Best Transience Poems

Light 
Drizzles
From the stars
On mascara clouds
Of night, blown by a sudden wind:
From the city's pavement the skies cosmetic drowns in light

From the heart's cradle another Icarus long for flight
And cannot shed the weight of dreams
In the porous light
Leaking time
Leaking
Life

Night
Brings back
Love's cadence
Moonscape memories
Flocking upon the soul's...

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OCTOBER TRANSIENCE
Bipolar month again unsettled ever changing
Summer’s mellow imitation defies winter’s grasp
Days of transient golden treasure to be cherished
Light and dark competing now in passing equipoise

Summer’s mellow imitation defies winter’s grasp
Sun now heads for southern apogee on Capricorn
Light and dark competing now in passing equipoise
Time’s...

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What is my conception of love?
Now that I let me straw hat rest 
On the rocks of Moses’ teachings
 Now that I behold robins pick my seeds

What is my conception of love?
Love is an old cotton Djellaba
I wear early sometime in December 
When Goethe’s muse...

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I can recall a summer day,
transient as a butterfly.
Fields full of poppies,
hazy with heat,
and pollen on the breeze.
Somewhere there is a memory
fragile and bright
that like a butterfly
captures a lifetime
in one perfect day.

And in the grass
the hoar frost
melts in winter sun.
Icy droplets drip 
into frozen streams....

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(Dedication: For my niece, Joan Chong)
--------------------------------------------


Pleasant feelings surge in pretty ideas;
Obscure panache seeps in artwork design;
Sensuous driven purge of mind forms fit here;
Touch of purpose deep as artifacts mime.
Choice of abstract art in fluid emotion;
Align round sure text with sublime hinting;
Rough edges now start to...

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Transience 
I woke up one day,
From deep, sweet slumber,
A long day's stay,
The oblivion of slumber...

My world was beautiful,
Tall trees, green leaves,
Never would I grieve,
My world was beautiful..

The flowers bloomed,
In the youthful spring,
Young brids took wing,
Over my head, they loomed.

Soon, it all disappeared,
Into the thin, unseen...

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Everlasting sun
  Shining upon a life of
Ephemeral time…

 Transitory, yet eternal within belief…...

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Touch a soft spot with form and feel;
Reach deep within to hurl a thought;
Ask for fine lot to frame fond will;
Now sense unseen the play of plot.
Search for the soul that knows the face;
Imprint new waves of feel and flow;
Embrace a whole that fills this...

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'wind is pounding in my heart'

It tears across the steppes and plain, it guides my mind and eases pain
Whithin the yurt, upon the road, it whets my mind; eases the loads
I've rode it's Breast ten thousand times,' with banner high the yak tails nine
Its of...

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What lives deep within?
Which thoughts, what vitality?
For from these must we emerge,
As there is little without
Except the baleful wind
Whining across bleached dunes.

Death is a void of expression
Stark, barren, arid.
Mere rocks scoured by flash flood
Twisted and gnarled;
Gravestones of salt extrusion
From emergent times.

What life there is in...

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p  u  l  s  e  s

  diastolic   
              systolic   
            ...

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Another old friend has passed on,
May he rest whereever he's gone.
Once you're a year above eighty
thoughts of life's transience are weighty.
but here were good times to think upon.

Old friends, I'll see you anon....

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For billions of years
I did not exist.
Then I existed
for a little while.
Soon I will return
to not existing
for the rest of time....

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I recline with my cherry tree musings…

a fountain of blossoms 
cherub cheek complected 
rise and curve from the ground 
up into a heaven and cloud scene  
to spread in splendor  a festoon of blooms 
like cumulus puffs plucked from above
and placed in tufts...

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THIS WORLD OF DEW

This world? 
Moonlit dew
flicked from a crane's bill.
—Eihei Dogen Kigen, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Seventy-one?
How long
can a dewdrop last? 
—Eihei Dogen Kigen, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Dewdrops beading grass-blades
die before dawn;
may an untimely wind not hasten their departure!
—Eihei Dogen Kigen,...

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