Fruitful toil

It was in the temple,

I was taken,

high in the arid Spring desert

I sat still

as I was instructed

only to listen

until I could hear

a word

about my being.

When it came

I absorbed the sound

like the sun

only trusting

its power

without understanding 

how it works

on my being.

I carried the world

as I moved

on

later with wind and rain

and humid storms

feeling a wrath

on my raw skin

unaffected by its

texture

until I fell

as hitting the solid ground

I felt

Soft

inside, sweeter,

a ripening 

had occured 

when I finally let go.

I now know

this Soft

interior

was not a choice

only 

the way

I had 

become. 

Artwork from  NYPL, (Artist unknown) Postcard series number: 70216, c. 1898 in Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Word Problems

The following lines are not my own, they are quotes which serve as railcars running along a track of thought...

Pain is inevitable,
Suffering is optional.
Our suffering is the problem,
the answer is waking up.
Hope is a waking dream.
I said to my soul, be still and wait without hope,
for hope would be hope for the wrong thing.
Whatever satisfies the soul is Truth.
Three things cannot be long hidden;
the sun, the moon, and the Truth.
The cause is hidden; the effect is visible to all.
When you have seen beyond yourself,
then you may find
peace of mind is waiting there.
Just keep in mind, the more we value things
outside of our control, the less control we have.
Holding on is believing there is only past;
letting go is knowing that there is a future.
Without desire there is stillness,
and the world settles by itself.

***
(Attributions in order by line:
1-4 Buddhist texts
5 Aristotle
6 & 7 T.S. Eliot
8 Walt Whitman
9 & 10 Buddhist saying
11 Ovid
12-14 George Harrison
15 & 16 Epictetus
17 & 18 Daphne Rose Kingma
19 & 20 Lao Tzu



Painting by Francesco Rustici (1610-1625), Allegory of Wisdom and Prudence' in Public domain.

Respiration; Exhale

Late afternoon, predusk
Crystal beads balance in between blades 
And I wonder how the dew does
Survive the day, 
Like me.

All the change and energy
exhausted.

Exhaled more than I took in.
Eyelids spread wide
I steal the last flakes of golden sun
And hold my breath
Because it's all I know I can do
and besides 
(myself)
my heart is simply too heavy
To lift this evening.

Painting by Henri-Edmond Cross, 'The farm, evening' c. 1893 [Public domain].

Emancipation of empathy

The father leaves
the delivery room
unable to wrap his grey brain
around her bloody pain.
The mother knows now
she is alone,
responsible for their survival.

The baby opossum,
smiling and listless,
lays still blinking away flies
from his glassy black eyes.
Rejected by his mother,
he dies alone
in the fresh cut grass.

A mother sits with her grown son,
worry lines her face connecting
the years between them.
Pain wrenches his body,
suffering they endure it side by side;
one will live,
one will die.

Salvation is a single passenger of deliverance
traveling through the tortuous view
arriving as a vicarious vacancy
forgetting and letting the suffering go,
anothers pain, one and the same.


Image By Correggio (Antonio Allegri) (Italy, Parma, circa 1489-1534) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.