Topic: Nectar

[Michael]

yes, very good

[nichi]

These are the Ways of All

Rumi said
"...the flute is played by fire, not by breath".

Yet for a little time
we can play this fire
- streaming our breath
through pursed lips
as we lean in close
- blowing kisses to the heart of a spark

As these gleaming skies enquire
each day we shade a tiny secret
from death and their jealous sight

holding one hand above a stream of air
feeling as large and dark as a mountain
and as wild and as untethered as light

when at a moment the breath acquires
the void into which gathered flame
and notes will die
- blown from a staff of smoke before our face
as tears issue from our eyes
into the fissure between beauty and pain

flickering notes
black stone
white foam
blue smoke

Slowing breathing out underwater
as a perfect ripple rolls overhead
making the sun
- the eye of a lizard
and the ocean bed our home

In this ancient reflection
older than the perfumed air above
stirred by insects and seasons
this pause
newer than that bubble
sliding over sand
...or love

There is in this whisper of the flute
an ancient sound
older than this two eared world
wiser than any will can understand

This explicit stone cradles an eternal tone
- the first phenomena of the complete
and perfect poem

a whole language is in this first word
...this the spark of a uni-verse
held within an opalescent shell

We who walk as flesh and bone
who talk to leave no tone unstirred
our words are notes in waiting
hidden in our chest

waiting to be reflected off leaves
or some watching creature's eye
as music pools like dark water
and our heart resonates with the rock

These are the ways of all

xxx
X

That's beautiful, xxx!

[xero]



[Michael]

[tangerine dream]

~

Like a sweet-water agate

by the river

cool and flowing

I awoke this morning

full of the moon's radiant glow

and sure in myself

and ready for the day

knowing this has all been for

a reason

~

[tangerine dream]

I like the sound of the refrigerator shutting off
When all else is quiet in my home
And the lights are all out
And the train whistles off in the distance


I like it when the wind graciously opens the door for me
With a gust and a slow gentle push
As I am just about to go inside the house


When the ravens come by to visit me at work
And fly down so low overhead
Circling the building, once, twice, three times
And then caw as they fly back away


When the morning sun wakes me
Peeking slowly over the woodshed out back
And in through the curtains
Touching my cheek like a kiss


When Summer says goodbye making way for the Fall
And Autumn comes slow and easy
Leaving sprinkles of dew on the grass in the morn
Mahogany leaves on the walkways
And rosehips as big as the moon


Sept 24 2008

[Michael]

like it 

I like to eat rosehips also

[TIOTIT]

W.B. Yeats: The Second Coming (1920)

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upn the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in the sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlhem to be born?

[nichi]

W.B. Yeats: The Second Coming (1920)

/...../And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlhem to be born?

One of my favorite poems ever, Tio.