The Love Thats Sleeping There

True to its meaning a chance meeting with synchronicity happened when I arrived home from my latest road trip. I was in a car accident and of all places, just a few miles from where I was living at the time. I wasn’ t hurt, just a bit psychological is all. But it makes me think about the ghost in the back yard and what is he doing while I’m on holiday. So I did what most would not… I bite off a piece of the dragon and took another trip… yes, another trip with long interludes between stops. One could say that this trip was for the drive itself complete with long panoramic vista and questions of life and love and who’s really in control of this vehicle. They say that only a fool would claim to know about love, well I further that. Only a bigger fool would hesitate to ask.

The Pilgrim longs for love lost, misplaced in the halls of the unrequited, buried beneath earthen tones of blues and greens. He’s traveled light years to be in that rich loom within and taken words as truth beyond reproach only to discover that they were fabrications of a continuous dialogue one has with the shadows of the mind. In truth, we conjure such ghosts from time to time but sooner or later on awakening from the dark night of the soul we elect to control these impish apparitions. Will, we learn from these false words that one suffers when the mind goes wrong or is it too late in the garden to grow fresh flowers and free the love thats sleeping there.

*copyright jc 2020-9…

Pontchartrain

Heading downriver toward New Orleans on Christmas eve you can hear the bells from St.Louis Cathedral and the angelic voices of the choir singing traditional Christmas hymns. If you listen even closer, the sounds of horns playing out from Bourbon St… traditional jazz from Preservation Hall. These different sounds of syncopation… horns, bells, and singing in a blended rhythmic exchange of musical styles can only make the heart overflow with love on this magical night. But a peculiar thing happens on this night according to the National Weather Service that calls out for our attention. Every Christmas Eve winds out of the east rush from the Pontchartrain headed west toward a crescent in the river at the French Quarters… downtown New Orleans. All of this energy is pushing onward to the mouth of the river. Witnesses say you can feel the winds lift you up as though they were coming to take you away. Legend has it that Papa Noel, after his visit to the bonfires of the river parishes, leaves New Orleans from this very crescent in the river with these prevailing winds surrounding his sleigh guiding it downriver to the Gulf of Mexico and all points south. And yes the sound of someone in a loud voice or is it the wind against the currents, either way, ” Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night.”

*copyright-jc2019-9-pixabay

Polaris

Oh bright star in a northern sea
As I wipe away the tears that once held me

I think that maybe what I see
From that bright star in front of me
In that land by a northern sea
Was never intended to be a star at all

Oh what could it be
In that land by a northern sea
Is it the twin star Sirius trying to fool me
For the brightest star, I’ve ever seen in a northern sea is Polaris
For if not what could it be
In that land by a northern sea.

*copyright-jc-image by pixabay-2019-9

On The Way Home

“When the dream came I held my breath with my eyes closed. I went insane like a smoke ring day when the winds blow.” -Buffalo Springfield

Take me away to the Black Hills, to a single mountain in the Dakotas where Crazy Horse is imprisoned in the rock. Let me gaze at his unbroken spirit on high… captured in granite only so the multitudes can see and understand his madness. Or is it our madness we must come to terms with?

Take me to the innocence of my youth, through endless days of summer as though I were disappearing in the deserted streets, through sugar cane fields and pastures beyond the old churchyard as we rode each night at the witching hour thru houses for the holy deserted by time and sorrow. We walked for miles upon miles through these hallowed grounds and never grew tired. We will lease forget these days of youth, joy, and laughter.

Keep a piece of my heart and save the rest for the crows as they will remember me long after these days of innocence have run out and are gone.

Image by Pixabay…Copyright 2019-09

The Natural Bridge

Many take shelter from feeling too much within
Some will tell you it’s a mortal sin
To fly so high and steep so low
Just as Perceval in tales of old 
But to know when all else fails
When all is lost down the streets of desire
And the blind eye of regret is all that one feels
You will soon come to a realization that the truest feeling is within the heart
That light and love are born of a sacred vow
And the only real freedom there is, inhabits this very moment
The only thing they can take away from you is the gift of solitude, to fear it, to be deprived of the comfort of one’s own company
And to subsequently demolish the natural bridge to the universe…

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October

“All things on earth point home in old October; sailors to sea, travelers to walls and fences, hunters to the field, hollow and the lone voice of the hounds, the lover to the love he has forsaken.” -Thomas Wolfe

Looking back over my life, it appears October has been a singular event for me in many ways as the first frost, covers like a blanket of crushed ice across the top of lawns and the roof of houses and barns. And what are some of the things that remind me of October? The end of the harvest… the harvest moon… the music of Bach… sleeping with the windows open… old dogs warming their chilled bones by the fire… geese flying in formation… blackbirds sing in the dead of night… bats waking from the rafters of an old barn heading toward an ageless nocturnal ritual…

The sweet fragrance of gardenias… the delicate colors of pansies… freshly brewed coffee… the season’s first hot chocolate… days of contemplation and wonder. The reflected light from the setting sun… clear and cool nights… the cat sleeps longer… dogs bark louder…hobbits drinking beer in the post-dawn sun… bats returning from a hard day’s night as squirrels gather nuts and acorns for their winter stores… the month of my diagnoses…. red-tailed hawks… walking man singing frost is on the pumpkin and hay is in the barn… my daughters birth… owls… and you are on my mind.

