Poetry

LOVE POEM FOR MY COUNTRY

My country is for love

so say its valleys

where ancient rivers flow

the full circle of life

under the proud eye of birds

adorning the sky

My country is for peace

so says the veld

where reptiles caress

its surface

with elegant motions

glittering in their pride

My country

is for joy

so talk the mountains

with baboons

hopping from boulder to boulder

in the majestic delight

of cliffs and peaks

My country is for health and wealth

see the blue of the sea

and beneath

the jewels of fish

deep under the bowels of soil

hear

the golden voice

of a miner’s praise

for my country

My country

is for unity

feel the millions

see their passion

their hands are joined together

there is hope in their eyes

We shall celebrate.

SANDILE DIKENI from Planting Water

ONLY BREATH

Not Christian or Jew or Muslim, not Hindu,

Buddhist, sufi, or zen.  Not any religion

or cultural system.   I am not from the East

or the West, not out of the ocean or up

from the ground, not natural or ethereal, not

composed of elements at all.   I do not exist,

am not an entity in this world or the next,

did not descend from Adam and Eve or any

origin story.   My place is placeless, a trace

of the traceless.   Neither body or soul.

I belong to the beloved, have seen the two

worlds as one and that one call to and know,

first, last, outer, inner, only that

breath breathing human being.

~

There is a way between voice and presence

where information flows.

In disciplined silence it opens.

With wandering talk it closes.

From Rumi The Essential Rumi translated by Coleman Barks with John Moyne.

SHACK CHIC

1.

Victory

To build a shack

and call it home.

2.

Houses are built on foundations

with walls and roof.

Homes are built with things

much deeper and less concrete.

3.

There are many ways to make music.

Sometimes it is a deep blue against the wall,

a bright yellow against fear,

another red to tribute imagination,

hopefully an orange to earth bad vibes

and my black voice

saying my life is beautiful.

4.

Temples are never built in one day.

But mine,this shack, was built in half a day.

5.

Nietzsche said:

“Hope is the ultimate form of defeat.”

We still raise ourselves,

somehow,

higher than hope.

SANDILE DIKENI from Planting Water

THE SUMMER DAY

Who made the world?

Who made the swan, and the black bear?

Who made the grasshopper?

This grasshopper, I mean -

the one who has flung herself out of the grass,

the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,

who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down -

who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.

Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.

Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.

I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.

I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down

into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,

how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,

which is what I have been doing all day.

Tell me, what else should I have done?

Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?

Tell me, what is it you plan to do

with your one wild and precious life?

Mary Oliver New and selected Poems Vol. 1

SOME QUESTIONS YOU MIGHT ASK

Is the soul solid, like iron?

Or is it tender and breakable, like

the wings of a moth in the beak of the owl?

Who has it, and who doesn’t?

I keep looking around me.

The face of the moose is as sad

as the face of Jesus.

The swan opens her white wings slowly.

In the fall, the black bear carries leaves into the darkness.

One question leads to another.

Does it have a shape?  Like an iceberg?

Like the eye of a hummingbird?

Does it have one lung, like the snake and the scallop?

Why should I have it, and not the anteater

who loves her children?

Why should I have it, and not the camel?

Come to think of it, what about the maple trees?

What about the blue iris?

What about all the little stones, sitting alone in the moonlight?

What about roses, and lemons, and their shining leaves?

What about the grass?

Mary Oliver New and Selected Poems Vol. 1

LOST

Stand still.   The trees ahead and bushes beside you

Are not lost.   Wherever you are is called here,

And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,

Must ask permission to know it and be known.

The forest breathes.   Listen.   It answers,

I have made this place around you.

If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here.

No two trees are the same to Raven.

No two branches are the same to Wren.

If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,

You are surely lost.   Stand still.   The forest knows

Where you are.    You must let it find you.

David Wagoner copyright 1976 from The House of Belonging Poems by DAVID WHYTE.

Soul Communion: The Ultimate Medicine
Who Am I?

I have a body, but I am not my body.

I can see and feel my body,
and what can be seen and felt is not the true Seer.
My body may be tired or excited,
sick or healthy, heavy or light,
but that has nothing to do with my inward I.
I have a body, but I am not my body.

I have desires, but am not my desires.
I can know my desires, and what can be known is not the true Knower .
Desires come and go, floating through my awareness,
but they do not affect my inward I.
I have desires, but I am not desires.

I have emotions, but I am not my emotions.
I can feel and sense my emotions,
and what can be felt and sensed is not the true Feeler .
Emotions pass through me,
but they do not affect my inward I.
I have emotions, but I am not emotions.

I have thoughts, but I am not my thoughts.
I can know and intuit my thoughts,
and what can be known is not the true Knower.
Thoughts come to me and thoughts leave me,
but they do not affect my inward I.
I have thoughts, but I am not my thoughts.

I am what remains, a pure center of awareness,
an unmoved witness of all these
thoughts, emotions, feelings, and desires.

- Bruce Burger - Esoteric Anatomy - The Body As Consciousness