THREE POEMS ON WAKING THIS MORNING

[Dharmavidya]

FRIEND AT THE WINDOW

So many leaves turning 

from green to brown,

or still part and part - 

walnut tree in autumn

caressing my bedroom window

how you have grown this year

through spring deluge and summer drought

now to emerge

through autumnal mist,

king of the garden,

kin of the wild.

HUSH

Out in the woods

a gathering of many trunks

supports a ceiling of verdant light;

one holds one's breath

in this holy place.

DEEP HEAP

I sleep in a humble heap -

runkled bed covers,

trunkled brain

rumbling into stupour,

tumble into night;

oh blessed dark,

how fondly you caress

the spindles of my hedgehog mind

that knows now only

to curl, curl, curl into your blackness

and be glad.

[Carol English]

Humm I tried to edit this but the edit vanished... Lost some of what I was trying to say...

But something of an agreement with Juline: suffering as being the clinging to identity. Sleep as a small enlightenment: the cessation of suffering being also something of the willing letting go of identity that takes place as we relax into sleep, relinquishing suffering and relaxing into the arms of the nembutsu.

[Carol English]

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[Carol English]

Trying to think how to answer this. It is a meditation in itself to try to do so... The first two poems are descriptive. Postcards of a sort. Removed from the personal. Not exactly cliched, but not textured and original the way the third one is. Somehow it moves from the deeply personal to something that feels universal— suffering and the cessation of suffering. It has a tenderness and vulnerabilityto it that is touching— the humble heap, runkled bed covers, trunkled brain... Not even a word, yet in rhyming it with runkled it is apparent what it meant... This play of language...

It is a love poem to darkness. The evocative/metaphoric quality of "the spindles of my hedgehog mind", the thorny spiky quality that a mind can take when, thoughts racing everywhere, unsettled and unsettling, we exhaust ourselves and struggle to let go... Yet, with the gentle touch of darkness, we remember how to settle. We curl into the embrace of blackness, like a child settling to sleep in the safe and loving arms of a parent. All of this is said in a kind of music of words... The rhythm, the use of repetition. "Curl, curl, curl an invocation, an invitation to relax and let go.

[Juline Smit]

I like the last poem too.

There is a comfort in sleep ... a surrender ... a letting go ... nembutsu.

[Dharmavidya]

The question, What makes a poem a 'good' one is interesting. I'd be interested to know what Carol saw in poem number three that made it 'better' then one and two.

[Dharmavidya]

Thanks, Carol.

[Carol English]

The third poem is exquisite.