Monthly Archives: November 2008

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Poem: Illusions

(Note:  After a year of joy and nail-biting in the worldly realm, with its political crescendo of sweet possibility, this reminder of the reality of things…)

raabbit-tracks

Optical illusions abound in the optical field
aural illusions abound in the

sound realm

That waterfall you hear is just
someone walking toward you

That wall rising up and that sky falling down is
just your own eyelids closing seen

from inside

The world evaporates and reappears
inside a fish tank

entwined in goldfish grass

Our loved ones also undergo illusory
transformations

sometimes as fleet horses leaping turnstiles in
synchronized equine unison

other times as lone silhouettes in a white
paper moonlight sitting under a gnarly

black tree

Our own souls color what we see
and what we see when we see

is our own souls

To get out of the way to see what
God sees isn’t for every ant and gorgon to

accomplish in one lifetime but it’s a
commendable goal

and worth every once of our
strength

That window opening onto that

snow crystal hillside with the
slanted birches on it rising

all the way into heaven

That white rabbit there between them
leaving whiteness and

entering it again

whiter than
before

______________

10/21/2008 (from Sparks Off the Main Strike, in progress)

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Poem: Honoring Our Election of Obama

salt-prayers-collage

This poem I present in homage to the overwhelming and outpouring national heart-energy in our election of Barack Obama to be our next President. Having lived through the idealistic 60s (when some of us literally saw castles in the air), not until now have I seen such an abundance, in now realistic and practical terms, of good will and hope for true change. Yes We Can, God willing, and may He pour His blessings on 44th President Barack Hussein Obama, and all of us, in the United States and the rest of the world, after nearly a decade of tragically mindless destruction, both inwardly and outwardly. Amen.

THE HEART HAS REASON TO BELIEVE

Le coeur a ses raisons que la raison ne connaît point — Blaise Pascal

The heart has reason to believe its tropical islands will bloom
giant scarlet palm trees whose
spraying spathes make golden pinwheels in a
bright blue sky

The heart has reason to believe the secret door to Allah’s private
chamber opens here without benefit of lock
but whose key is that murmur on the lips of a lover
that reverberates through our bones to the
earth-bound bottoms of our toes

The heart has reason to believe in a sky whose opening eyelid
shows an eye that goes on and on into oracular oblivion
seeing every creation He’s ever created from
time before time to time after time has expired

The heart has reason to believe it’s riding a
team of wild white horses going at full gallop through all
the worlds and all the world’s oceans at once
to run along a shore brought to life as we pass
whose faces open like white roses and whose
voices chime like silver bells

The heart has reason to believe the heart’s God’s residence
and we enter it with caution and with care
with courage and bravado for He’s waiting there for our
entrance and His Face is already coming into focus in our sphere

The heart has reason to believe all this by the simple fact of being a heart
and not a steamboat or a plank of wood floating on black water
where moonlight cannot reach

And the spaces between the heart’s beats are orbital dimensions
complete worlds come to birth in

and the beats themselves are His Name
as He names the worlds that come to birth

How can we not be delirious with love under these
perfect climactic conditions!

When He beckons us toward Him by the very
organ that keeps us alive

in the very chambers He’s created for His voice
to echo and reecho in

calling us home!

__________________________________________________

11/15/2002 (from Through Rose Colored Glasses)