River Song

Tonight we sleep under velvet skies
As we count the days since the caravans have departed in winter’s wake
I find the beloved in a hundred murid images
The clues hiding deep in these crossed roads of a poet’s second-hand notebook.

For those of us left behind to finish with this wayward stroll
The milkiest way is full of light from Andromida’s way star bright
With nights of Blue Moon, Cowboy Junkies, and Sweet Jane
Least we forget the rain, the sky and the Hawk from on high.

Steel on steel will make the rails sing
But tonight my song is for the river the Lakota call Wakan Tanka
Take me into your murky debts amongst the sunken cypress logs
And renew me in the pure water of southern rain.

With great respect and warmth, we bid the day adieu’
May our dreams ever fall true for another nights review
And with my eyes ever-smiling across the waters wide
It’s good to ride the river with you tonight.

©jc2020-9

Image by Pixabay

So This Is Love

*copyright 2020-9 all rights reserved…images by pixabay

So this is love, of something or other.
Merlin locked in a tree by his one true love.
Kerouac his scroll of the open road unfolding before us as we traverse space and time to the hemispheres where dusk and dawn constantly kiss the sky.
Into the mystic, the slip into the stream sounds like Tupelo Honey… sounds like the love of something or other.
Tolstoy finds the correct words and purpose in the simple life of the lowly peasant…
as he holds Anna’s hand, the train roaring in the
For Poe, its the Raven calling out from his chamber… forevermore, forevermore on that cold Baltimore night leavingv a trail of tears and a bottle of cognac.
And yet for others, its pain when it’s honest and it’s honest when its pain.
Stranger things do happen inside the lucid mind where large is small and small is large yet they meet in the narrow inspiring insight and sound in the very words we speak yet we never hear as they catch us bit by bit and surprise us at every turn.

In Silent Lucidity

Deeper issues of a sudden moment seated deep within my soul…quiet… can you hear the stillness? Quiet… can you see it moving? Where? If you have to ask, then you haven’t seen or heard.

Into the abyss of situations shedding light on concerns about life itself. There is emptiness, an unsettling knot that tells me there is much more to life than times movement of the hands-on a clock. The things of what I was taught in college, I don’t believe anymore. Or in the catholic church, I don’t trust anymore. In reality, we are ever passionate about all there is and all there is not… the 10,000 things. While waiting for the rhapsody, just as stuck as ever, much too foolish to realize that we are the composer in secret lucidity, ready to begin our personal symphony. Life can seem like one situation after another that comes and goes where one feels unfulfilled to the point of being bored. Material things can’t control me as some may feel relief in inanimate objects. From the Buddha’s 3rd eye’, I learn many things and the first lesson, “unto oneself, be a light.”. But despite this or because of it, still, there is a peacefulness that I witnessed in people, a look of serenity and tranquility. Something that glows from deep within; a look I’ve longed for all of my life. I know that such people discover a deeper sense of being beyond time while living in the mystery of time, in perpetuity. In Silent Lucidity…

*copyright-2020-9-jc *images by pixabay…

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…

copyright-jc-2019-9

 

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