|
Details |
Greg Gaul Poem
Come with me to the Talking Tree
a place where spirit and nature can be.
Where science of the forest couples
with ancient traditions of the land.
Where indigenous people learn to live
with trees mindfully hand in hand.
Listen to branches rustling hymns
through silent sounds in their limbs.
Mighty Maples murmur in the breeze
sweet tales of syrup drawn to please.
Trees converse, they do care
sending forest messages everywhere.
Through the air and underground
signals pulse from floor to crown.
Quaking Aspen is known for being
the earth's most massive living thing
these trees united by one root system
the world's largest superorganism.
Trees often act for collective good
doing exactly what they should.
Sometimes they will reset their mast
until the attacking danger's passed.
Internal rhythms set their pace
slower than the human race.
Tree's daily burden that they bare
is they process the world's air.
Did trees learn survival plans proven
in the 360 million years pre-human?
What do 7 billion humans foresee
as the fate for earth's 3 trillion trees?
Fallen trees again live too
vessels that life flows through.
Their wood relives deeply in
buildings, books even violins.
So stand with me in equanimity
and listen for lyrics patiently.
Wait to hear beneath this tree
poised to the sound of "poetree".
Copyright © Greg Gaul | Year Posted 2018
|
Details |
Greg Gaul Poem
I saw a one-legged Sandpiper
today on the beach.
I saw him land on his single pedestal,
it was an artful thing.
Entranced by his disability,
I stood transfixed with curiosity.
I so wanted to help him
but we're worlds apart.
How can he feed?
How can he fend?
Suddenly, he flew away up the beach,
I followed him.
There he stood lightly wafting in the wind,
still balanced on that single leg.
His fellow Sandpipers scurry about
unnoticing his remarkable challenge.
Later, a kindly friend told me
shorebirds often hide one leg
to conserve energy.
Silly, I felt a loss
for my misplaced empathy
towards my one-legged friend.
What a self-centered bubble
I live in.
We're always so troubled by
what we think we know.
Truth is, we know so little.
Next time on the beach,
I'll look for the one-legged Sandpiper.
It'll remind me that
there's so much I still don't know.
Copyright © Greg Gaul | Year Posted 2018
|
Details |
Greg Gaul Poem
Standing all alone in the woods;
eyes shut, I feel the lilting light.
Sun dodges needles through the crown,
beams land on my skin softly so.
Brisk breezes quicken and rustle.
Bristlecone pines ever sway slowly,
while pockets of air blush my cheeks.
Staying stalwart in meditation,
cones crinkling as puffs roll them
gently across the forest floor.
Thoughts judder to the hovering pines -
somehow sound vibrations etch marks
captured in the sentient wood.
Stories of prophetic forests,
Stradivarius mesmerize all,
hulls moaning warn mariners,
haunted houses cynics believe:
wood mystically cradles spirit.
Under the old trees guileless gaze
do they sense me as I do them?
She stands before my eyes closed,
I fall into her dream again.
She's called the "Ancient Gardner":
rules - rocks, water, plants, animals
and humans - all the universe.
Her countenance is elegant:
purist white hair, slight frame, regal smock,
penetrating eyes that draw me
to her secret venerable world.
Stares inside in a knowing way.
The legend starts in 555 B.C.
Boy twins, Zan and Zing are infants
raised in a Shinto village.
As young men, both were vying for
Zee's affections as bride to be.
They went to a nearby forest.
In the pines, they battle over her,
their blows reverberate loudly
seen by all the forest network.
Zan fatally fells Zing with a thud,
lets out a woeful wail with tears,
slumps into a sobbing heap
regretting his killing attack.
He buries Zing at the bottom
of the first ever Yamaki pine.
Zing's soul transfuses into the soil,
into the famous kami sapling.
Zan schemes to create a solid lie
starting an imperial epoch.
He's not suspect, they believe him.
Vows to the gods this would be the
single lie of his long life.
He lives up to his honesty vow.
Zan's secret lies in the forest soil.
A fair and thoughtful ruler, Zan
often bathes in the forest,
meditates and mulls governance.
