Poems
Always, throughout my years,
I was prepared to spend
long hours looking.
Just looking.
Stars, raindrop
on a twig,
a spider’s web,
stripes on a blade of grass,
the seedhead and the bee.
Mountain, leopard, cloud.
Wind and water. Wheat.
Who will do things?
How will they get done
if you’re a dreamer?
If everyone …
So the story ran.
The hours were truant, stolen,
rumoured to be lost.
But still I sought them out,
stubbornly, hungrily.
Now I know
these were the only hours
that were right.
All bustle, bother, wringing
of hands
has blown out of time.
And here I am, still
kneeling by a flower,
steeped
in eternity: home.
Lynne Bryer
(Photograph: pdphoto.org)
The time has come.
At last
This is our time.
It flows
Around and in and through our lives.
This timeless time for which we sought
And struggled in the past and grasped in glimpses.
Promised scenes, arcadias
And “might have beens” dissolve
As we become
Of timelessness a part.
That innocence
That everlasting Now
Is here with us
And we are in the midst
Deep
In the calyx
Of that Heart.
LV
(Photograph courtesy of geocities.com)
Love all God’s creations,
Both the whole and every grain of sand.
Love every leaf, every ray of light.
Love the animals, love the plants,
Love each separate thing.
If you love each thing
You will see the mystery of God in all.
Feodor Dostoyevsky (1821-1881), Realised Russian author
(Photograph curtesy of Paul Candlin and the Australian Department
of Environment and Heritage)
Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts.
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
Which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
And He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.
From The Prophet by Kahil Gibran