The days drift by at summer’s pace,
Too insubstantial to embrace.
Without a goal that I can chase,
In neutral I am stuck.
Though I am home, most any place
Would seem the same, with just a trace
Of novelty to help me face
A way out of the muck.
No matter what, in any case,
The passing time might grant some grace,
My lethargy conceding space
To welcome back some pluck.
Butterflies, once were chasing
Bubbles, once grabbed at
Do lead us on still.
As dazzling do thrill.
In both the forms of daydreams;
Their worlds; golden lit.
As unreachable.
As insubstantial.
The blank field is a whitewashed wall
between
eyes and incipient thought.
A neatly printed line
emerges out of nothing,
fingers sleep
as they plant words in inky rows.
Meaning searches for meaning,
each symbol is a cracked seed
shed from a blacked-out window -
brain particles blindly seeking.
There is meaning here,
but it is as yet formless,
what is seen is slough and spillage,
mind-molt
struggling into an appearance
of notion and idea.
Now the word is flesh, a glossolalia,
a mute speaking in tongues, yet
breathless of any spirit.
At once the painted parody of self
is free to wriggle forth,
to sew and bind together
discernable images,
it must surface above the silent page,
lift up the emblematic
as the hammer-arm
of the insubstantial, until deciphered
by other necromancers
who then speak
for the dead-voiced word.
This then is the tipping point:
the space between sight and seen,
a place to speak into existence
the once immaterial
or surrender all coherence
to the un-lettered reticence of God.
Insubstantial
I opened the window in the door, one early morning.
and was met with a face that looked like a cloud; it
blew frost roses on the glass, they were so beautiful,
abstract, and oh, so fragile.
Years ago, by the cloister`s wall, I saw some miniature
Looking at roses, I replanted them in my garden, and they
disappeared, I thought they had died out, but this spring
They were by my wall, nodding shyly in the breeze.
As the spring turned into summer, they had no shade
and disappeared like frost roses on the window glass;
And that is ok by me, cause I know they are there just
under the earth, waiting for another spring.
“Just as the objects seen in our dreams are found, when we awake, to be insubstantial, so our waking perceptions are likewise unreal—a matter of inference only.”
~ extract from ‘The Holy Science’
Being the dreamer and the dreamed,
how may we in the dream awake
as long as thought spirals are streamed?
Let’s make our mind calm like a lake!
With thoughts rested, poised in the void,
we as awareness self-aware,
reclaim light of Self unalloyed,
whence ego cravings we outstare.
Thought cessation is then the way,
for us to see and recognise
our true essence as clear as day,
beheld only when ego dies.
Let’s be with love and light aligned ~
We’re living light, not body-mind
I cannot fathom eternity.
So I wash the dishes from dinner.
I cannot comprehend the vastness of the universe and galaxies.
So, I read another story to my child.
I catch glimpses of how insubstantial I am, like a mote of dust floating on a sunbeam.
So I pay my bills and go to work.
I love my family and pray to my God.
I listen to a friend crying over the phone.
I bring a hot meal to my elderly neighbor and maybe visit for a bit.
No, I cannot understand, much less control, the infinity of the stars and time and space.
But I can do my best to touch the lives of those around me in a meaningful way, with love, respect, and kindness.
I give the rest to God
On drear and endless nights
when the thunder in my head
is louder than
the thunder beyond my window
and sleep denies me rest,
I have to wash my eyes several times,
for her face imprints itself
behind closed eyelids.
The departed move on, travel away
from the gravity of this place and time,
they are unshackled from us,
we who may still cling
to our own emotional chains.
What does she want of me?
It was a short torrid affair,
why this lifetime haunting?
You cannot dream someone out of your soul,
it's not about memory or forgetting,
if there was once love
it is a now only a torn rag
flying upon heedless winds,
a make-believe insubstantial thing.
Why does she paint herself before me,
and why do I disappear
when she looks upon my aged being?
I wash my eyes and often wonder
if it is really I that haunt
her.
Time has buried itself too deep,
it forces eras to push
tall mountains around yet more
towering stacks.
The dung beetle is enslaved
by an unwavering purpose and labor.
A feverish Sisyphus twitches
beneath every grain of substance,
weight is piled upon weight,
but clouds,
those billowing sky-blooms
those ghosts of our perception,
they sketch the lightness of air
upon a higher compass.
