The Wabi-Sabi of Tintern Abbey
Things bloom more beautiful when breaking down.
The nave now ploughs through foams of flowering trees,
a frozen caravel. Kissed by the breeze,
the river surface suddenly seems to frown
exquisitely. The apse’s jaunty crown
of weeds above one (sightless) eye would please
romantic poets. What was once a friese
lies strewn about, a shaley shanty-town.
We love whatever withers, atrophies.
To see
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Categories:
wabi sabi, poetry,
Form: Sonnet
Wabi-sabi
“Your daughter stares,”
my mother whispered;
as she lay naked on the bed.
A smile of pleasure crossed her face
while the nurse
gently caressed her frail body
with a soft, warm sponge.
...
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Categories:
wabi sabi, death, life,
Form: Free verse
Wabi-Sabi
Looking in the mirror,
Looking at yourself, sighing,
Say “she’s more broken
Than the others you see
walking down the street.”
Maybe you won’t say so
When you see their faces
Washed out and pale,
Behind the painted concrete
Cracks do start to break.
So don’t stuff your thin arms,
Flaunt that well in your cheek,
Be proud of the black marks,
By the edge of
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Categories:
wabi sabi, beautiful, beauty, judgement, love,
Form: Free verse
Wabi-sabi
In this world,
we are all transients,
traveling to the beat
of a mortal drum,
on a latent path
that only the souls
can see,
waiting for that moment
when we give back
our borrowed light.
Like a star,
we can shed our light
in the night
and lose our radiance
in the day,
to depend on the sun,
...
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Categories:
wabi sabi, wisdom,
Form: Verse
Wabi Sabi
Kato was a mutt-product:- breeding run amok
No purity meant the pound of death-induction
Only his adoption saved him from that inferno
turning life into moments full of simply-perfect:
Each summer, the sun stroke a furry black hue
Elevating it with a sheer of burgundy elegance
Pauses were paws-aplenty with a trot and stop
Leaves all fallen he sniffed, callings of
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Categories:
wabi sabi, dog,
Form: Free verse
Wabi Sabi and Flow
Imperfection becomes,
the beautiful face of impermanence.
One dying flower,
enlightens a whole field of blooms.
Change gives meaning,
to all that is born to flow.
The river does not ask which way?
The rocky riverbank crumbles,
because the water declares
the unreality of all resistance.
In an imperfect world,
perfection is a form of death,
while death is beyond form,
and so, a chip or crack
in a
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Categories:
wabi sabi, poetry,
Form: Free verse
Wabi - Sabi
We wander through so many gardens,
doting robins, ignoring the crows.
Our personal oasis is an unfinished poem.
Plastic flowers may last longer, but their dead scent,
cannot compare to freesia and frangipani.
In fading grey sunset,
I crumble, crouching in musk air.
An arch frame with withered wood skin
and paint peeling in need of black dye,
but still Shalimar honeysuckle wraps like
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Categories:
wabi sabi, analogy, metaphor, philosophy,
Form: Free verse
Wabi-Sabi
Wabi-Sabi 12-21-23
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Wabi-Sabi
Empty the mirage of perfection
Whose shadow wears scars
Of perpetual broken rainbows –
Cracked rose petals –
Gilded edges joined by hibernation and spring.
A pilgrimage into amnesia
Timeworn victories fade into badges lost to time
Moonlight swallows the waning heart of morning
Sunlight gobbles up unfinished faces of the moon
Storms inhale fragments of sunbows.
Out of exploding ephemeral
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Categories:
wabi sabi, life, seasons,
Form: Free verse
Wabi-sabi
For me you’re designed, mesmeric scarred moon,
grace gleams in the convolute cradle of cyan night,
slithers in the silken sky I create for you,
a turquoise trail you trace in my heart incised.
Thunder cloud surges from the edge of stained night,
the debris of the splintered sky swathes me.
You retreat in the glare of anguish
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Categories:
wabi sabi, analogy, appreciation, love,
Form: Free verse
Wabi Sabi
Nothing can dim the light that shines from within. ~Maya Angelou
You are perfect
in all of your imperfections.
What imperfections?
I ask.
Exactly!
He responds.
it was not true love
the only true love is God
and Christ on the cross
bearing the imperfections
so light can shine out from me
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Categories:
wabi sabi, god, identity, light,
Form: Free verse
Categories:
wabi sabi, emotions, feelings, life,
Form: Free verse
Wabi-sabi
The beauty of the leaves embraced their difference
As they shriveled ‘neath the sap drained Maple
Celebrating their continuum in the soil
A sadness tinged the sun’s smile
The mindless flocks fled, as did my thoughts
In search of kinder climes devoid of tears
Guided through the present by the past
Sifting through the distant clouds of when
Gnarled trees contort ensnared in
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Categories:
wabi sabi, life,
Form: Verse
Wabi-sabi
When he went away, leaving her that day,
She thought her heart would betray…
The way it hurt, the way she wanted him to stay.
When love meant to last all lifelong, like a song,
Joyful and full, then lost in the dark, so wrong,
Leaving her alone and afraid, after he’d strung her along.
When doubts filled her up, after
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Categories:
wabi sabi, appreciation, heartbreak, heartbroken, lost
Form: Rhyme
Wabi-Sabi
youth, where imperfections trip upon each other
and opportunistic peers joyfully celebrate the folly
- glass tree houses be damned...
and - a spun bottle breaks blood brotherhoods
where fragile crevices expose truths and
welcome untested kinships to fill the void.
the leftover baggage - will it be burden or buoyant?
like Scrooge's chains, worked upon - idyllic dreams
...
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Categories:
wabi sabi, life,
Form: Free verse
Wabi-Sabi
Cars are the wind on the streets
semi-truck wheels shriek thunder,
rain shatters against stone and brick walls
on dusty roads, oak trees fence with twigs—
wushu wooden clatters.
Dreadful arrays of dryads
azure and amethyst gossamer haze,
sleek, silken strikes gist an opera of wisteria,
as they sway to silver breeze's sibilant rustles.
They chant lullabies in lyrical lilts of hued iridescence,
of hearth
...
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Categories:
wabi sabi, analogy, appreciation, introspection, nature,
Form: Free verse
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