*Copyright-2019-9-JC

Dragonfly

I’m told that your ancestors go back to the mystic mountains of old where there are stories of many a dragons lair teeming with gold. In truth, you’re one of the first creatures to crawl out from the birth waters of Mother Earth. Many years removed from those times not only in size but also in temperament as you witnessed the Bodhi Tree, the Sermon on the Mount, the first singing of the Veda’s. With translucent wings, you fly over a tranquil pond untouched by ripples, as your mind is calm and untroubled by the dance of time and space, going beyond the known world; fluid, poised and powerful as a dancer of ballet.

Either from the gods of old or from the universe as claimed by modernity, His is the method of our forefathers that you lay secret too, where one’s connection to one’s ground of being is one with all there is.

You are the harbinger of change and maturity mining from a deeper well. A red-tailed hawk in your service flies upward to the sky, retrieving a message from the west wind destined for you.

Like a still point, you hover, meditating in your quiet way, for the awareness of an enlighten Heaven and Earth. Then to fly with wings interdependent to the six directions, across land and sea as you give witness to Gaia. Is she doomed for giving life to her less than noble children? Is it time for Shiva’s dance of fire? But alas the destroyer is also the creator, a continuum of divine proportions.For you are the very epitome of change, as you make your way through the very air you call home, onward to time evermore.

copyright2019-9-jc… images by pixabay55

In Vagabond Dreams

Not all who wander are lost”
-Tolkein

No, we are not lost but locked hand in hand with a destiny not always understood. We set forth not by force or a lack of responsibility but in love; a love which rules with the heart’s intensity for truth… jc

I’ve arrived back from my sojourn, none the worse for wear guided by Hermes, the messenger of the gods… seeking the grace of his good council. Such wisdom as has been drawn from a cauldron of nine maidens for centuries on end.

It isn’t necessarily the physical miles that earn one trust on the road but if the distance isn’t owing to any fan fair or parade as such but to what might be called an eternal state of mind or being. For example, how bizarre would it be to see the eternal in William Blake’s grain of sand, to sense it on a spiritual level? The miles that role can achieve this phenomenon for you. Some may call this day a daydream but all give evidence toward a spiritual exsperience.

As we see that it is the journey that is of most importance and not necessarily the physical destination. So what of this trip we’ve been on. It is indeed relative to call it long or even arduous. It’s relative to each of us.

One feels the need for the open country, the crowded city, the mesmeric ocean, or the reclusive mountains at any one point in life. And as time moves on to an uncertain fate, so does the wandering spirit we give title to as the gypsy, the pilgrim, the bohemian.

Is our faith blind? Maybe not, but still allow me to sail to the other shore to live, to learn, to contemplate. And I will be sure not to walk before its time, to only setting forth when the red-tailed hawk appears in the new dawn light with a secret from the sky and calls me on to another home.

images by picsabay copyright-jc-2019-9

Road Trip

Dear Friends of WordPress,

You may have noticed that during the last mouth or so I’ve spent less time blogging. Nothing wrong, I just decided to take a road trip, as Jack would call it. And this one took me through out the south to places known and unknown. Who knows the riches in words that will fall from this tree. We’re on the last few miles before calling on home to guide us in.

Thank you for your support, JC

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Image courtesy of Pixabay

All In Time

As many of you know I struggle with Parkinson’s disease. In the years since my diagnoses so much has changed either because of me or in spite of me… work, moving, kids, meeting new friends and renewing old ones. Never was I one to try and deny my circumstances for it was cathartic just to know this is what ails me, now what can I do. Sure I tried to conceal my tremors and the way I walked but time has a way of liberating all secrets. In the guise of this generative, physical and cognitive condition I do battle with the dragon time and time again for time comes to the aid of every decision under heaven, be it an angel in heaven or devil in hell. There is much truth in this as Perceval and the ailing Fisher King, seeking the question, “what ails you, Sir, what ails you”? Compassion flowering the good earth. Perhaps it is also a bit like Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote, “man must not distance his brotherhood even with the worse of men.” For sometimes your the dragon and sometimes not.

copyright jc2019-9… images by pixabee