Tag Archives: poetry

birthday poem

Posted on by

4

In this uncreated emptiness

- an unfurling, unfolding
energy-locus trembling with
sensations so varied
they appear to hold
no common currency -

experience swings

from melting tenderness
and wide-eyed wonder
to the creaking pain
of bodybits worn and stressed
(there’s a tutu pirouetting
on satin points in one scene;
stomping across the stage
leaden-hoofed in another)

In this uncreated emptiness

there’s a seeing, a knowing
a luminous awareing of every tonality
and every texture
every nuance of light and shade
shimmer and flicker
conspiring to create an apparent world

there’s an immaculate stillness
unchanging, unmoving, unaffected
by the stories told by
pleasure, pain or perfection

there’s a brilliant beingness
in which every dance
listed in life’s repertoire
is danced by be the one

whirling
crazy lover
inexhaustibly romancing its insatiable
self

emelle says:
off with the training-wheels,
away with the Zimmer-frame
I raise my glass to Life!

Beloved, let this heart beat long enough
to whirl a few more orbits of the sun
dissolving, giddy and swooning, into your arms
which are
none other
than
my own

~ miriam louisa

a fool’s prayer

Posted on by

12

.

.

one bright new now
you looked around at your life
and you realized
that with very few exceptions
those who had shared time on your path
for years (or just a blink)
had failed to understand
the choices you appeared to make
and you felt the quiver of their
condemnation in your heart

it was never easy walking the Fool’s highway;
sometimes you even fell by the wayside
convinced that you were terminally confused
as you glanced in the mirror of mainstream mediocrity
with its demands for evenness, respectability,
predictability

often it was too hard to find words
that would find a lucid landing-place
in the minds of those you so dearly wished
could understand your crazy irrationality,
that would make it clear that you weren’t depressed
or ill, or lost

but that you were a soul driven by a contract with Truth
(you had signed up, remember, when still too young
to understand the consequences)
that you were a thread of gossamer
on the breath of Life

emelle says:
let me die to the dull respectability of the world
with its need to turn me into a story
let me forever be a Fool
in the hands of the lawless Lover

~ miriam louisa

Image: Tarot of the Magical Forest by Leo Tang

love’s the ultimate sly squatter

Posted on by

20

~

how could it come to pass that halfway
through my sixty-eighth orbit of the sun
Love
would find me?

how, when I was without need
or hunger or even a shy dream that
Love
might find me?

perhaps Love, like me, is a homeless vagrant;
like a mysterious night moth,
It seeks out the empty, glowing
innocent heart
and quietly moves in

emelle says:
Love’s the ultimate sly squatter

~ miriam louisa

.

divine dazzlement

Posted on by

0

I want to introduce you to artist Claire Beynon who lives and works in Dunedin, New Zealand.  Her art work, her poems and her writing never fail to uplift and inspire me.

Her blog is called All Finite Things Reveal Infinitude, from the poem by Theodore Roethke.  Here’s a luminous 43-second sample:

. 

.

All finite things reveal infinitude:

the mountain
with its singular bright shade

like the blue shine
on the freshly frozen snow,

the after-light
upon ice-burdened pines;

odor of basswood
upon a mountain slope,

a scene beloved
of bees; silence of water…

~ Theodore Roethke

Claire’s bog: http://icelines.blogspot.com/

~

the unbroken

Posted on by

6

~

There is a brokenness
out of which comes the unbroken,
a shatteredness
out of which blooms the unshatterable.

There is a sorrow
beyond all grief which leads to joy
and a fragility
out of whose depths emerges strength.

There is a hollow space
too vast for words
through which we pass with each loss,
out of whose darkness
we are sanctioned into being.

There is a cry deeper than all sound
whose serrated edges cut the heart
as we break open to the place inside
which is unbreakable and whole,
while learning to sing.

~ Rashani Réa

.

an invitation to extreme creativity

Posted on by

7

If creativity is radical discontinuity in a pattern of thought, then going on retreat is an invitation to extreme creativity.

Retreat is radical discontinuity in a pattern of being.

It’s not so much a movement towards anything, although it might it might involve wandering in unknown places or bunkering down in a metaphoric cave.  It’s more of a movement away from the known life with all its impositions, distractions and habitude.

As the disappearing Dharma teacher said – it’s a total commitment to awakening.  Not just in little glimpses, but in rock solid steadiness.

You will know when you’re ready and you must go.  There won’t be a second thought.  You won’t be driven by your mind or even your heart and certainly not by your feelings for they are the most fickle of all.

You’ll be driven by Grace, by a sweet and unquestionable imperative that will shock you and your N & D.  Resisting the call is possible but the consequences to health and sanity are dire.

When the invitation comes, grab it, beloved.  Park your procrastination into long-term storage and walk, empty, into the arms of Life.

.

The Journey

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
“Mend my life!”
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do -
determined to save
the only life you could save.

~ Mary Oliver

.

I am the life of life

Posted on by

0

I bow to the beloved Rumi, who spins this savage wisdom into poetry that unravels my heart’s weave…

~

I am not a Christian, I am not a Jew, I am not a Zoroastrian

and I am not even a Muslim.

I do not belong to the land, or to any known or unknown sea.

Nature cannot own or claim me, nor can heaven;

nor can India, China, Bulgaria.

My birthplace is placeless, my sign to have and to give no sign.

You say you see my mouth, ears, eyes, nose – they are not mine.

.

I am the life of life.

I am that cat, this stone, no one.

I have thrown duality away like an old dishrag,

I see and know all times and worlds as one,

one, always one.

.

So what do I have to do to get you to admit who is speaking?

Admit it and change everything!

This is your own voice echoing off the walls of God.

~ Rumi

thank you for the hairy ones

Posted on by

2

This little blog was launched two years ago, on Mothers’ Day 2009, and dedicated to my sweet mother, Miriam. I’m a little late this year – it’s already Monday in this part of the world – but a post is pressing this morning, a prayer of gratitude for all mothers, including the miraculous and long-suffering Earth that is truly our lifelong womb.

.

.

Beloved Life

Thank you for Mothers

Thank you for all your awesome
ways
of replicating yourself
from simple cell-division
and eggs a zillion ways
to womb-birthed, pouch-held
babes

Thank you for the hairy
ones
the crusty, the creepy,
the slithery, the feathered ones,
the ones we love and
those that scare us silly

Thank you for the ones we call
human
our own, who built our scaffolding
from their own cells so that
the Light of your Awareness
would have a home

Thank you for their
generosity
regardless of our opinions,
our grievances, our stories, for
they made it possible for you
to create yourself
and to Know yourself

and to Know yourself
from birthing unto birthing as
Beloved

~ miriam louisa
Photo: Slavka Gough, Bali, 2011