Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Devotional Poetry

When I started writing regularly I was delighted to find that some of the poetry had a devotional quality and was useful in personal worship and meditation.

This one celebrates my joy and gratitude for the peace and fullness that I’ve connected with through the practice of vipassana meditation:

How grateful am I to you
    Oh light filled void !
How pure, fine, and full the touch of breath
    Deep
        Deepening
            Moving
                Still
I am a happy fool


This one celebrates my spirit friend, Hummingbird:

Take me delight
For I’m bloodied by the struggle
And I need an easy breath and laughing song

Hummingbird’s garden
Is the place of healing breezes
And the warm wet easy beating of my heart

My love, my light
My bold and gentle teacher
And my healer who’s prescription’s always Joy

Take me delight
For I’m whole when we embrace
And my path is one with heart when we are one


I wrote a series of poems inspired by the of the significance of the spectral colors in celtic shamanism.  Two of them work for me as votive pieces:

Yellow

Bright banners fly in the yellow Sun
Sing glory of the bright Sun dawning
Glorious Self abroad earth walking the
Journey of the Soul

Yellow eyes of panther stalking
Owl eyes spinning, turning, swirling
Deepening trance and piercing gaze
Companion of the Soul

Golden yellow?
Shiny metal pales before the
Yellow quickening, risk taking
Power outpouring, joy exuding
Servant of the Soul


White

Let there be White
Pure White busting
Forth from White outpouring
White

No prism dividing one thing from
Another all thought one thought the
Thought of All

She speaks pure White
Eternally and Her
Moment did not begin
And does not end


This one is a rondeau relating to a story that I wrote some years ago about a mythological ancestor of primates, Priman in the Long Ago:

Grandmother Moon danced in the trees
Sang softly in the whispering breeze
Where Priman lay by water still
And drank the heart song to his fill
And dreamed a destiny to seize

Suffusing wisdom soul’s increase
A gift of wholeness and of peace
Waxing light expectant thrill
Grandmother Moon

When Priman sought his heart’s release
Lay down his burdens, worries cease
She walked the water clear and still
And by her love his peace fulfilled
Release and healing gift of peace
Grandmother Moon


Any poem that ends “I am Light” is devotional for me in some sense:

Wake groggy yet the
Vision cuts like a
Diamond blade slicing the
Jewel glistening green in the
Void glowing with light
Luminous with light
True Light from True Light
I am Light


Another celebrating my spirit friend, Hummingbird:

Iridescent Hummingbird
Hover round your tiny nest
And dart among the willows and
The cattails growing thick
In blood warm water

Safe amid warm summer days
That never end and ever see
Deep moonlight streaming through
The summer night with
Vines and blossoms growing

Thumping of the drumbeat finds you
Starlight calls your name
Dreamer sees your vision shimmer
Vision seekers come to see
And sing, “Iridescent Hummingbird!”


May we all be blessed

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