Category: Poetry

Dirt-Worshipping Tree-Hugger

~ Deb ~ 2 Comments

Every day, priests minutely examine the Dharma

And endlessly change complicated sutras.

Before doing that, though, they should learn how to read the love letters

     sent by the wind and the rain, the snow and the moon.

                                                               — Ikkyu

You may freely replace priests with ministers, rabbis, imams, gurus, or televangelists.

You may freely replace Dharma with Bible, Torah, Koran, or Bhagavad Gita.

You may freely replace sutras with commandments, verses, visions, prophesies, judgements or any other claim to know the mind and will of the universe.

Or you may just replace all the words ever known with those love letters from nature and be at peace.

Meditation on a Rose

~ Deb ~ Leave a comment

I watch you.

So long that I forget about time.

So intently that I forget about space.

I watch you until I forget what you are called.

 

Eventually, I am no longer watching you.  

A watcher is separate, and I have become

the suede of your petals,

the sinew of your stalk,

the sting of your thorn,

the essence of your fragrance,

the photosynthesis of your leaves.

 

For a moment longer than time and

smaller than a split atom

you and I are one.

Seven Seconds of Stunned Silence

~ Deb ~ 1 Comment

It’s a timeless moment,

a sharp intake of knowing, a breath of awareness.

The final word comes, either heard or read,

and with it the resolution of a thought

which resonates at a tone too deep for humans to hear –                                             

maybe heard only by sperm whales –

but which we can feel, and which we know rings

a truth truer than the truth known before.

 

My eyes linger at the white space

on the page after the final period –

Or I sit in the quiet after Garrison’s voice

falls away into broadcast silence. 

I stay in that silence.

I stay for a timeless moment,

seven seconds of stunned silence,

in that place where poetry lives.  

Big Bang Theory (or Where We Begin)

~ Deb ~ 1 Comment
I saw a picture of a friend as a toddler that was dated three years

Prior to my birth.  My mind said,

(not sure why, but it often talks to me)

“This was before you were even a twinkle in your father’s eye.”

 

Phrases I have heard all my life often seem forever

Saddled with the meaning I gave them using a child’s mind.

 

For 44 years I believed,

Without even really thinking about it,

that the “twinkle in my father’s eye” was the

Pure unadulterated joy he felt knowing that

I, his precious daughter, would someday

Come into being to

Enrich and fulfill his life.

 

It just dawned on me today that it is likely referring to

The flirtatious glance that is the true moment of conception.

 

There was a time when we were all nothing more than

The lustful leer of a woodie-wearing boy who thought his

Asp was an anaconda.

 

Our first raspy wail was caused by that slap on the ass

Which followed the pointy-headed journey through a very tight place

After the squeezing and squeezing

And living upside down

Spawned by nine months of cell reproduction

starting from a blastocyst created by that lucky sperm

Who won the gold in the freestyle

Of the biological Olympics and

Pierced the membrane of a single egg . . .

 

. . . Because a penis ejaculated in a vagina after

Kissing and hugging and rolling and spooning and

All because of a twinkle in the eye of some dude who thought

His roll of dimes just might get to pretend it was a worth a whole lot more

And play a little game of cha-ching.

 

And that, if you want to get downright technical, is the moment of conception.

 

So the right-wingers and Catholics and pro-lifers who believe that

Life must be allowed to blossom from the tiniest potential

To a full-fledged being

should insist that their daughters follow through,

Stay out late after the dance,

And create the potential found in the twinkle

Of a school-boy’s eye.