work on these mornings
Dispensing with its familiar taint formed of other
kinds of vapor, which we gather throughout our
day to day interactions with this stuff of reality.
Hoarfrost permeates much the same in its blanketing
of every surface nook and cranny, defying gravity, comes
only when called out by the elements, its conspirators.
Colors shift and change, the light dances new dances
–a communion of deep appreciation of living things
that have their own mastery and workings reaches me.
This day to day eye softens its course, lays down its tools,
puts aside whatever ways it’s become accustomed to
seeing the world and takes an in breath, yes, breathes in.
San Cristobal, NM
10 January 2015
The clouds moving, nearly
Imperceptibly closer than,
I move to the east side
The eaves shelter from
More than the rains
Good Samaritan design
Noon stands out acting
The Prima Dona except
In loneliness and reaches
Then to One and Two
For company inviting
Them early for tea
Some days no one wants
Near and turns away to
Find the most ready refuge
Awaiting their turn
Their moment in the sun
Patience is a virtue
Blessings come to those
And yet… the winds pick up
Darker under bellies seen
Two O’clock is inconsistent
It’s her way or her luck of the draw
Maybe both perhaps neither
Today she was thinking
About that tea invitation
Chameleon writ large
Seeking anonymity in
The heat of the afternoon
Hoping to get off the hook
For what others have
Come to expect of her
That “time of the day”
And yet it’s all so fleeting
Yesterday’s invitation
A glimmer, is not Today’s
El Rito – Kagyu Mila Guru Stupa campground
8-16-14 2:59pm
The notion of a virtual blog tour landed here upon being sparked by my dear friend and colleague Daniel Ari, who made the initial suggestion that I might like to participate in such a tour, following his blog tour post (a poet friend and colleague had invited him.) I felt the spark land and since then the question has been did the spark become an ember and did the ember survive? Or perhaps another question might be was it a virtual spark and does it, now, have what it takes to light this contemplative, virtual fire? Perhaps. Shall we see?
What is not a perhaps is the whole-hearted conspirator I find in Daniel Ari, the person, being, and creator afire. I invite you to visit his blog Fights With Poems, as long as you have more than a moment to explore and drop in. Daniel’s projects are a many (writing, publishing, teaching, collective blogging and more), his stretch is broader than most and not confined by his idea of himself, if I can say so. One project of note is his forthcoming book, One Way to Ask, a book of querons, a poetry form of Daniel’s originality, inspiration, and making. For this book, he is collaborating on many levels with artists and other co-conspirators, which has Daniel’s signature of ever-ready-to-remake-oneself with each sitting, writing, and re-versing. It has been my honor and stimulation both to be included in amongst the co-conspirators included in this book. I look forward to the publication of One Way to Ask.
And thank you, Daniel, for inviting me once again into territory that I may not otherwise find myself in if it weren’t for you and our connection! (Another such invitation from Daniel brought numerous years of my participation in his collective blog, IMUNURI. Currently Daniel has 131 submissions there, I have 57, and ten other poets have submitted their works/poems there, as well.)
A photographic interlude as the blog tour continues…
The Virtual Blog Tour comes with these party-c-pant questions (putting on these party pants is one way to participate!)
1) What am I working on?
I don’t know what I am working on until I am working on it. Even then, while I am “working on” something, it is more precisely working me or opening out through me or pondering within this persona/non-persona. It doesn’t seem to be my way or mode (at this time) to know what I am working on. What does come, at times, is some kind of knowing being expressed through words on paper or words being typed on a computer or iPod screen. Question #4 seems to be creeping into #1.
2) How does my work differ from others of its genre?
Similarly, I am not aware of my poetry and writing being of a specific genre type. If you know otherwise, please let me know! Ha! What comes through as poetry seems to be unique to itself. I will say something that does come to say around this question: the poetry I write comes from or via direct experiencing, an internal voicing or somatic experiencing as the words present themselves. I would not say that I don’t think about what I write, but something like that. It seems to me that I am ready when something seems to come through and have easiness of expression as words in some kind of structure close to what we call a poem. Poems as awareness as felt sense, perhaps.
3) Why do I write what I do?
“Why do I do what I do?” as a question seems to come out of some unseen or unconscious motivation to seek security (or need to know) when security of that kind is simply non-essential. So, for me, there is not an need to answer such a question. The poems ponder enough on their own and simply get written (or not.)
4) How does my writing process work?
There are tastes of this question in the previous answers 1, 2, and 3. What else I might share here is that there is some kind of seeding and then a gestation period and then, perhaps, a kind of birthing in the writing. The writing usually takes my full attention and is something that moves through and I respond in the now. Often there is the anticipation of something before it finds its form as words on paper, mostly as poetry, sometimes as contemplative writing in prose, sometimes in photography or a combination of the aforementioned.
The writing is a kind of direct experience, as in I am present for something as it is felt and expresses as words. The photography, too, is a kind of calling or marking of direct experience and has a numinous quality within it. What gets expressed, conveyed, felt, or sensed through the sharing of these, I also do not know what that might be. It is like breathing for me. Or at least that is how it comes today to write about such things.
Monsoon skies in El Rito north of Questa, New Mexico ~ July 2014
And finally, the blog tour may continue in a similar fashion to above, if I have other bloggers to invite for you to check out with blog tour posts of their own. However, I found that I did not have currently active bloggers to invite! So I invited both a poet/artist and a songwriter/musician/poet to start their own blogs such that they could be included with accolades in this Virtual Blog Tour.
