Discussion Topic |
|
This thread has been locked |
Fletcher
Trad climber
The great state of advaita
|
|
|
Jan 20, 2013 - 02:36am PT
|
Beautiful Mouse, beautiful.
Eric
|
|
Fletcher
Trad climber
The great state of advaita
|
|
|
Jan 20, 2013 - 02:36am PT
|
This one is right down my alley:
Shoveling Snow With Buddha
In the usual iconography of the temple or the local Wok
you would never see him doing such a thing,
tossing the dry snow over a mountain
of his bare, round shoulder,
his hair tied in a knot,
a model of concentration.
Sitting is more his speed, if that is the word
for what he does, or does not do.
Even the season is wrong for him.
In all his manifestations, is it not warm or slightly humid?
Is this not implied by his serene expression,
that smile so wide it wraps itself around the waist of the universe?
But here we are, working our way down the driveway,
one shovelful at a time.
We toss the light powder into the clear air.
We feel the cold mist on our faces.
And with every heave we disappear
and become lost to each other
in these sudden clouds of our own making,
these fountain-bursts of snow.
This is so much better than a sermon in church,
I say out loud, but Buddha keeps on shoveling.
This is the true religion, the religion of snow,
and sunlight and winter geese barking in the sky,
I say, but he is too busy to hear me.
He has thrown himself into shoveling snow
as if it were the purpose of existence,
as if the sign of a perfect life were a clear driveway
you could back the car down easily
and drive off into the vanities of the world
with a broken heater fan and a song on the radio.
All morning long we work side by side,
me with my commentary
and he inside his generous pocket of silence,
until the hour is nearly noon
and the snow is piled high all around us;
then, I hear him speak.
After this, he asks,
can we go inside and play cards?
Certainly, I reply, and I will heat some milk
and bring cups of hot chocolate to the table
while you shuffle the deck.
and our boots stand dripping by the door.
Aaah, says the Buddha, lifting his eyes
and leaning for a moment on his shovel
before he drives the thin blade again
deep into the glittering white snow.
~ Billy Collins ~
(Picnic, Lightning)
|
|
mouse from merced
Trad climber
The finger of fate, my friends, is fickle.
|
|
|
Jan 20, 2013 - 04:03am PT
|
The Preceding Twenty-Four Hours
Any time you went into the warm bright sun from the gloom
Whenever you found an extra five dollars in your wallet that you had forgoten you stashed
When you found the chocolate chips were white chocolate and not just plain toll house morsels
That time you thought a message was wiped out only to find it again on your computer
Especially the last time you made it to the gas pump on fumes
The time some dork from the UC offered to buy you a drink and you found he's really just as decent as you and only slightly better educated and that's all in computers and carpentry, heck
Did it make your day?
|
|
Fletcher
Trad climber
The great state of advaita
|
|
|
Jan 21, 2013 - 02:56pm PT
|
Staring in the the abyss today...
Enriching the Earth
To enrich the earth I have sowed clover and grass
to grow and die. I have plowed in the seeds
of winter grains and various legumes,
their growth to be plowed in to enrich the earth.
I have stirred into the ground the offal
and the decay of the growth of past seasons
and so mended the earth and made its yield increase.
All this serves the dark. Against the shadow
of veiled possibility my workdays stand
in a most asking light. I am slowly falling
into the fund of things. And yet to serve the earth,
not knowing what I serve, gives a wideness
and a delight to the air, and my days
do not wholly pass. It is the mind's service,
for when the will fails so do the hands
and one lives at the expense of life.
After death, willing or not, the body serves,
entering the earth. And so what was heaviest
and most mute is at last raised up into song.
~ Wendell Berry ~
(Collected Poems 1957 - 1982)
|
|
Marlow
Sport climber
OSLO
|
|
|
Jan 21, 2013 - 03:11pm PT
|
To the Stone-cutters
Stone-cutters fighting time with marble, you foredefeated
Challengers of oblivion
Eat cynical earnings, knowing rock splits, records fall down,
The square-limbed Roman letters
Scale in the thaws, wear in the rain. The poet as well
Builds his monument mockingly;
For man will be blotted out, the blithe earth die, the brave sun
Die blind and blacken to the heart:
Yet stone have stood for a thousand years, and pained thoughts found
The honey of peace in old poems.
Robinson Jeffers
|
|
Marlow
Sport climber
OSLO
|
|
|
Jan 21, 2013 - 03:26pm PT
|
Birds
The fierce musical cries of a couple of sparrowhawks hunting on the
headland,
Hovering and darting, their heads northwestward,
Prick like silver arrows shot through a curtain the noise of the ocean
Trampling its granite; their red backs gleam
Under my window around the stone corners; nothing gracefuller, nothing
Nimbler in the wind. Westward the wave-gleaners,
The old gray sea-going gulls are gathered together, the northwest wind
wakening
Their wings to the wild spirals of the wind-dance.
