AND SO DEAR TOAD

Asleep upon the forest floor,

 A stroke across my face... one touch, no more

An alchemy of one plus one... a drop of dew....

A whisper once, then twice... oh, is it you?  

A place I passed a thousand times before 

I saw nothing but the sketches of my tiny mind.

Now I see the glisten gloom, the shimmer shakes

The sudden form the very stillness takes.

& so, dear toad, I come at last to thee

With jaguar eyes & softest gaze I see

Your throat as white as the Milky Way

Your eyes black pools in midnight caves

Your jewelled skin as ancient as a newborn babe

The sacrament of sun; at once, at once, I am awake!

With jaguar eyes & softest gaze I see

& so, dear toad, I come at last to thee

& so, dear toad, I come at last to thee

DAY DREAMS of DENNIS

   My daughter Cecilia had a gentle cat named Dennis. His fur was soft... white as an April bunny rabbit. He had a pink nose. Alas, to escape the noises of the day, he climbed into the still-warm, wheel well of the neighbour’s car. When the engine started the inevitable happened. Mercifully it was instantaneous. I paint this little homage to the brief life of a beautiful creature for my beautiful daughter. 

    I often wonder what cats think of while lying in the dust-moted columns of the afternoon sun. They know an ancient wisdom. House cats meditate on memories of the life of the big predator felines.. leopards, ocelots & sabre-tooths. In my dreams sun-spangled jaguars drift in the shadows of the rain forest & watch my every move. My ancestors carved images of the Jaguar-Gods… half men… half cats into the walls of their Sun-temples. If I stop thinking for a moment & let my mind slip free I remember the day dreams of all those cats.

SOLSTICE

I love the moment, the hour, the day when the sunlight starts to come back. The Winter Solstice. St. Lucy's day. Advent. The darkness on the Prairies in December nudges me into the folds of my parka... into the cushions of my sofa in the chilly studio... into the deep caves of my melancholy. Today I breathe easier. Morning comes moments earlier. Time itself inspires... expires & I feel the opening up of possibility once again. Our solar system unfurls the overture of life returning in the lengthening of days. I worry too much. Life is so precious... so beautiful. I have the great gift of days ahead of me. I am releasing the knots from my brow..the kinks in my soul & celebrating the sun rising anew from the cold white fields of Saskatchewan, like the Phoenix lifting  from the ashes. I am so glad to be alive today. Yes. That is my word today. YES! Today & always.... YES!!!

SUMMER OF LOVE

1967 was  a pivot year. Everything changed. I was alive. I was there. It was the end of innocence…. the beginning of what we are now becoming. That was the year of the great American car… the chariot of the American Dream. The car as the machine of destiny… speed, beauty, grace, steel & glass. The Mustang. The Cougar. The Charger. The SS Chevelle. You could fall in love with a car that year. You could fall in love with humanity that year. The fruits of civilization seemed tangible. At the wheel of an internal combustion engine. Power at the tips of your toes. The sky blue and vast. The full moon still unblemished…. virginal.  The air pure. The highways sketched like silver threads out to the horizon. On the Road… born to be wild. It all changed after that…. it all changed. A car means something different now. We are different. The innocence is ended. We are starting to know ourselves as we truly are. The road still stretches out ahead. Does the sun rise?  Does the sun set?

BIG BANG

SOURCE

The Fundamental certainty I return to... the source of the Creation... the underlying field that holds everything in its gaze is constituted of two principles.... Love & Light. The permutations, temporary patterns of the manifestation (especially in the human realm) are transitory & ephemeral like the ripples that shiver across the surface of the still ocean at dawn.  I am often lost in the chatter of the day to day.. the details of my short story. The dark turbulence & tribulations of the history of our entire civilization is hardly more lasting. When I stop & look inward I return to the place I have always been. At the Source.  That Source is Still but it is not empty. The radiance is boundless. Love & Light bathe the distant circumference of all that is.

PRESENCE OF HEART

The ways of the world have always been turbulent, full of discord, hatred & violence. Hatred & violence beget hatred & violence. The response to violence is not more violence but loving-kindness, compassion & a genuine intention to understand & to heal. The still source at the centre of Creation generates the field of love. The field is ever present & is the true nature of this Universe. Like a magnetic field it manifests as living, breathing love when sentient beings (you & I no less) manifest love in their being & becoming...as we approach the field. Evil is the state of being so far removed from the field’s Source there is no effect of the field. It exists as an absence not a presence... a distance not a closeness.  The response to violence is loving-kindness, compassion & awareness. We have just entered the next Age… the Age of Awakening. There are bound to be growing pains. Recognize them… allow them to play  out… enter back into the clarity.