Archive for the ‘Spiritual’ 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 —

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 —

2012-07-17

Sunday, September 29th, 2013

Do not spare me from feeling all this;
right down to the quick.


To feel the life that’s always been here
just beyond my next should
and the mind’s endless chatter.


There are death and endings here
so burn me down, Beloved,
and just let me feel it all.


Here, without purpose and meaning,
here, where this same sun has shown forever.
Here, where transience is the song of life,
and here, where the poet’s heart burns within me.


Here, I raise my hands and close my eyes,
here, a terrible beauty rages.

Here are the beginnings and endings of all of us,
on our ways to the we know not what.


Here, I’ve stopped for just a beat,
to be in the endless moment.

Gallagher – 17Jul2012 – Benicia, California


— Copyright 1965-2013 by Dennis Gallagher —