Fresh as the air, salt as the foam, play birds in the bright wind, fly falcons
Forgetting the oak and the pinewood, come gulls
From the Carmel sands and the sands at the river-mouth, from Lobos and
out of the limitless
Power of the mass of the sea, for a poem
Needs a multitude, multitudes of thoughts, all fierce, all fresh-eaters,
musically clamorous
Bright hawks that hover and dart headlong, and ungainly
Gray hungers fledged with desire of transgression, salt slimed beaks, from
the sharp
Rock-shores of the world and the secret waters.
Robinson Jeffers
|
|
Fletcher
Trad climber
The great state of advaita
|
|
|
Jan 21, 2013 - 07:25pm PT
|
The highest good is like water.
Water gives life to the ten thousand things and does not strive.
It flows in places men reject and so is like the Tao.
In dwelling, be close to the land.
In meditation, go deep in the heart.
In dealing with others, be gentle and kind.
In speech, be true.
In ruling, be just.
In business, be competent.
In action, watch the timing.
~ Tao Te Ching ~
(Translation by Gia-Fu Feng and Jane English)
|
|
Fletcher
Trad climber
The great state of advaita
|
|
|
Jan 23, 2013 - 02:22am PT
|
“How to Be a Poet”
(to remind myself)
Make a place to sit down.
Sit down. Be quiet.
You must depend upon
affection, reading, knowledge,
skill—more of each
than you have—inspiration,
work, growing older, patience,
for patience joins time
to eternity. Any readers
who like your poems,
doubt their judgment.
ii
Breathe with unconditional breath
the unconditioned air.
Shun electric wire.
Communicate slowly. Live
a three-dimensioned life;
stay away from screens.
Stay away from anything
that obscures the place it is in.
There are no unsacred places;
there are only sacred places
and desecrated places.
iii
Accept what comes from silence.
Make the best you can of it.
Of the little words that come
out of the silence, like prayers
prayed back to the one who prays,
make a poem that does not disturb
the silence from which it came.
© Wendell Berry. This poem is excerpted from “The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry”
|
|
Pillowattack
Boulder climber
DC
|
|
|
Jan 23, 2013 - 03:22pm PT
|
The ox pulls the plow
The earth breaks open
It is raining
|
|
Marlow
Sport climber
OSLO
|
|
|
Jan 23, 2013 - 03:31pm PT
|
Wanderer's Song
The thread in the hand of a kind mother
Is the coat on the wanderer's back.
Before he left she stiched it close
In secret fear that he would be slow to return.
Who will say that the inch of grass in his heart
Is gratitude enough for all the sunshine of spring?
Meng Chiao
|
|
Fletcher
Trad climber
The great state of advaita
|
|
|
Jan 24, 2013 - 03:08pm PT
|
Seek patience
and passion
in equal amounts.
Patience alone
will not build the temple.
Passion alone
will destroy its walls.
~ Maya Angelou ~
(Life Mosaic)
|
|
Mtnmun
Trad climber
Top of the Mountain Mun
|
|
|
Topic Author's Reply - Jan 24, 2013 - 04:20pm PT
|
Good one Donald!
|
|
Fletcher
Trad climber
The great state of advaita
|
|
|
Jan 24, 2013 - 10:25pm PT
|
An old favorite:
Messenger
My work is loving the world.
Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird —
equal seekers of sweetness.
Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums.
Here the clam deep in the speckled sand.
Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?
Am I no longer young, and still not half-perfect? Let me
keep my mind on what matters,
which is my work,
which is mostly standing still and learning to be
astonished.
The phoebe, the delphinium.
The sheep in the pasture, and the pasture.
Which is mostly rejoicing, since all ingredients are here,
which is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart
and these body-clothes,
a mouth with which to give shouts of joy
to the moth and the wren, to the sleepy dug-up clam,
telling them all, over and over, how it is
that we live forever.
~ Mary Oliver ~
(Thirst)
|
|
mouse from merced
Trad climber
The finger of fate, my friends, is fickle.
|
|
|
Jan 25, 2013 - 12:11am PT
|
the inch of grass
God sent His only begotten son to mow the lawn and sweep the driveway but He went climbing with His friends instead.
Super-Cross meets Taco Sauce.
See what happens eventually?
There is no controlling them when they have become Crosstians.
They are out to convert the world.
Holy Mother Mary pray for us.
Mother Frank, come back. If you can't, it was nice meeting you when you were one foot tall.
