As the air thickens yellow with the weight of the westering sun
It seems hardly possible…
The sky has deepened…
The sky has turned a darker shade of deep…
Has deepened to a mind-bending blue.
I lie here on the smooth rock of the river’s bed.
I stare through the tall stand of the grand-hulks of the drought-deadened grandfather pines.
The canyon’s clan of Vultures sail by, slide over.
My eye catches…
And ho!… the magnitude of the immaculate blue mysteriousness overwhelms.
Here at Hawk’s Nest my wilderness home
I do not mourn the changes…
Yes, I am saddened by the decreasing birds, of the emptying out of the eco-system...
But the creek’s water flows… being flows… flows as a current continually birthing.
I, the human… I am not the progenitor.
I am Nature’s… Nature is mother, nature is Queen.
And my endeavor is as a devotee, and I reverence.
-August 2023
“And thankyou Procol Harum for the riff”
Old Crow lounges on his ledge.
He is a small silhouette upon this little lookout.
If you get to meet him there… there’s not much to see.
He’s not much at all anymore.
Just a soft glow as he cares for the heart at the start of everything.
Seeing out over the canyon
He sees out into the great currents.
He sees out into the summer… he sees this summer drying the land to bone and
He sees that death has come to deal the cards and
He is watching many here at the table fold from the game.
Today the smoke and ash that once were Sierra Forest fill his air.
The day is hot like an inferno.
Old Crow thinks he is watching the world die...
Old Crow wonders what will become as the nurturing bosom withers to leather.
O will it ever rain enough again to resurrect us all?
Old Crow lounges on his ledge,
He is a small silhouette on this little lookout.
He’s not much anymore but the kindness...
Not much anymore but a child of the greatness that fills this universe.
He watches the greatness animate creation with enthusiasm and
watches it animate him with adoration.
Old Poet Crow on his ledge has little left of living but to entwine with the divine.
And the divine coddles him.
He is the privilege… ours is the privilege of a spark amid the eternity of dark.
All changes… form arises… form extinguishes.
And hallowed… life/DNA goes on…lives on hot lives on dry… lives on wet and flooded.
And the thing to do… the thing to do with what is holy…
The thing to do is for Old Poet to keep grabbing hold… to grab good and tight…
Grab gratefully to the gladness that rises with the breath that rises out of the heart to become the beam that blossoms divine between the eyes....
And allow death its deal.
-August 2021
Welcome,
I am a lover of poetry…
My heart… my passion like a medicine drum
Beats with the ecstasy that is within this world.
Herein are songs from a life lived in devotion.
hardcoreJOYOUSpoetry
Endless thanks to Prem Rawat
and to his venerable, supreme Self-Knowledge
photo is of my dear Nepali helpmate and grandson
There is no rest.
Nothing ever comes to rest.
There is only the embrace of the present.
And here
In the present
Within
Here my comprehension laughs.
There is no rest.
Nothing ever comes to rest.
There is only the embrace.
And here
Beneath
Within the breath,
Here resides the secret home,
The loving intimacy, the jewel of the divine joy.
I stand feet like roots fitted into the ground.
I stand arms by my side hands curled softly
I stand eyes ahead smiling at the ease within me.
My head is held in the sky
My head is held aloft in the blue bright amid the great above
And within my focus shines with graditude.
Breath is the wind… are the wings that carry me into the awake.
Heart is the soil… is the ground tender and fertile that grows the inner garden.
The divine is the rain… is the soft soak that feeds my being.
All else is insubstantial…all else floats by.
Self-Knowledge is the key to the gate.
Awake I know...
Awake I am clarified...
Awake I am sealed circulating the essential.
And awake I am the Essence.
Here in the Great Collapse… Here on the surface of the Earth… Here we breathers of the nurturing blue atmosphere… Here, we oxygen-burners have dislodged this gaseous bulk… and now, here, we are sending its hulk lurching down a one-way journey of many millennia into such tremendous transformations.
Here in the Great Collapse… Here in the crush of flooding, the desiccating bake of the unrelenting radiation… Here in the Great Collapse… Here in what is producing and has so far sustained the fleshy recycling photosynthetic animation we all are… Here in the Great Collapse… Here in the Great Collapse… here beyond our abilities... here beyond our envisioning... Here as this firmament whose firmness we thought was solid… Here as this steadiness becomes unsteady… becomes fitful, unfixed… Here in the Great Collapse… Here as our vehicle wobbles… here as it veers unsteerably. Here in the Great Collapse… Here as the out-of-control-ness accelerates, careens far from what was balance… Here… here in the Great Collapse… we still insist on motoring on with the biosphere dragging bouncing behind.
But here, still, your consciousness has a compass. But here there is a knowing to pilot you beautifully, carefully.
-from the Folio Here In The Great Collapse in the Book tab
Ok scratch me deep enough
And you will find I am a cooperative-ist… a collective-ist,
A proletariat
Another Bub among the hubbub.
And for sure,
May the gods that fuck things up, may they wither the desire
Of the brother who wants to become better than the rest of us.
And double-so the one who wants to become the billionaire boss of the all of us.
My work is towards a world
Where the humble are happy to be the humble,
The lazy may be lazy,
The silly the silly,
The honest, honest.
A world where power is so decentralized
That the good-heartedness within the village over-powers…
That all have their say… and an idiot is well-loved.
A world where all feel the sanctity of what is natural.
A world where a son is everyone’s son
And a daughter is as a son and everyone’s daughter.
A world where one’s reputation is one’s wealth,
Greed is a blight,
And one’s currency may buy decent shoes
But not privilege.
- from the Folio, Moutian of Gold, Valley of Grass, in the Book tab
I wish I was in a bar in San Francisco
Sitting in the TL sipping something like bourbon
Savoring the sass of the Queens
Sipping to become so courageous
As to conquer words that would rip open the secret
And you would feel in that moment
When you read them
The ecstatic orgy I feel
When Divine consciousness so clear
Kisses what is the creation of me.
Crow says, ”TL? The Tenderloin is a district of San Francisco renowned for its glorious depts of depravity.”
photo: SF street art circa 2019