Posts Tagged ‘Poems from the Lodge’

Kama Ananda

Kali I called you to me.
Across mountains and forests,
Seas and deserts
I called you,
And you came.
I am the spirit of Life
Singing my song.

It is the music of my
Sojourns in the body.
It yearns and cries out.
It weeps and laughs.
This song whispers love to you.
It lifts you as easily
As it wounds your heart.

For I am all things lodging
In the soul of the man who loves you,
Who is giving you everything,
His power, as well as his weakness.
For this is love,
To know each other,
To treasure what is revealed.

You are singing your song to me,
And I hear it my darling.
I hear it and it lifts and wounds too.
And that is love.
I know it, husband that I am.

Just a Stick

Its just a stick,
In the same way a temple is just stones.

Or, like a tree, unfolding its boughs and leaves in wind and sun, reaching its roots in relationship with soil and microbes, fungi and minerals; living its life in the ever present moment of change, in the inextricable connection with sun, earth and the fullness of things, is just a tree!

And this stick is etched, some would say, by larvae boring and eating its substance under its bark.

Some would say that. But this stick is etched by its relationships with things; by its relationship with what has been and what is. And what is etched is script. And that script says:

Look upon me and know.
For I am the story of life.
Upon my body are the marks of your existence.
For I am life as you are life,
And seeing me you see yourself.

As life I give form,
And I consume what I have formed.
But in the midst of my creation and destruction
I mark upon my substance
The passage of experience.
And experience forms valleys and mountains,
Brightness and shade,
Misery and laughter.
These valleys and peaks,
With the light and shade,
Are the script with which I write
The journal of my being,
The record of my life and death.

What does my script tell you?
Is it a story of hope,
Or a record of despair?
Does it tell of love gained,
Peaks scaled,
Of dreams made real?
Does it speak of despair
Or long loneliness?

Perhaps it unfolds the mysteries
That lie behind everything,
That connect and shine
In common things.
Or maybe it stays in your perception
As a series of meaningless scrawls
The work of random soulless events
Upon something that itself is mute.

For I am Life, and can be only
What you bring to me.
I am a stick,
Saying so much,
Or so little,
Depending upon your art!

I Am Yours

Darling – You have me.
Even now you breathe in the atoms
Of the air I too have breathed.
And is not your body,
Somewhere therefore partly mine –
A body we share?
So are not you and I
Part of the same dance?

I was raised in such a small world,
Taught to posses, to own, to control,
And to believe in my separation from you.
Yet now, walls fall away,
Old roofs crumble,
Revealing sky and stars –
Always there but hidden beyond layers
Of beliefs and thinking.
But what do I own
Now the walls have fallen and the roof gone?
This body, with its trillions
Of particles and atoms –
Do I own them,
And the stars and cosmic creation they arose from?
Do I own the food I eat,
The water I drink –
For money is a strange hallucination
People dream of ownership in –
And do I really own or control any of it?
For if I did, surely I would carry
What I owned beyond the grave.
And as this bomb of realisation exploded
And my old dwellings blew away,
I stand with such laughter
At what I believed myself to be;
Such joy at being dispossessed.
For I own no body or mind.
I possess nothing of the world
That I can ultimately control –
Except perhaps as children control toys
In imaginary worlds of play.
But I see the question in your eyes.
No, not even my mind.
I did not conjure out of my being
These wonderful words I use.
Syntax nor concepts grew from
My own efforts.
The whole glorious expanse of ideas
Are really ours – not mine.
Even an original idea
Only emerges from our collective awareness,
Our shared language,
Our given communications,
Creating webs of thought we weave together.

Yet in the midst of all this we have existence.
Owning nothing,
Controlling nothing except toys,
Having nothing except existence
And each other,
Dancing together
Amidst this swirling paradox.
So yes my darling partner in dance,
You have me,
As I have you;
As close and as personal
As my own breath,
And as unpossessed as the air.

Hunger

Life is always hungry.
Hungry to be,
Hungry to absorb and grow,
Hungry to know.

And I am Life,
With two legs
And eyes seeking food;
Hands reaching out
For what I need,
What I hunger for.

And in that reaching out,
My hands touched yours –
Or were yours the first?
And woman –
The ache of hunger
We both then felt,
Drawing us together.

For I had hungered
For you
Without knowing.
And I believe you
Hungered too.

Then came the feast,
The open mouthed wanting;
The deep yearning fulfilled.
The mouth, the guts,
The genitals
All desiring
And fed.

You are my feast still.