Hello, Suzy, it's been years since you've been here.
|
|
mouse from merced
Trad climber
The finger of fate, my friends, is fickle.
|
|
|
Jan 25, 2013 - 12:21am PT
|
Curious about the Taco Sauce, lemme know when you get a chance.--Fletcher email to MFM
And so am I,
And so am I.--Frank Zappa
Who could imagine Life with NO SAUCE!
Certainly no Aborigine, Dreamy as he is, could not. NO WAY IN DREAMTIME.
And peyote chewers have no clue.
Strange Brew, kill what's inside of you, too.
Expresso doesn't express much, and three tenors means too much expression...
Which leaves us with the balancing act in the icefall, a nightmare.
Calling all dreamcatchers!
See the crevasse of surprises widen before your eyeses.
And run away! Run away!
|
|
Anastasia
climber
InLOVEwithAris.
|
|
|
Jan 25, 2013 - 01:26am PT
|
a model poises
her body twist toward the camera
the image of the perfect curves
unmarked skin
her gentle knowing smile
should she be ashamed of selling her image
or is it a great failure
to honor beauty as is
without our ego
demanding shame
or ownership
when in the end
it's just youth passing
even beauty fades
like our words
meaningless
AFS
|
|
mouse from merced
Trad climber
The finger of fate, my friends, is fickle.
|
|
|
Jan 25, 2013 - 08:56am PT
|
"Meaninglessness Without Pictures" Says It All
He lifts his own breasts in comparison.
His sister has recently gone down the hairy road to puberty and now he's twelve he thinks it's his turn.
But where are his boobs?
He was totally expecting them, kind of relieved now--
he wasn't looking forward to having to wear a bra like she said he would have to do.
She's going to have to answer to this one, he thinks. She mustn't tease him so much. She'll be sorry...
|
|
mouse from merced
Trad climber
The finger of fate, my friends, is fickle.
|
|
|
Jan 28, 2013 - 03:36am PT
|
"Don't Interrupt."--Teacher
[Click to View YouTube Video]
It's just knice to now Flutcher's still buzzing around hear.
"Sunfinnished"
So, like, Poetrick, Oh!
--if I may be so bold as he, what need of poetry except to tell of "We" or us collectively?
Hey's one of There Gang here, I'd say.
Their more than, say, six hundred.
But hey,who's counting?
Half a Dome gone. Word.
Into the Valley of Dearth
Rode the dirtbaggers.
Talus to the left of them,
Meadows to the right of them,
Onward and downward they rode,
Full of the dreams and the stories
Of the old school and they're revered old hoaries
Who's names clogged the journals with glories
In the un-punctuated, missle-spelled equilibrium
Of the evolutionary process
"Believe it or not" says more sometimes than anything
--Sometimes you just gotta say WTF.
And they did and we did and the guys before them guys did
All the way back to and beyond the back side of Muir/Clark/Clyde.
We are a totem-pole-arrangement,
Stacked like black and white demi-gods
In black convexes this time
Arrayed in silly string glory
Winching along and cumming from camming
Damming the fact it's not free.
Nothing is for free, yet we all wish it were so.
And both it and I will be free. You know it. Your kids know it.
Tom, Yvon, Royal know it.
And, above all, Chuck knows more than we will ever know now.
But he knows.
I just trust.
--Lord Finnyshin.
"Hoot to Be a Poet"
Yuk.
Yuk.
|
|
Anastasia
climber
InLOVEwithAris.
|
|
|
Jan 28, 2013 - 04:34am PT
|
as a poet should I have the skill to string my words together
and rhyme them with blue
should I be able to give them rhythm like a well played guitar
strumming my vowels of thought to a beat
with meanings that grasp you by the guts
twist you down onto your knees
and then is it still a poem
or is it a prayer
of a soul needing to be saved
from the devils of the world
of the mind
and the devil that is made up of "I"
I am not very good at rhyming with blue
and I can't hold a rhythm beyond the basic rocking of a child
and instead of you being brought to your knees
it is I clenching my guts with my words losing meaning
and yes, I am full of devils and ghost
random thoughts I'm not able to string together
am I still a poet
when I can't even write down my name
for here the waters call to Virginia Woolf
and to Ingrid Jonker
as Sylvia Plath forgets to bake a cake...
do I really want to know what drove them
as it vibrates beneath my hands
into the shadows of my thoughts
to feel so much
I really honestly should learn to be still
and replace my thinking with well worn passages that are safe
written by folks that have reached old age
anything but the passions of the lost
I don't have to write
stay up all night
yet here I am
does this make me a poet?
|
|
|
SuperTopo on the Web
|
Let us know!