poetic musings

here it is

 

 

I don’t know what it is.

 

I can’t meet it face-to-face.

I can’t turn my back on it.

 

It’s impossible to flee from it.

 

If, by some wild grace

(I don’t know what that is, either)

it turns its all-knowing eye upon itself,

the default idea of duality

(by which I mean the unquestioned compulsion to label, define and separate)

vaporises.

 

Even the concept of ‘one’ is clearly one idea too many.

 

Knowing without a centre, without a knower,

knows. 

 

It excludes nothing.  It has no preferences.

 

Separation ceases.

 

The old urge to know what it is,

how it is, why it is,

has become irrelevant, obsolete, laughable.

 

I say: here it is.  Show me how you can possibly ignore it.

 

 

– ml

2021

 

 

Painting by Michael Leunig, Desert Song Man

leunig.com.au

 

 

breathing with the lake

Here I am.
Sitting in Paradise
breathing.
Breathing the tide of clarity – in it comes
crystal-clear, out it goes,
often muddied by mind –
and I smile as this lifestream flows on
saturating each sensation, yet
paying no heed;
never cocking an eyebrow or casting a vote,
only ever reminding me:
Here I am
I-without-name-or-boundary
here and now
as This, and This and This.

The current version of Paradise finds me staying in a place of great beauty, beside a large lake. This entire year has unfolded as a series of deep retreats. It is a time for, and of, integration. Health issues are being lovingly tended and their emotional causality explored. It’s both harrowing and heart-swelling: Grace delivers whatever is needed, reminding me I signed up for the Full Monty.

Apropos of nothing (I never go fishing) these three small poems landed in my net:

Miriam Louisa Simons, Lake Macquarie, dawn

 

breathing with the lake

I am

Monet-mind beside the Seine

 

–

 

black swans glide by, curious:

pounding the lakeside path

a rainbow!

 

–

 

fog hiding the lake

one solitary oarsman

rows through melting space

 

Photograph taken from my zafu.

how could you not love something like that?

I was poking around one of my favourite poetry sites recently and found some of my own lines. They had been sourced from one of my other blogs.
(Sincere nods of gratitude to the curator.)

I had quite forgotten these lines (unsurprising, since you didn’t write them, says Emptiness), and reading them again delights me. Unashamedly. So I’m sharing them here.

 

Echoes from Emptiness: how could you not love something like that?

 

how could you not love something that

never leaves you
regardless of how often you ignore it?

that’s always self-shining –
never needing flint or switch or fuel?

that never changes
regardless of the vicissitudes of your daily experience?

that never takes sides
whatever person, team or nation you’re supporting,
whatever idea or opinion you hold?

that never breaks apart
even though your life appears to?

that never minds
n-e-v-e-r   m-i-n-d-s
that you spend your life running around looking for it
while it’s in your face the whole time?

how could you not love something like that?

something you can never escape,
and that’s so immanent
you are forced to accept it
as your own true identity?

how could you not then love
Y O U R S E L F ?

and everything arising
– thoughts, perceptions, memories, feelings –
within that inconceivable Self?

how could you not love that immensity which precedes
and includes all existence?

how could you not kneel at your own feet
in awe?

 

how could you pretend that your enlightened
heart-driven passion
was not the Great Passion of That
which holds the planets in their orbit?

 

how could you ignore the urge to pour
your energy and attention
into whatever opens your heart?

 

how?

 

– miriam louisa
August 2013