Is there a place for us
Lonely souls
In this big, glowing city?
How ironic
To feel solitarily
In a city of fourteen million
Been slinking in the shadows
For a while now
The light can be burning
Frightening
The shadows can be reassuring
Rapid
Train headache
The view from the windows
Street lights
Feeling warmth from
Only strangers
The red neon torii gate
Opens the door
From the mundane world
To the sacred
Our home
Of neon billboards
With the loud BGM
Pulsating through us
Vividly
This is where I belong
Light and darkness
Both embrace me
In warmth and
Serenity
Categories:
torii, cat, city, dark, light,
Form: Free verse
The hillock, the bell
The swept terraces
The swept minds.
The white wood hall
The reflecting pools
The reflecting minds.
The weedless gardens
both in brain and curtilage.
The temple grounds.
The temple gives
flight.
The temple sounds
bird/wind, hush/shuffle
The temple sounds
right.
Some say all (I say many)
paths
lead to these courtyards.
Follow flower flows.
Wending ways, find one's way.
The middle path, the Wu Wei Way...
Many, many ways to find One Way;
to find one's way, to finally find,
to unwend one's way to home mind, to
No Mind.
Silences...
Echoing off Oms.
Poverties...
Bowls cradling alms.
Quietudes in multitudes,
of balding bones.
The chatterless babble of an unseen brook.
Torii, lotus, gravemarking gorinto, stupa, murti;
each here, each
forsook.
Cherry, Plum, and Chrysanthemum;
each a Zafu seed, each a mustard seed.
Verdant lives, wants fallen
as Autumn leaves. Needs.
And for the nun? And for the monk?
Each path of pilgrim's footfall
an invitation, a lure for the mind
at least, if not the heart,
to
depart.
Categories:
torii, leaving, nature, philosophy,
Form: Free verse