Even so, the insubstantial
may take a denser form,
a cresting wave of rain
will thunder down
from its gossamer womb.
The whole harnessed world
must now heave
upon every drop of water
as if it were just one more
boulder to bear.
("Mind's Eye", 2017, original encaustic)
Mind’s Eye
Within the crystal palace
of mind’s eye
what is small is large
and large is small;
no distance separates objects,
nor time moments.
Instead everything is light
reflecting and refracting
endlessly in a hall of mirrors.
At play, mind delights
playing with itself
through the eyes of everyone.
Each moment just another
insubstantial wave of thought
washing, lapping, breaking
within the spaciousness of mind.
(2/10/24)
A slow swim through clouds of consciousness.
My wife said I had lost a day,
but I was timeless, though as my mind moved,
so did the world,
I travelled by ever clearing thoughts,
over distant skies and far mountains,
the earth was beautiful and without fault.
I was weightless, but not insubstantial,
for gravity simply lightened spirit and will,
a gentle force
moved me to wherever I desired to go.
When the nurse appeared, her words were alien,
her angelic speech created only for celestial tongues.
My wife's voice was sweet and as musical
as a Sufi prayer.
I was told later that I just groaned loudly,
complaining that
my ass was sore.
Slow flakes,
Shaken from a starry sky,
Floating through the air
Like tiny fragile ghosts,
Settling on black branches
Glistening with spectral frost.
The great silence of falling snow.
Each flake unique,
As delicate as old lace,
Pure and white as an untroubled soul.
They brighten up the gloom
Of an early winter afternoon.
Each flake insubstantial, transient,
Their lives, like ours, are brief,
Their beauty a passing moment of radiance.
In the light of a street lamp they fleetingly transcend,
Only to be seen no more.
By Mark D. Stucky
Glamour is a hollow, shiny shell,
a rapid, pretty paint job
on an insubstantial surface,
that alluringly promises much
but never satisfies the hunger.
True human beauty is internal,
from the depths of one’s core.
It starts in the heart and soul.
It slowly sprouts and spreads,
percolates and permeates
the exterior from within.
The best but bleakest beauty
grows from wisdom
wrestled and wrought
from woundedness.
Pain, a teacher of distinction,
comes to every one of us,
but only some students
embrace the lessons
and find meaning in affliction.
For perceptive learners,
crises cut and clear the clutter
from bloated, busy lives,
enabling the complex splendor
of sorrow and healing,
of tears and laughter,
of doubt and faith,
of truth and grace,
of peace and joy,
of love and compassion
to emerge from pruned spaces.
(First published in Small Town Anthology VII: Entries from the Seventh Annual Tournament of Writers, Vicksburg Cultural Arts Center, 2021, p. 93.)
Why is pleasure measured in moments,
while work is measured in weeks or years?
Pleasures are like insubstantial fictions, sweet treats gone
in the tasting or perhaps flowers, that once cut, wither.
So don't be enthralled by fickle snippets of passion.
Work and service have the weight of reward,
by labor's honest toil, we fashion, forge and provide.
without the insignificant ~ there'd never be a significance
without the insubstantial ~ there'd never be anything of substance
without you me and our puny atoms ~ this cosmos would not be whole
By
David Kavanagh
According to Scientific American
There are the same number of atoms in the
observable universe as there always have been!
Do the math, you are part of
the sum that makes eternity!
You always have been and
always will be!
Where it all came from
#your answer is as good as mine#
Incineration; it is his living wish.
The urn will be a plain oblong box,
He will be boxed.
The wooden package will be sent
as only a temporary accommodation,
not a place of rest or peace,
but something to be kept until poured.
This pouring will be an on-going
one taken up by a river
for carrying.
The current will winnow and permeate
sift and sieve,
fish will be his filtrate,
the river rocks a million headstones
that will grind his dust finer
until the water itself eats it.
Then the empty box will be filled
with saffron, sandalwood flakes,
and dried mothwings,
be taken back,
back into the flames
to be a thin ascending signal
of smoke
so insubstantial
that it will be no more than
a dissolving question
in an un-answering
sky.
A wispy waymark
just light enough
to ride upon the ever breathing
breath of the wind, and
always moving onward unseen.
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