Archive for the ‘Catalyst2’ Category

2008-06-21 – Under Many Stars

Saturday, June 21st, 2008

Here,
amid the weeds
of these centuries,
I rise.

Seeking light and warmth
from the soils and seas
of yet another world.

The long rise;
the single cell, the multiple.

We spawn;
fleet of form and bright of eye.

We gather and rise
in complexity and imagination
beneath another wheeling sun, above,
and the shifting plates, below.

Again and again,
we come to self-consciousness.
Spewing poetry and conquest,
cities and literature.

Proud and driven,
we sing the animal’s song …
but in a higher key;
as we procreate, build and consume.

And it is always the same rise …
and always the same fall,
just … beneath a different star.

We are technological children,
impulsive and uncontrolled,
pressed onward by those same
biological imperatives
that fueled our original rise
from the mud.

Those same imperatives,
now freed by our intelligence.

Those same imperatives,
now pushing us from behind,
motivating us,
while we stare into the mirror
of our imagined futures
and think ourselves Gods.

And all this
while we are sleepwalking
into our demise …
once again.

We think we are aware
and we imagine
that we see the game entire.

But while we are looking for enemies
outside the gate,
they are no further
than our next desire, within.

We, driven on
by our own biological imperatives,
will plunge again
onto that self-same sword
of our desires and greed,
untamed.

I have been many times before
and I will be again …
rising and falling beneath different stars
with different eyes and chemistry.

But I am the same one.

I have yearned for my freedom before
and I have died by my own hand.

But someplace among the stars,
I will rise once more.

And this time … this time …
I will learn to transcend
the very urges
that doomed me
in my technological
adolescence.

And on that very dirt,
after the long climb yet again,
I will finally find the path
to maturity and intentional balance
with the biosphere that birthed me.

And enter, then, into all of
whatever awaits … such as we.

gallagher
21 June 2008 – Summer Solstice
Monroe, Washington, USA

2011-10-03 – At Colette’s

Sunday, October 2nd, 2011

An October night in a house laced with moonlight
with a good friend asleep in one room
and my lover and partner asleep in another.

I realize, yet, again,
what lucky man I am in this life.

Marriages lost, earthquakes come and gone,
hearts repaired and small fortunes lost.
And none of it touches me
as I walk through these moon-washed rooms.

The Beloved loves the child
that stands into the wind
and dares to dare.

The child that says,
“Bring it on, Beloved. hold me
to the breast of this life
with all it has to give.”

Break my heart and storm my sanity
and I will still believe you to be the Beloved,
believe you to be compassion and light;
even as I prepare myself to pass over and die.

I had prayed for lightening
even though I might be destroyed.
And then I walked, some months later,
through this house laced with moonlight.

And I see here the proof that I am loved
and the proof that fear
is just the way we delay experience.

I see that, even as I die,
I will drink this cup to the end
and walk into the storm
and feel the rain and praise the giver
and know that I am a blessed child.

gallagher
03Oct2011

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 —