Archive for the ‘AAA – Recommended’ Category

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 —

2013-11-22 – As tears go by

Friday, November 22nd, 2013
 
Why is it that the older I get
   the more that things move me? 
Music brings me to tears
   and injustice to anger.
The short-sighted stupidity of greed
  that is destroying the world I know
     brings me to deep sadness
        and thoughts of violent resistance.

The poet in me rages when I look at my heart's pain
  and compassion wells up and washes me again.

Is it nostalgia for this life I have loved so well
   or the pain of loss gathering around me like the night?

I tell you this - I shall not resist
   these knives of love that cut me.
For these tears are born both
   of love and pain.

And, if we are not here to saturate ourselves in this
   then I cannot think why this is better than being dead.

gallagher
20Nov2013
christchurch

— Copyright 1965-2013 by Dennis Gallagher —

2013-12-06 – Dear Sister

Wednesday, December 11th, 2013
 
Dear Sister, I know you tried to grow.
   In the early days, I was deeply awe struck by your struggles. 
So much more sincere than my own dilettante musings.
   You opened me up then to the meditation room's quiet seeking
      and inspired me to make my own questing real.

I was a rough seeker; just a blunt Irishman with dreams
   far too simple to be afraid to open any door, if I could but find it.

And, in your chair beside me, you burned with dedication
   and called in the voices and the truth; session after session.
How many hours of channeling flowed through your conduit
   how many times there did you open my eyes?

Looking back now across the years and all that has happened since,
   I see what an unequal struggle it was for you.

You began so much more encumbered than I.
   Your childhood, your Karma, your inflexibilities, your isolation,
      your anger, your hurt and all your deep distrusts.

They walled you in even as you spent so many hours 
   seeking to break through.
They blocked you 
   even as you burned for release.

You sat in that chair with fierce will and dedication
   and you held the vision of the highest good for all concerned.
You read Seth and pondered the mysteries locked inside T.S. Eliot's poems
   and you filled the house with the symbols and sounds of many traditions.

And yet, Dear Sister, you've arisen from that chair un-transcendent, 
   un-opened, un-humbled and still essentially believing 
that only your will, only your hard-won defenses, only your way, 
   only your opinions and only your disdain, strength and anger could protect you.

All of these I can see now betrayed you.
    They were the very walls that kept you from breaking through.
Sweet Sister, what you tried to achieve through acts of will and dedication
   can never be done; save through the erosion of all that you held to make you safe.

There is no growth without humbling, 
   no advance without disassembly, and no new becomings without unbecoming.
And only a deep and sincere choice to allow yourself to become porous 
   to all that has hurt you and all that you can feel 
      can free you from those things that impede your realization.

gallagher
06Dec2013

— Copyright 1965-2013 by Dennis Gallagher —