Freeway Jungle

It was so long ago
When you and I
Walked almost unclothed
Through the grand forests.
Everything had meaning
In the world we walked.
The birds and wolves
Were spirits,
Brothers and sisters
In the great garden of Life.
And Creator was everywhere,
Touching mystery and wisdom
Into the sky,
Into the leaves and herbs,
Into our every deed.
And I thought
That world forever gone
Until I stood in the
Clearing of years
And saw your face again.
You were standing
In the Freeway Jungle
And we reached out
To one another
With the new magic
Of electronics
And digital words,
All streaming
To each other with
The old magic of Mysterious love.
And the Jungle of meaning
And fragrant dreams
Opened to us again.
Right here in the cement
And the technology.
Creator enveloped us
In the mystery of things.
Wrapped and transported
Us through distances
In the mind and heart.
And we again
Knew the sacredness
Of a stick,
Or a sea washed stone.
We became kin once more
To our brothers and sisters
The hawk and the wolf,
And sang with them
The sacred heart song.
And they gave to us
Their forest lore.
And, as one living being knows Life,
And in knowing Loves and mates
With the Beloved.
So did we – and are blessed.

On A Dusty Road

You see, I didn’t know.
Maybe it was like being blind.
You have no idea there
Are things you are missing.
That’s how it was for me.
Things were hidden from me
Because, I suppose,
I was dead.
I don’t mean dead – not breathing;
Dead in my heart –
Dead in being aware of
The wonder and beauty in people.
I get it now because
Slowly I came alive.
It is so painful – coming alive.
All the parts of you that have
Been lifeless, like limbs
That have been to sleep.
Now, waking,
I see so plain,
Love flowing through
Eyes and faces
Moving them as wind
Might move leaves
On trees and branches.
And the limbs of my love
Hurt in a beautiful way,
Hurt with the way love
Stretches you and
Dances you
In movements that
Push you beyond yourself.
So it has been for me,
Coming alive and
Seeing people for the first time.
Seeing them moved like
Flags in the wind of love;
Seeing them flow fast
And turbulent with that love.
Now that love touched my eyes
And healed my blindness
Those things are visible to me.
I see the beauty of a person
Bubbling like a child with
The love they feel;
A child at a party
Hardly containing laughter.
I see those faces and bodies
Full of love that
Has been rejected
And the pain of having
So much to give with
No one to receive it.
Then I see the face of the dead.
I see death as it must have
Appeared on my own face.
A face without the movement
Of life flowing through it;
Perhaps twisted with
What cannot be allowed,
A face held empty of feelings
Except of despair,
Of pain at parents who
Never knew how to
Give themselves to their child.
So many stories I now see.
So many eyes wanting to
Be looked into with warmth.
So many hands seeking
To be held and held again.
But love touched me,
Held my hands
One day on a dusty road.
Love pulled me close
And asked nothing of me –
Only to let love in.
Now, maybe I too
Can walk dusty roads
And take a hand to
Pass on that magic.
Maybe I too
Can touch with love,
Heal the blind
And raise the dead to life.

Flying West

Fragments of you were everywhere.
Bits of your face,
Body shapes,
Even your breasts.
It got more pronounced
As the day unfolded,
A long day, flying West.
And it was only
As I was dazed
With unmet sleep
That I really saw you at last
In the many women
I had watched
During the hours.

I had almost seen it before,
But suddenly there you were,
The spirit that lived through you,
Lived and loved,
Held your kids,
Expressed that easy communing,
The ease with existing.
And I knew
Who you were at last,
Who we all are
If we are lucky.

For you are the living expression
Of that great woman
Who made America,
And raised her children.
You are that female pioneer
Who managed
To love and be a mother
And a wife
In the beginnings
Of a great land.
You even told me once
That you are an American girl.

And it’s true.
You mothered us,
Filled us with your spirit,
Gave us your body
As a wife.
And everywhere I looked
I saw you.

Dear God,
How I wished
I had married you
And been with you,
In those beginnings
Pioneering this land.
To have been with you
As the spirit of manhood
You gave birth to.
I wish I had been that man,
And you were my wife.
For that great man
Shines through your sons,
As you shine through
Your daughters —
America!

Firelight

Sometimes
When the clouds are heavy
Around these Welsh hills,
Especially at night when
The world goes quiet and
There is only the wind knocking on my door,
I sit with the lights low
Letting the firelight dance for me.
This house, that you and I built with our love,
Stands the buffeting and the rain,
Strong enough for storms and even winter snows.
Warm enough to keep life in me vital and
Looking for you in the movement of the flames.
That is how I sit this night.
Loving you my darling.

Darklings

Traveling alone into the years
Alone together with others
Into the darkness
Of what I cannot see
Ahead of me
The inky black
Of the unknown
Transformed to beauty
By my calm
Knowing you are there

Inside You

Darling,
I feel myself
Deep inside you
In your lovely warmth.
Pull me closer
Until I lose myself
In you.
You are a joy
To fly with,
To roll and kiss
And cry with.
Open to me again
And bathe me
In your flowing.
I need you
So much.

Next >

< Previous

Tony Crisp

Posts Tagged ‘Poems from the Lodge’