Zan marries Zee and loves her.
He is emperor for many years.
Aged, nearing death Zan reveals
his lie to his loyal wife Zee.
Zee asks their emperor son Zoe
to bury Zan beneath the Yamaki.
Zoe inherited the throne.
Zee never reveals the secret.
Both infuse the landmark tree
eternally part of earth's heartwood.
Zan and Zing are the hidden kami.
Zoe fights hard losing a great war.
He gets invaded and deposed.
The kami sounds vibrate in the wood.
Ancient Gardner keeps consciousness,
the oldest wood cradles wisdom.
Bonsai persist in kami legend.
Much later, Zoe's lineage re-emerges
as concubine Empress Wu Zetian.
But pernicious secrets persist.
So often the common outcome.
Real instinct outthinks imprudence.
A tale of unintended acts,
results of a legendary sin.
Kami revealed, spirits in the wood.
If you want to find the truth
about spirits in the wood;
look closely, embrace the timber,
dance inside the branches.
Burl wood beauty shows stress can vary:
see spirits in carvings, statuary.
Feel its personality, presence -
it's in its grain, resonance...
The sound, the tone that it will emit,
the echoes that come out of it.
A mystical, mythological, philosophical, botanical, historical and spiritual tale. A mix of fact and fiction offered as a possible concept of how thought and spirit is sustained in our world. Inspired by David George Haskell's Songs of Trees book (among others such as Robin Kimmerer, Susan Simard, Peter Wohlleben) and a combination of Shinto and Buddhist teachings. Free Verse
Copyright © Greg Gaul | Year Posted 2019
|
Details |
Greg Gaul Poem
I've been watching you
Since your beginning
Whispering to you
A thousand subtle ways
Throughout all your days
You picked me up as a leaf
You were only three
Clutching my stem in your tiny hand
Long time you stared at me
Gazing at my veins, amber colors
Other leaves rustled in my fall winds
My songs to you, thousands of them
You couldn't listen then
At twenty three with your friend
You laid on your backs one clear night
In a grassy field peering starry lights
My voice was that galactic silence
Too low a whisper for you to hear
Only crickets caught your ear
Now you did hear
In your thirty third year
When your first child was born
And you heard my primal cry
Shook your illusions, you asked why
Your deceptions re emerged over time
Forty years later, no longer aware
Of the cosmic cycle we all share
Still my voice too quiet, too low
My greater voice in a single clap
Disintegrates humanity into smithereens
Think tectonic plate shifts are epic?
My full voice explodes a supernova
A sound no human has ever heard
A mere hiccup for me
I speak through this fragile human
Something of a poet, his intent is fine
Make no mistake, his thoughts are mine
Oh, I have many stories and wisdoms
I could have shared, had you only cared
At your end, we will finally embrace
As your dust clears
And leaves no trace
Listen
Be aware
4/6/18
Nature Contest
Sponsor: Regina McIntosh 5/6/21
Copyright © Greg Gaul | Year Posted 2018
|
Details |
Greg Gaul Poem
Little droplet
your time is near,
never fear,
be part of it.
Fall into the great ocean
your conscious way,
unconscious stay,
Nature's final notion.
Lean back
let it go,
it happens so,
embrace the black.
Droplet make a tiny splash.
Whisper in your Bardo ear,
till you're no longer here,
and flesh turns to simple ash.
So sleep little droplet,
how sweet the dew.
To love it and live it
and to start anew.
Copyright © Greg Gaul | Year Posted 2017
|
Details |
Greg Gaul Poem
I landed in Poet's Court
Caught me speeding in my Sonnet
They judged it a rhyme crime
According to the officer's pentometer
I was doing 50 in a 25 word zone
I'm pleading for comma relief
Hoping to be released to free verse
Under supervision of course
Fortunately there's no sentencing in poetry
Maybe they'll just revoke my poetic license
Copyright © Greg Gaul | Year Posted 2018
|
Details |
Greg Gaul Poem
So many think about changing the whole world,
few think about changing their very selves.
Standing on the precipice, peer beyond.
