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

Vishnu’s Dream

Once upon a dream in a time not long ago while sailing the dark silent sea in the vicinity of the constellation Crux which harbors the Southern Cross, our pilgrim found himself immersed in unwritten words, wordless readings, and silent teachings, for he now understood that nature is the true teacher in all of our ways of understanding words. The true understanding of what he read enveloped and afforded him the real test of insight, what he called intuition, instinct, a sixth sense.

The stuff of the mind can be calm in one instance and treatuous in another just like the river, beneath the surface, are rip currents wanting to pull the flow of water under into opposite directions much like the way the currents in the mind work. Indeed some drown in these waters never to be heard from again while others embrace themselves in timeless fluidity.

And where do we go next oh great ocean? Will we find our Pilgrim circumnavigating just as assuredly as brave Magellan did in days of old? Why none other than the cosmic ocean the same one where Vishnu dreams the universe into being for isn’t that what we’re doing, dreaming our lives into being. So we set sail in a boat made of dreams through an ocean made of stardust to the other shore as the backdrop of our lives slowly disappears into oblivion and the next adventure unfolds.

In A Dark Wood…Shunngmanitu Thanka

The Lakota say that it is not uncommon
To hear something calling your name
In the stillness of a dark moonless night.
This is ‘shungmanitu thanka‘, the Great Wolf.

One night our pilgrim found himself walking deep in a dark wood; overhead a new moon disguised as its shadow self-juxtaposed to an array of stars, as the sound of spent leaves crushed underfoot sounded in the autumnal air. It seemed as though the wind was guiding him towards an expected destination as he found himself facing Sirius, the Dog Star. At this moment, his vision caught sight of a light moving swiftly in front of him in the shadows of an oak grove. Like a slow waxing moon, a white wolf appeared before his eyes lending a radiant glow to the maze of yellow, red, and green on the forest floor.

In silence, it’s believed
As though shouted
From the highest mountain
That this seer has witnessed
A vision and is in store
For a special kind of teaching.

“Through an open window in a thicket of shrubs, I saw his head turn up toward the dark velvet sky, and howl into the thin air, moving his head from left to right and back again. It was mournful and very moving like he was self-contained in a certain kind of grief reserved for a departed lover. We both sat there at a distance, careful not to startle the other, a meeting of heart and soul… a revival. And on the 3rd day, we took leave of each other, disappearing as suddenly as he came, I walked away embracing a deeper understanding of life, love, and compassion.”

The White Wolf, a native to Tibet is a spiritual presence in the Himalayas. Native Americans call on him as a teacher and pathfinders to unmapped territories of the forest and uncharted areas of the soul. Sirius, the dog star of the constellation Canis Major, home of the ancients, is his symbol, the brightest star in the night sky. Sirius is, in reality, two stars seen as one from its proximity to the Earth. Because of its binary nature, it represents the paradoxical nature of life.

The Pilgrim on his path is like a Lone Wolf, he’s not of a pack, he seeks knowledge for knowledge sake. It is not important to the wolf or the pilgrim if one or a thousand hear his meditations in the night. In his indifference to fame and fortune, only a few may hear his prayers, but as a pebble splash on the surface of a pond, vibrations will echo in these waters until the end of time.

©jc2019-9… Images by Pixabay

Ogleo

Ogleo peaked through the crack of his bedroom door. He heard his mother’s door to her bedroom close for the night and the faint click of the light switch turn off. He stepped out into the hall, flashlight in hand and proceeded on his nightly ritual to his father’s great library occasionally shocking himself from the static electricity he caused by his socks rubbing against the recently steamed carpet. Of course, his mother knew where he was going and he knew that she knew. It was all a part of a ritual with the finale coming at 6:30 each morning where she would find him in his fathers leather recliner fast asleep with any number of books lying about him.

A Magic Window (2nd view)

“God writes the Gospel not in the Bible alone, but also on trees, and in the flowers and clouds and stars.” -Martin Luther

///////////////////There Was To Be A Wedding

“Go on and break you crazy heart” -Hank Williams 

It seems like ages since I lived this one particular life and year after year it grew a little fainter leveling parts of my soul in total darkness. But always with lessons in tow,  This should have been a day of joy and happiness… a celebration; but I chose not to attend and thus ruined the party for all concerned. Well, maybe not all concerned as some were glad the party didn’t take place at all and for them that was the real party.

But what do I feel and doesn’t it count for anything? That little intuition inside me kept saying, “no way, you can’t go through with this” even though I fought it tooth and nail out of fear that I was destroying a life. Better to ruin my life than another. Isn’t that the chivalrous thing to do?

What nonsense, cried our Pilgrim. Be true to thyself and that will bring you to a higher truth. Hide behind erroneous thinking and that will leave us as a naysayer of depressed energy longing for a life it thought it knew.

Yes, whispered the heart, fingers crossed, bowing slightly to the head. Likewise exclaimed the head winking back to the heart.

©jc2021-9courtesy of Pixabay

Orion and The Art of Solitude

“Solitude is not found so much by looking outside the boundaries of your dwelling but by staying within. Solitude is a deepening of the present and unless you look for it in the present you will never find it.” Thomas Merton

Echoes From The Eye Of The Storm

It is an interesting biological fact that all of us have in our veins the exact same percentage of salt in our blood that exists in the ocean, and, therefore, we have salt in our blood, in our sweat, in our tears. We are tied to the ocean. And when we go back to the sea – whether it is to sail or to watch it – we are going back from whence we came… John F. Kennedy

Pilgrim

 To be wild is not to be crazy or psychotic. True wildness is a love of nature, a delight in silence, a voice free to say spontaneous things, and an exuberant curiosity in the face of the unknown.
-Robert Bly

It came to pass on this day, that the wild man who created such havoc casting out demon shadows he saw in others and himself; and the inquisitive boy yearning for knowledge at every waking moment, never getting enough, are one and the same for they are you and me, forced into enchantment and awareness, abiding in a lonely house off to the left-hand way of ‘being’ by the river of  contemplation.

Morning Dew

The setting sun seemed to linger for one last glimpse over the horizon. In his solitude, looking out toward the hemisphere our Pilgrim could see the two brightest stars of Orion along the celestial equator, Rigel, and Betelgeuse. The expanse of open sky looked as though it contained every constellation in existence, lassoed and corralled in the heavens above. Our Pilgrim seemed to not have a care in the world, just he and the starry sky above… and the moral law of Kant. It is many who don’t realize these magical moments where the earth and sky seem to touch the setting sun and all is one. It was then after a short meditation he recited a poem written for his Lady and all lovers separated on this day.