Archive for 1987

1987-07-31

Friday, July 31st, 1987

This girl whom I love so much is going for it all - and I applaud her.

Against the edge of all darkness and the dissolution of spirit and certainty
   she wanders; a small brave candle.

She seeks understanding and enlightenment,
   she tries to hard and gets frustrated,
she wants the deep knowledge,
   and tries to figure out how to come by it.

In circles and dreams she runs,
   counting beads on the rosary path to heaven,
squeezing knowledge, clamoring with the mind,
   lusting with the heart and fearing with the ego.

And yet ... and yet, my love...

I hear the truth just behind you,
   I see the light you long for shining in you,
and I laugh as you cry because I know
   just how close the truth is.

gallagher
31 Jul 1987
- about Joan

— Copyright 1965-2010 by Dennis Gallagher —

1987-11-20

Friday, November 20th, 1987


   An early winter evening with
      motorcycle wind and headlights moving
   through the lights 
      of houses full of warmth.
   I open the door 
      into a darkened room
  and the sound 
     of running feet.
   She is there 
      with the smell of incense
   lighting candles 
      behind the bedroom door.

   She has George Winston's 
   music playing 
   And I feel deeply blessed  
      to see her love, 
   her playfulness, 
      her passion.
   My hands are cold from the dark ride
      and she enfolds me,
   and kisses my neck like the heat 
      from a winter wood stove.
   Such feelings of intimacy fill me.
      And in this moment 
 I am both spirit and flesh; 
   Transient, and yet imperishable.

   This washes over me ... 
   I.   am.   loved.

   So many years, 
      and so many women,
   I've passed through 
      just to gain this vision.
   Just to be able 
      to see how deep 
   her goodness, sincerity,
      and caring, are.
   I tell her this 
      and she laughs at me.

   She says it just takes some of us longer 
      than others to see the obvious.
 
 I can see that these soft experiences 
   of intimate reality are
   so much of what is real 
         and worthy in us.
   And that all the rest 
    are only the moments 
            between these moments.
   But....      but...

   These human moments of ours
      can also pass in darkness. 
   
 In jungles . ..from where gaze
     fearful hidden eyes 
  amid the scream of bullets  
      where women hide babies
 with hands covered by dirt. 
   Places of terror and death.
   And these are ours as well.
        For we are
  both the light 
    and the shadow.

   This world cannot see it's insane.

   But I will remember 
   what is real.
   And I, too, 
   will dim the room and burn incense
   for someone.
      and gather our small love 
  and peace 
   against the storm.

                                    gallagher
                                    20 Nov 87

— Copyright 1965-2008 by Dennis Gallagher —

1987-12-16

Wednesday, December 16th, 1987
            The winter storm finds me
               watching the trees swaying
                  against a gray and moving sky.

            I feel the Buddha's thought,
            if what he experienced
               could be called a thought,
                  as the trees swayed
                  ...continuous, elegant, flowing....

            The raw beauty of it
               rendered on the canvas of no-mind.
            ...being and presence and timelessness...
                  cold and wind, winter and death 
                     and beauty all here....

            I watch them sway like they did
               when the mastodons roamed the north
                  and men wore skins.
            Such a small glimmer of focused awareness are we
               amid the turbulence and tumble of existence.

            Identified with our names
               our jobs, our bodies, our personalities
            and our memories
               we go blind almost all the time.

            Surely, those many centuries ago,
               Buddha watched other trees in a storm
            and felt the same benediction and blessing
               of this vision.
            I know his thought
               and feel his joy for a moment.

            But he turned and walked away into the rain,
               and chose to advance openly towards his death.
            And he gave up every fiction and every pose.
           
            He chose to meet existence in the raw
               and found the roll of God's thunder
            while we sleep
               and barely feel the breeze.

                              gallagher
                              16 dec 87
                              Newport Beach

— Copyright 1965-2008 by Dennis Gallagher —