Archive for the ‘Paris’ Category

2013-08-30 – Parc Monceau

Friday, August 30th, 2013 
 
I feel my legs creaking as age steals up upon me
   and, when I walk in the park, I know the ground waits below me.

All my health, lovers, adventures, years and successes 
   are just chaff in the winds of these many lives I've lived.

I sit near the still point and feel the simple knowing
   that ebbs and seeps from there.

The old men with money and power and the tiny tots
   with their little plastic sunglasses are all one to me now.

Love and being, here and now, and the leaves 
   that fall from the trees, they all whisper 'freedom and bliss' to me.

I look, and the urge to grasp rises, 
   but I say 'No'.
Each thing and moment, each coming and going is,
   in itself, perfect.

Buddha smiles someplace in this moment and in no other
   and whatever purpose is, and has been, is always now.

The ground waits beneath me and I hear its murmuring
   and I wait, pleased, for what is and what will be.

The world is magic that there can be such peace here
   in the midst of so much pain and war and evil.

gallagher
30 Aug 2013 - Paris, France

— Copyright 1965-2014 by Dennis Gallagher —

Posted in 2013, AAA - Recommended, Catalyst2, Culturium, Paris, Places, Spiritual | No Comments »

2013-09-27 – Somewhere, these lands join

Friday, September 27th, 2013 
 
Somewhere, these lands join;
   the all embracing smile and the closely reasoned thought.

In one land, we drive a stake
   and call it context, time and place.
In the other, we are mute and empty
   and all the parts mix into each other.

There are sign posts and paths between:
   here, arithmetic, there algebra and, beyond, calculus.
The discrete ebbing into the unity,
   the concrete dissolving into the abstract,
the events becoming the experiences,
   and the known bits of knowledge changing into knowing.

There, sits a holy man lost in the ineffable.
   Adrift and aware amid the unspeakable,
empty and conscious
   wordless and steeped in wisdom.

Here sits a wordsmith, stringing his beads,
   muttering his rosaries of syntax and grammar.
Time draws on and a breeze whispers of place
   and of a pen in search of a bridge.

With time, it all fades slowly away;
   the events, the facts, the things learned and repeated.
We are here on the bench, but who is really here?
   Now, we are considering this silence, but when is now?

If I bring all this and write the last line.
   If I bring all this and write the last line.
I am in the place where these lands join,
   I've come in from the outside
      or I've come out from the inside;
         both.

gallagher
27 Sep 2013
Paris - Parc Monceau

— Copyright 1965-2013 by Dennis Gallagher —

Posted in 2013, AAA - Recommended, Paris, Spiritual | No Comments »

2017-05-29 – Paris Departure

Monday, April 10th, 2023

Last day in Paris, last day in Europe;
after four and a half months.
Maybe the last time to see Gerry.
He could disappear, just as his friend Kevin did,
in an unexpected moment.
Not so very unlike the certainties that await us all.
These rooms and streets, all friends now.
But they could become strangers again
as have so many once the light of
our friends have moved on
and left them empty.

Gallagher
Paris
29 May 2017

Posted in 2017, Gerry, Paris | 1 Comment »