Pierce your personal, privileged bubble.
View the vast vision across all beings.
In wonder, count the petals of a flower.
Be amazed, probe a chambered nautilus.
Walk backwards out of Fibonacci's Spiral
into eternal embrace with enlightenment.
Spin science's vortex, fall into art's abyss.
Through the dark to the light and back again.
A looking glass within a looking glass,
mirroring all nature, realities' rules.
It seems little opens closed minds much
but when it does, it opens hearts forever.
Buddha's "mind-heart" path, hoping all will walk.
Walking through two doors at once can happen.
Trust that quantum particles jumping
in and out of existence can be real.
Or gaze deeply into a baby's eyes
and not picture the expanding universe.
Rather, see yourself this time, finally looking out.
Enlightenment finds you, you don't find it.
As it approaches, make your mind be still
all you need is loving-kindness and a smile.
Illustration Colored Pencil By G. Gaul
Copyright © Greg Gaul | Year Posted 2020
|
Details |
Greg Gaul Poem
Love this vast planet of ever being
loosen the mortar in your fortress wall.
Sense what all our eyes are clearly seeing
into oneness let loose spirit stones fall.
Fall then in the warming arms of the seas
bravely embrace our common ancestry.
Step under the soothing shade of the tree
one certain truth for all humanity.
Nature looks to all to be defended
haunting echoes plead to us to give back.
Native peoples want all abuse ended
our better angels will lead the attack.
This so surely sets each one of us free
as we will find the true nature of we.
Copyright © Greg Gaul | Year Posted 2020
|
Details |
Greg Gaul Poem
Laying my head back, eyes closing,
reminiscing, the years falling away into decades ago
to the 1950s at my grandparents' grand home
for Christmas.
It was a gracious dining room.
Noontime sun streaming in.
Chair rail with deep red wallpaper, white trim.
Decorating the lace clothed "Big Table"
was a tallish 1870s porcelain Meissen fruit centerpiece
with lovers circling the stem.
Even the adults had to look around it.
Grandmother "Lil" and "Mister B"
were at their nouveau best.
All their progeny seated in good form
awaiting the traditional invocation by "Mister B".
Also seated were the ones that were to be
"seen but not heard" at our side table, the "Kids' Table."
Draped card tables for the dozen of us -
me, my brother and sisters and cousins.
Everyone all scrubbed in dresses and ties.
Mine was a clip on.
As expected, a milk glass got tipped. Spilt milk.
Besides that, we kids had great fun and
became friends again as we did each year.
The thing of it was, none of us liked
being at the "Kids' Table."
We felt lesser, unworthy, subtly so.
Even when I was ten, I knew there were
only two ways to get to the big one:
marriage or go in the army.
We all wondered what it was like to be adult.
After all, most of them smoked.
They all had drinks.
The women had figures, swishy swirls.
The men wore suits like they knew how.
At the "Big Table" they all talked like experts
about stuff we didn't understand
and they laughed loudly at Uncle Bob's jokes.
As the years moved on, things would change,
always do.
I saw virtually all my cousins
disassemble their lives too early -
marriages, divorces, addictions, lost jobs, left school -
beleaguered into inevitable submission.
My family miraculously unscathed.
But they're all gone now,
"Big Table" and little table too.
All that's left from the 50s
is my brother, sister and me.
For years, I was at the "Big Table" since my brood and I
took over the Christmas tradition.
The "Big Table" conversation was
superficial and posing was prevalent.
So one year, I put myself at the "Kids' Table." Just for fun.
Yes, milk got tipped.
But oh, the wonderment and hope. A meal that truly was
food for the soul.
Now that I'm old and looking back,
with a quiet smile, mulling it,
I kinda liked the "Kids' Table" better.
Colored pencil illustration by G.Gaul
Copyright © Greg Gaul | Year Posted 2018
|
Details |
Greg Gaul Poem
Quaking Aspen trees
is an organism that is
way above us all
Senryu on mind Contest
1/29/20
Jenish Somadas Sponsor
Copyright © Greg Gaul | Year Posted 2018
|
|