Tag Archives: patience

Beginner’s Mind

Posted on by Standard 3
Image re-posted from The Mind Unleashed Facebook Page


Image re-posted from The Mind Unleashed Facebook Page

I thought I was at center. I felt as balanced as a ballerina in Swan Lake. At the place of nirvana where cherry blossoms float down and the world smells of nag champa. Where you aren’t wrestling snakes in the evangelic’s circus tent, but sipping honey from lily cups. One of those cool Zen-catching moments that Ram Dass and Kornfield talk about as casually as the goodness of roasted potatoes at Sunday supper. You know when the sky opens as to Moses and you’re blessed with eternal peace. Then the horns blared and I looked at the dashboard clock. Funny how certain we can be about things, until we’re not.

Time. The time to get from here to there. It haunts me like a wolf. If I can let the time go then I’m catching Phoenix feathers and dropping into downward facing dog, a hawk swooping Earth. Hourglass snatches me up, though, and she is a mean old, nanny demanding I learn my lessons. Feels like someone should have mentioned that time is a whip cracking in your head that’ll be your undoing if you aren’t careful. Instead we are offered lovely chimes to mark it.

I thought enlightenment was a place, like Intercourse, Pennsylvania where it was always funny to touch that spot on a map. That with the right amount of effort and time I’d be there, properly dressed and ready for congratulations. The fattest, blissed out cat, in full lotus that ever walked through the doors of the Ritz Carlton of the Tao Te Ching.

Oh, all of the thoughts you have thunk, little grasshopper.

A work in progress from The Writer’s Church in Boulder, CO. Hosted by Marj Hahne. Inspired by “Elegance” by Fleda Brown.

Winter Sun

Posted on by Standard 4
Winter Sun: Photo by Noelle

Winter Sun: Photo by Noelle

Winterscape barren as white bones picked. Edges sharp, light and dark. No color and much shadow till it weighs the heart to stone. All life in movements of sugar dust winds at high speeds across the now crusted snow. Crows cling to power lines as cattle huddle on grassless slopes. It hurts to look. To wrap oneself tight feels the only comfort. A lonely hug in a bereft land, silent, but for the wind.

Willfully, I force the aperture open wider than nature allows taking in angled rays, piercing and yet strangely soft in brilliance. Hitting the retina at full force I refuse to blink. Face warming despite wild, moisture sucking winds I open my arms wide. An invitation I give; opened and exposed. The cold strokes my warm belly as if it were a lover. I tolerate the chilly caress with shivers to remind I am no fool. I wait, each breath a blacksmith’s billows, for all treasures want for my patience. Then it comes as she tips along the mountain ridge.

Diamonds alive in the snow. Pinks and yellows arc across the lens with halos in green. Sunlight refracts off tearing lids bouncing back with a light of my own. Pupils snap wide as the eyes see what was there, but ignored – a rich, cornflower colored blanket surrounding the Earth. A blue sky as deep as Spring waters and endless as a sea. The heart quickens. It feels life and nearly breaks in exaltation of a winter’s suns penetration down to the soul. Warming the optic nerve, a pulsating signal to a wintered heart. Quiet my soul has slept in the cold, dark hours of December, but the great orb offers her hand now to dance. How could any spirit refuse a winter’s solstice waltz? Surely, I cannot.

Coming Winter

Posted on by Standard 2
Re-posted from Enchanted Nature's Facebook page

Re-posted from Enchanted Nature’s Facebook page

COMING WINTER

The rain is steady across the field
And cold lays heavy on the pane
I welcome the turn inward
As fall drifts to winter’s mane

Fires are stoked without
And within a blaze burns, too
A warmth bathes my thoughts
As the blanket wraps the limbs, cocooned

Incubation brings reflection
In the way the clouds mirror on the lake
Real, rich and yet, transparent
To be remembered even as they fade

Gold leaves fall, wet and dark
In the growing wind
So I let my thoughts fall, too
Damp upon the skin

Winter lurks amongst the vines
Of the pumpkin patch, now bare
And I grow empty of a year’s losses
Floating lighter on this eve’s air

The fields are empty of there harvest
Apples are long to their bins
All things must sleep to be fertile
And I am now free to sleep in

Sunrise

Posted on by Standard Reply
Re-posted from Enchanted Nature's Facebook page

Photo Re-posted from Enchanted Nature’s Facebook page

At first the light is soft
More a grayish change from a deeper night
Then the gray takes shape, as light causes
The bark to darken to the west
I am steady as the trunk
Eyes, too, are soft upon the grain

We are objects in a photographic negative

Gray seems to move into the deepest purple
Red
Almost without my noticing
It is the great prelude
The rich, earthy drumming that heightens
The senses to the light
To come

Orange like fire streaks the trunk
And lifts the eastern bows up into
Arms praising the Sun God
Who has yet to grace the
Horizon
The purple red drifts into the color
Of shadow and now even the
Nightshade is no longer night

I breathe it all into my inner sanctum
Quiet in my meditation
The thunder of the rise a crescendo
Seen only at the pulse

Such be the morning drama of it all
And it would be
Too much
If I were not already weeping

Pooh: Little Gem

Posted on by Standard Reply
Bridge over Dutch Creek: Photography by Noelle

Bridge over Dutch Creek: Photography by Noelle

“Sometimes, if you stand on the bottom rail of a bridge and lean over to watch the river slipping slowly away beneath you, you will suddenly know everything there is to be known.” Winnie the Pooh

Alphabet Soup

Posted on by Standard Reply
Hidden River: Photography by Noelle

Hidden River: Photography by Noelle

After their all gone, I find I’m still here
Bound to earth a regular oak in the field
Captured in this moment a
Dog with her bone
Even the clock ticks slower than a
Frost’s melt
Goaded by the weight of
Hampered grief in my chest
I stand in the quiet, deciding?
Jump back in or dally
Kicking the cat
Love is at the center of all this, even as
Misery runs me down in
Narrow alleys that smell of
Old fish and over sweet
Poppies
Quit your begging at
Rama’s door, I say to the mirror
Salvation is in your
Tight belly – hungry for
Unity a
Volcanic sound blasting
With the power of
Excalibur
You are grace and beauty at the
Zenith of a transformation you command

This Abecedarian was created in the Front Range Writer’s Room hosted by Marj Hahne

Exiting

Posted on by Standard 1
Lone Leaf Beached: photography by Noelle

Lone Leaf Beached: photography by Noelle

It felt good as done at the start. Bound, lost, no exit. Pressure to make a diamond lays on my mind. After all these years have I nothing? No smooth finish, but a stumbling out the door. Denial isn’t a river in Cairo, the old joke trails, but it is an immense watercourse in my mind. With Titan effort I withdraw and hibernate the winter. At first waiting for Godot. Then like driftwood, I surface upon a lone beach. No place to go. No direction suggests itself and after a bit, I can no longer sit. Crying. No warmth or comfort. I walk. Crying. Then walk with the most outrageous and worrisome yelling, before walking with no sound at all. First aimlessly, then with a longer stride. More determined, yet aware of what floats by me. Breath in, breath out. I no longer appear to be in any hurry. Anticipation taps at my heart. Single and free, alone on the beach. The expanse a welcome blanket and the endless sea it’s own serenade of the lover yet to come.

Inspired by The New York Times crossword puzzle: 3/11/2012. An exercise in creativity from Front Range Writers Room hosted by Marj Hahne