Every ache and disappointment
Every pain and fear in us
Is the dying of a world.
Worlds die so subtly that consciousness is not disturbed,
Only in feelings is there turbulence.
We grieve and live on
And know not why sadness and joy descend upon us.
Worlds within worlds:
Out of every change of mood,
Out of every new tone of soul is the power put forth -
The worlding, the frothing of new seeds sown,
The breath which is life,
The pulsing which is life at its fount and origin.
In order that colors may be born;
That motions may be enveloped in music.
That life may secrete to itself the kaleidoscope of meanings
Which are word and food to us.
That the tides of god may caress us,
Mothering forth the always-birthing, always-dying:
The universes of inner lights,
The feeling life, pregnant with new self,
Galactic dew of our morning moments -
Buds of potential spangling and waning
Across the long nights around us,
The deep deaths within us.
Nature is howsomuch more profligate than we can imagine.
The mercurial inner life,
Geysers of feelings, life uttering itself and washing itself away.
Ever-mouthing life changes the subject.
The heart of life, the what-it-is-to-be-alive:
Conversions and versions,
Conversations of energies more personal than dreams,
More plentiful than grass.
The evanescence of soulish life,
Immortal, though always perishing.
The eternally present that cannot be caught,
Cannot be kept.
The dance of the secret self that emerges to perish unseen.
Like the metamorphic play of clouds:
Like the face of a child -
Expressions reversing, erasing, coursing on in delight and turmoil
To become some other.
The pulse of life in us,
The season of secret times, revolving and decaying
And erupting again:
The phoenix of soul
Reminding itself to be by sparks and charges,
By powers born to kiss and die.
Soul is these generations of fireflies within us,
Cascades of subjective glints
Sparkling in their trillions in each of us.
We are the floating worlds,
We live and die by their dreaming and turning.
Life pauses, and breathes again.
What is real? What matters to us?
What matters most cannot be unreal.
Life is subjective, that is its truth.
We cannot step twice into the same river
We are the river.
Every pain and fear in us
Is the dying of a world.
Worlds die so subtly that consciousness is not disturbed,
Only in feelings is there turbulence.
We grieve and live on
And know not why sadness and joy descend upon us.
Worlds within worlds:
Out of every change of mood,
Out of every new tone of soul is the power put forth -
The worlding, the frothing of new seeds sown,
The breath which is life,
The pulsing which is life at its fount and origin.
In order that colors may be born;
That motions may be enveloped in music.
That life may secrete to itself the kaleidoscope of meanings
Which are word and food to us.
That the tides of god may caress us,
Mothering forth the always-birthing, always-dying:
The universes of inner lights,
The feeling life, pregnant with new self,
Galactic dew of our morning moments -
Buds of potential spangling and waning
Across the long nights around us,
The deep deaths within us.
Nature is howsomuch more profligate than we can imagine.
The mercurial inner life,
Geysers of feelings, life uttering itself and washing itself away.
Ever-mouthing life changes the subject.
The heart of life, the what-it-is-to-be-alive:
Conversions and versions,
Conversations of energies more personal than dreams,
More plentiful than grass.
The evanescence of soulish life,
Immortal, though always perishing.
The eternally present that cannot be caught,
Cannot be kept.
The dance of the secret self that emerges to perish unseen.
Like the metamorphic play of clouds:
Like the face of a child -
Expressions reversing, erasing, coursing on in delight and turmoil
To become some other.
The pulse of life in us,
The season of secret times, revolving and decaying
And erupting again:
The phoenix of soul
Reminding itself to be by sparks and charges,
By powers born to kiss and die.
Soul is these generations of fireflies within us,
Cascades of subjective glints
Sparkling in their trillions in each of us.
We are the floating worlds,
We live and die by their dreaming and turning.
Life pauses, and breathes again.
What is real? What matters to us?
What matters most cannot be unreal.
Life is subjective, that is its truth.
We cannot step twice into the same river
We are the river.
pip:
It would be a shame for such a good poem to go commentless. Good thing i'm here. Thank you for posting on Journal Poetry Day. Will you play with us next week?