A Fragment

Mercurial and mobile

Adaptable, fluid

Sometimes, I am hard and ice-cold

Other times, soft and yielding

I can be mighty and terrifying

For travellers, I often grant gentle passages

I also grant treacherous passages

I glisten and dance before your eyes

I nourished your nascent body, filling the womb that birthed you

To some, I am the fluency and resilience of women

Ocean, cloud, rain, river and back again

I am the ceaseless flow of life

Observe and drink my wisdom, weary traveller

I will quench your desperate thirst

A Fragment

A murmuration materialised before us, sweeping miraculously across a muted grey sky

Like the atoms of a body in motion, they moved in perfect unison

Transfixed, I looked on with wonder and awe

My friend spoke "It must have something to do with the leading birds and the motion of air travelling to the others"

I momentarily held this view in mind, then felt a pang of vacuity and despair

The wildflowers burgeoning across the springtime field, their green stems suffused with golden light, petals joyously spreading, are they also to be summed up scientifically?

What about the glowing moon suspended in the nightsky?

And the magnificent mountains sprawling before you, terrifying and wonderful, spilling toward the distant horizon?

How about the fox that locked eyes with you as you wandered home, its amber eyes glinting in the dark, its rusty pelt bristling as it scurries away?

Awe and humility should be welcomed through the door of our understanding, and we should ask them to sit right beside science

A Fragment

The more habitual and repetitive life becomes,

the more we lose the wonder, the awe.

The more we lose the openness we once had,

when the whole world was apparelled in celestial light*.

But let us honour and cultivate this wonder and awe.

And though we may never return to a true child-like state,

let us not become embittered and closed-off.

Let us remain open and supple.

Let us remain good-humoured and sensitive.

Let us revere each morning sunrise, a miracle beyond words.

Let us cherish each passing season, each blade of grass, each gnarled tree.

Let us always be grateful for the wonder of life. 

 * Wordsworth

A Fragment

A poem can be a reminder of how things really are

A shock, a jolt, a lightning strike cutting through ignorance and amnesia

Perhaps a poem is also like morse code or a telegram signal, encoding a message but never fully revealing the soure

A poem is a collection of letters and words, abstract units that come together and form a cathedral, a sweeping murmuration, bristling with meaning, insight and truth

Particles coalesce and form beings

Musical notes collaborate and form symphonies

One becomes two, two become three, and the world dances in relational ecstacy

A Fragment

When I wake up, when I think, when I move about in the daylight, I see multiplicity

I see fields, rivers, birds, trees, flowers and people

Every individual thing going about its business, living by its nature, and eventually dying

I see all of this, the whole drama of life and death, unfolding before me in a beautiful yet tragic way

But at night, I am given new eyes

Within the bewildering multiplicity of the world, there is an eternality and oneness

There is a bedrock, a foundation of unbounded love, ageless and timeless

Everything emerges from this bedrock and returns to it, everything takes part in this endless dance

My words fall short here

Words are limited and conceptual whereas unbounded love is ineffable, limitless and beyond thought

The One enfolds the Many, the Many enfold the One

A Fragment

Did you know that we held each other’s hands even before we met?

Before time, all hands were joined

We have always known each other - did you recognise me when you first looked into my eyes?

But when we are born into the earthly world, we come to feel isolated

We forget where we come from, our true home

We become amnesiacs and somnambulists

We get entangled in our individual lives

Through our misguided feeling of separateness, we are plagued by anxieties and pains

And yet, when I look into your eyes, when I feel this love between us, I no longer feel separate and fearful

Through you, I am reminded of my true home

A Fragment

Every now and then

moments emerge which bring about profound newness. 

 

Imagine when you first encounter crocuses and hyacinths,

after a long winter,

arising from the cold ground.

Imagine the way an epiphany springs into your mind,

a momentous realisation,

forever altering the course of your life.

Imagine that unconscious arrest of inspiration,

when involved in a creative project,

miraculously bringing it all together.

 

It is as though a secret force is at work in the world,

steering these events on.

And though this force is eternally present,

it is made more apparent

in these auspicious moments of change,

when a seismic shift is felt within.

 

The evening we first met, an unassuming evening of gentle conversation,

held one such moment.

Saying goodbye, I stood on a precipice of decision,

and something akin to destiny took over my body.

A deeper force carried me along

when I kissed you for the first time.

 

I cherish this moment, the moment my life wildly shifted,

and our evening of gentle conversation.