silence II

Silence is not a lack of words. 

Silence is not a lack of music. 

Silence is not a lack of curses. 

Silence is not a lack of screams. 

Silence is not a lack of colors 

or voices or bodies or whistling wind. 

Silence is not a lack of anything. 

Silence is resting, nestling 

in every leaf of every tree, 

in every root and branch. 

Silence is the flower sprouting 

upon the branch. 

Silence is the mother singing 

to her newborn babe. 

Silence is the mother crying 

for her stillborn babe. 

Silence is the life of all 

these babes, whose breath 

is a breath of God. 

Silence is seeing and singing praises. 

Silence is the roar of ocean waves. 

Silence is the sandpiper dancing 

on the shore. 

Silence is the vastness of a whale. 

Silence is a blade of grass. 

Silence is sound 

And silence is silence. 

Silence is love, even 

the love that hides in hate. 

Silence is the pompous queen 

and the harlot and the pimp 

hugging his purse on a crowded street. 

Silence is the healer dreaming 

the plant, the drummer drumming 

the dream. It is the lover's 

exhausted fall into sleep. 

It is the call of morning birds. 

Silence is God's beat tapping all hearts. 

Silence is the star kissing a flower. 

Silence is a word, a hope, a candle 

lighting the window of home. 

Silence is everything --the renewing sleep 

of Earth, the purifying dream of Water, 

the purifying rage of Fire, the soaring 

and spiraling flight of Air. It is all 

things dissolved into no-thing--Silence 

is with you always.....the Presence 

of I AM 

~ Elaine Maria Upton

a state of magical simplicity

To practice Zen means to realize one's existence 

moment after moment,

 rather than letting life unravel in regret of the past 

and daydreaming of the future.

To "rest in the present"

 is a state of magical simplicity, 

although attainment of this state is not as simple as it sounds.

~  Peter Matthiessen
 from 'Nine-Headed Dragon River'

saunter reverently

I don't like either the word [hike] or the thing.

People ought to saunter in the mountains - not 'hike!' 
 

Do you know the origin of that word saunter?

 It's a beautiful word. Away back in the middle ages 

people used to go on pilgrimages to the Holy Land, 

and when people in the villages through which they passed 

asked where they were going they would reply,
 

 'A la sainte terre', 'To the Holy Land.'
 

 And so they became known as sainte-terre-ers or saunterers. 

Now these mountains are our Holy Land,
 

and we ought to saunter through them reverently,

 not 'hike' through them.

― John Muir 

the wind

The day we die

the wind comes down

to take away

our footprints.

The wind makes dust

to cover up

the markings we left

while walking.

For otherwise 

the thing would seem

as if we were

still living.

Therefore the wind

is he who comes

to blow away

our footprints.

~ Southern Bushmen

from A Book of Luminous Things

edited by Czeslaw Milosz 

 

sufficient

Strong and content I travel the open road.

The earth, that is sufficient,

I do not want the constellations any nearer,

I know they are very well where they are,

I know they suffice for those who belong to them.

You road I enter upon and look around, I believe you are not all that is here,

I believe that much unseen is also here.

All seems beautiful to me,

I can repeat over to men and women You have done such good to me I would do the same to you,

I will recruit for myself and you as I go,

I will scatter myself among men and women as I go,

I will toss a new gladness and roughness among them,

Whoever denies me it shall not trouble me,

Whoever accepts me he or she shall be blessed and shall bless me.

Now I see the secret of the making of the best persons,

It is to grow in the open air and to eat and sleep with the earth.

Here is the test of wisdom,

Wisdom is not finally tested in schools,

Wisdom cannot be pass’d from one having it to another not having it,

Wisdom is of the soul, is not susceptible of proof, is its own proof,

Applies to all stages and objects and qualities and is content,

Is the certainty of the reality and immortality of things, and the excellence of things;

Something there is in the float of the sight of things that provokes it out of the soul.

Now I re-examine philosophies and religions,

They may prove well in lecture-rooms, yet not prove at all under the spacious clouds and along the landscape and flowing currents.

Here is realization,

Here is a man tallied—he realizes here what he has in him,

The past, the future, majesty, love—if they are vacant of you, you are vacant of them.

Only the kernel of every object nourishes;

Where is he who tears off the husks for you and me?

Where is he that undoes stratagems and envelopes for you and me?

The efflux of the soul is happiness, here is happiness,

I think it pervades the open air, waiting at all times,

Now it flows unto us, we are rightly charged.

Here rises the fluid and attaching character,

The fluid and attaching character is the freshness and sweetness of man and woman,

(The herbs of the morning sprout no fresher and sweeter every day out of the roots of themselves, than it sprouts fresh and sweet continually out of itself.)

Toward the fluid and attaching character exudes the sweat of the love of young and old,

From it falls distill’d the charm that mocks beauty and attainments,

Toward it heaves the shuddering longing ache of contact.

~ Walt Whitman
excerpts from Song of the Open Road 


 

half life

We walk through half our life

as if it were a fever dream

barely touching the ground

our eyes half open

our heart half closed.

Not half knowing who we are

we watch the ghost of us drift

from room to room

through friends and lovers

never quite as real as advertised.

Not saying half we mean

or meaning half we say

we dream ourselves

from birth to birth

seeking some true self.

Until the fever breaks

and the heart can not abide

a moment longer

as the rest of us awakens,

summoned from the dream,

not half caring for anything but love.

- Stephen Levine

from Breaking the Drought