Posted on by Glenn Mower

City sirens and seagull cries

‘Oh,

who gives me the wings like the dove when I would fly away and be at rest?’ (Meister Eckhart, Discourse on Eternal Birth)

‘I shall lead my friend into the wilderness and shall speak to her heart. I will return her vineyards and transform the Valley of Trouble into a gateway of hope.’ (Hosea 2 14 & 15)

and so:

Breathe deep I do, this dove grey breeze

ingest the wail and warp and weave

of city sirens and seagull cries

and hurt filled sweat in salt sore eyes.

And pray I do, that You may quell this thirsting woe

this cling to things I think I know

this bursting urge that grips the reins

that tourniquets Your blood in veins

fat furred and hard from my control

of withering heart, and yet and yet

this distanced soul cannot forget

to Breathe out and inwardly once again

trust Love to light the twisted turns through

joy and rage and hope and pain.

‘When we set our intention on love and humility, then, by the power of mercy and grace, we are cleansed and made whole.’ (Julian of Norwich, Showings, chapter 40)

Posted on by Glenn Mower

Daily Ablutions

 

Reading Shuntaro and Dickinson

says to me its time to go

put down the scrawling pen

and see the sun and daisies breathe

in Freedom’s oxygen.

 

Brimful water steams

my lowering smiling self

displacing bodies to my breath

in throat and heart and  warming chest

to rest such mistiness

in rhythms from above.

 

 

Posted on by Glenn Mower

Fissures of man in the night of sense

as I sit

fogginess fumbles and sages profess bland

magnificence upon unclear shafts

that enlighten darkness with out

and offer deliverance within.

untamed, infinite, un-chartered glimpses

and likeness to these reported experiences is all.

 

Right now, unravelling blankly

in this shifting stillness I maroon

upon the plumpest cushion of nothingness

while hunger and thirst ignite the yearn

and burning embers agitate for

peace filled light.

 

thoughts laid down once and again

draft worries for wings

attempting to glide so far beyond

this intricate stack of ego and story and sense and

this senseless fluttering so often immerses

the purest of breath into such whining

defining nasal pretence, and yet.

 

still here I sit,

vainly thrusting trust forward to

pointless bottomless shining pit

to intimate flow so distantly familiar

that shakily, as if to drown in waves

of loveliness I wash the wish

that Love becomes my watering bowl

and I become the fish.

Posted on by Glenn Mower

Wishing well

May foot steps lay light upon this precious earth

May meadows sprout sweetly within wakeful ease

May worries be welcomed with the warmest of smile

To join lip upon lip upon this evening breeze.

May quiet souls save us from amplified stress

May sharp words find stillness and suffering stall

May thoughts upon thoughts upon feelings and sense

Release, to float freely like leaves in the fall.

May conflict disperse upon in-flowing breath

May out-flows of love bathe tired worn torn flesh

May waves of abundance soothe and replete

While rays of vast darkness shine bright in our deep .

Posted on by Glenn Mower

4 am

 

It’s too early to go anywhere, 4 am and its my birthday.

Reading Shuntaro Tanikawa has made me smile and my eyes sting.

He smooths me.

But for sure my birthday is not for me, it is for the person who bore me.

A time to thank her  and my dad and all my ancestors for conspiring

to bring me forth. To thank them for setting me on my journey.

 

53 years counted.

 

My stomach boils in the porridge I have just eaten. Too early to digest.

I drink more luke warm water, but the bubbling remains.

 

I  feel so old and frail when my back goes out of joint,

when my hips seize up again, when I walk again like a duck.

 

To be woken by pain in my pelvis and my groin,  is no worse or better

than to arise to the trill of my alarm clock, or to the plaintive calls of the gulls

on the roof.  It is just another categorising thought another blurred sorting out

In the randomness of life.

 

And yet it feels much much worse than that.

 

I drink more pre-boiled water and ask it to tell me the names of

the other people it has passed through.

 

If I laid a book at your table  and if  it comprised entirely

of untouched, unblemished paper, would  that give you

enough space to pause and ponder the  inexpressible.

 

Or would you dismiss this as a gimmick?

I have a book upstairs whose cover is made of rough tree bark,

whose pages are finely sliced cork. Each page exposes the uniqueness of grain

and organic blemish of that cork cut, that’s all.

 

I can sit and read these pages and become content.

I can feel touched in the touching of their wonder within.

And yet

When I am tired the very same book dissolves into jus another

sales persons clever gimmick.

 

I  am tired and I do need to need to stop.

To stop and  sink into the growing light.

To let go into the spaciousness

of

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

no-thing

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

in

 

 

 

 

 

particular.