Perhaps they will do just that and at least one new blogger will be featured here in short time. I will update this entry with their URL and some of what inspired me to invite them to participate. Perhaps.
arriving with the full moon ~ July 10, 11 2014
while camping near the Kagyu Mila Guru Stupa, north of Questa, NM
We have our things
Even if we have very little
or essentially nothing
Not threadbare are any of us
And some semblance of things
is brought together, even if
just to drink this or eat that
We can sit on the ground
The body will sleep when it comes time
the preoccupation of belongings
is such a high order in our lives
that it is nearly invisible
I pause to think, as if thinking is
the way, how to live
on the land with no amenities
It seems preposterous
Just sit on the ground?
Rest under a tree?
Wait until batteries run out
and then be silent?
As if Silence was not there
all along
Everything we eat, drink, sleep
is there in the Silence
Everything we are
is that Silence
We love an entry into.
Leave an opening
And something will move thru
Even if just pretend.
So when we really go thru
What then?
Is there no going back?
We’ve moved between
And are never the same.
Something has passed
From here to there
And back again is only onward.
We pine for what was
Looking thru What Is
Trying to see something
Other than
What simply is, Just This.
And pining, things just look the same
But never are
Or are so inextricably
The same it would take
The widest open eyes
To see This
And not see something else.
Perhaps it is the putting aside
Of what the eyes see
And letting things be
As empty as they are
Each thing a doorway
To itself
Nothing more, nothing less.
In that entry
We move as all direction
Within and without
Leaving nothing aside
Going nowhere but everywhere
Without departure.
And the openings
Await nonetheless
Waiting as the perceivable
In the perceiving
As they are
As they are.
When there is nothing to do
Something seems to be found to do
It’s a circus we didn’t even
realize we had tickets for
and have been going to
all so regularly
It looks like life
And yet life isn’t doing
Life just happens
All on its own
No tickets necessary!
There is no grand entry, no backstage
Just ask the wind
the thunder
the rain
None of these need permission
And cannot be kept
Under lock and key
There is no one to pay
Even if that makes us
Feel more real somehow
We have so many wallets
all around and everywhere
Most of them hidden away
(what are we protecting, really?)
But there they are
What good would it be
if we didn’t find ways to fill them?
Is it a question of good?
Or is it a question of a day
yet upon us when all
bartering ceases
And something yet known,
however already conceived,
bursts forth taking us
as we are
as our most direct
Unfettered, alive beyond word
Nothing need be done
The question of do and not do
Too will cease
slope ridge line light
Photography –a medium I first explored over three decades ago and now find myself coming back to again, is compelling. It is the appearance or illusion of what was seen –not seen by the naked eye but by the camera, as Garry Winogrand so aptly noted as he discussed photography while being filmed himself for a documentary on photography.
We can look at photography in another way, not the way the camera ‘looks’ at the world in that split second aperture opening, but the way the human being and the human eye explores and glances, focusing or not focusing at something. Each photograph I take asks, if it can be said that way, to be looked at differently. In the photo above, for the body/brain there is a gestalt here. There are worlds within worlds in this image in the way I experience it. There is abstract beauty, there is light, dance, majesty, tenderness, softness, a deep relax. I love what seems to me the visitors, the trees high up on the ridge drawing my attention and intersecting the ridge line, riding the slope of this arid mountainside.
I love the scale shift in detail from the foreground to the very distant space of the ridge on into the sky. The feel of the day that drew me out into its changeability is touched here in this photograph, for me. Something breathes more easily within me in the presence of this light and shadow illusion of a land and cloud scape. So where might we say this landscape exists?
As invisible
as an updraft, the eye soars
as the osprey’s flight
The other ‘land’
A new land was visible, as well as undeniably felt today. This land was a land of clouds, in perfect synergy with the geological, earthen land masses that appear so permanent and reliable. The cloud cover was ever changing today, reliably so. The play of light and shadow cast exponentially greater than the day or two before when I took in the simple play of afternoon light and shadow on the slopes of the Adams Gulch trail north of Ketchum (where I’ve been communing with animals for the last three weeks.)
It was as if I had arrived in a wholly new place. The clouds joining with, marrying, in a deep interplay with the curves and slopes of the mountains and hills and creek valleys everywhere around me creating a new order of scape. I was drawn to capture the shapes and the light and the feel of these ineffable contours again and again and again. Everywhere I turned, yet another land to move with, to be wafted by, lifted up while my feet remained with the ground below.
Dwelling place in the clouds
Where is it we dwell, truly? There is only one small portion of ground that our physical form rests down, touches down, meets contact with and makes real that place. All other aspects of space are perceived, even if they can be mapped, recorded, seemed to be held real ~ all these are simply a pointing to. Such is the magic of the cloud land or cloudscape, no maps are made of these.
Hiroshige Homage
In that way, clouds are akin to so many other changing thus not permanent things, not expected to remain the same. What is it about cloud nature that our brains so resonate with their phenomena? Are we not so much closer to cloud than steel or glass or even wood? We are so changeable by so, so many aspects and factors of life that shape us, constrict us, show us off, dissolve us, heighten and sometimes perturb us.
Permanently Changeable: Sky Dance
I will meet you here
We are at home in the sky
There no ladder climbs
Life Being Life 