I am currently away travelling the Australian Bush and in and out of net coverage, I’m eight days in and ten to go, so I’ll see all of you lovely readers soon when I return.
Regards, Paul
Currently Away
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Beyond This Moment – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon
At dVerse Mish is hosting poetics with an invitation to write a poem using three words or more from a selection. My choices are: Orenda (mystical force), Querencia (place from where strength is drawn) and Isolophilia (preference fro solitude).
dVerse Poets - Poetics - There's a word for that "They simply never understand, do they, that sometimes solitude is one of the most beautiful things on earth?" Charles Bukowski
Beyond This Moment Orenda down the slopes of mountain minds and valley redoubts of no intention, comes opportunity, that moment of desire, a la querencia, the turning of soul for home in a quietude of frame, longing in sighs for an end to rivers of noise while rejoicing in shivers of gaze, a patient isolophilia that sits so lightly it slips easily past our defences and undoes the palisades of the heart, inviting dreams and other worlds. Copyright 2022 ©Paul Vincent Cannon All Rights Reserved ®️
Filed under awareness, Free Verse, life, Philosophy/Theology, poem, quote, Spirituality
The Real Work – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon
At dVerse Lisa is hosting the Quadrille (44 words) with an invitation to write about Work.
dVerse Poets – Quadrille – Work
“The mind’s first step to self-awareness must be through the body.” George A. Sheehan
The Real Work Living ever forwards, as if there was no past, no questions to ask of ourselves, never seeing how we are and how we affect others is a profound dis-ease, but to sit and observe and notice what arises, surely, this is the real work. Copyright 2022 ©Paul Vincent Cannon All Rights Reserved ®️
In The Forest – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon
In this poem I have riffed on a line from ‘Sometimes’ by David Whyte the line is: “Sometimes if you move carefully through the forest.”
“If you go off into a far, far, forest and get very quiet, you’ll come to understand that you’re connected to everything.” Alan Watts
In The Forest Sometimes if you move carefully through the forest, you might just hear your own dreamings in the wind rustled leaves, or see the loud beauty of a dew drop preserved in such silence, it is pristine at noon, perhaps too the interventions of the raven's musings might raise resonance of feeling, like the touch of damp humous to the nose, or moss to the skin, eucalyptus flavoured rain drops splattering from leaves, sending memories, inspiring ideas, leading me onwards. Copyright 2022 ©Paul Vincent Cannon All Rights Reserved ®️ Below is Whyte's poem: Sometimes by David Whyte Sometimes if you move carefully through the forest breathing like the ones in the old stories who could cross a shimmering bed of dry leaves without a sound, you come to a place whose only task is to trouble you with tiny but frightening requests conceived out of nowhere but in this place beginning to lead everywhere. Requests to stop what you are doing right now, and to stop what you are becoming while you do it, questions that can make or unmake a life, questions that have patiently waited for you, questions that have no right to go away.
Filed under awareness, bush walking, Forest, Free Verse, life, nature, poem, quote
I Am A Thousand Winds That Blow – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon
“True courage is like a kite; a contrary wind raises it higher.” John Petit-Senn
For this poem I took a line from Mary Frye’s ‘Do Not Stand At My Grave And Weep.’ to riff with, mainly because it is a poem that I wrestle with, I experience Frye’s poem as wistful and I wanted to write a poem that expresses the reality of death but also honours the sense of spirit, of afterlife.
The line I have taken is “I am a thousand winds that blow.”
I Am A Thousand Winds That Blow
I am here and I am there, in life, in death, I am everywhere, I'm in the ground, I'm in the urn, in my bed I twist and turn. I cannot deny that I am alive, always buzzing I love to thrive I cannot deny that I did die, so mourn away and light the fire. As the ash floats on the air, don't embellish with too much flair, let me go where I must go, I am a thousand winds that blow. Copyright 2022 ©Paul Vincent Cannon All Rights Reserved ®️ The original poem is below
Do Not Stand At My Grave And Weep by Mary Frye Do not stand at my grave and weep; I am not there. I do not sleep. I am a thousand winds that blow. I am the diamond glints on snow. I am the sunlight on ripened grain. I am the gentle autumn rain. When you awaken in the morning's hush I am the swift uplifting rush Of quiet birds in circled flight. I am the soft stars that shine at night. Do not stand at my grave and cry; I am not there. I did not die.
What Words – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon
“Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness.” Bertrand Russell
What Words? What words carry love that can ease past pathologies of self-doubt or loathing, even shame, by which one cannot possibly be equal to the feelings, let alone the carriage of expectations that inevitably seem to follow and the constructs that haunt our sense of hidden self, safe self, not yet ready for this turmoiled world of risk. What words carry love? Copyright 2022 ©Paul Vincent Cannon All Rights Reserved ®️
Filed under Free Verse, life, love, poem, quote
There Used To Be Twenty – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon
At dVerse Linda is hosting Open Link Night when we are invited to post a poem of our choosing.
“I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity.” Edgar Allan Poe
There Used To Be Twenty I'm having a garage sale, my sanity's going cheap, and my vanity is worn so make me an offer and I'll throw in a few lost aspirations and some fragments of jealousy, there's a chunk of broken innocence, sadly no spare parts, though I can offer bits of placated ego that might help patch that mess, and there's a box of baggage for when you're haunted, and a couple of packets of mixed nuts and a bag of marbles, there used to be twenty but five are missing, cash only. Copyright 2022 ©Paul Vincent Cannon All Rights Reserved ®️
Filed under awareness, Free Verse, life, poem, psychology
Just Stop – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon
“All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” Blaise Pascal
Just Stop I watched him for a while, he didn't seem agitated, but he fidgeted, moved, seemed unsettled the whole time he sat, though sat is moot, he couldn't take his eyes or his ears away from his phone, his fingers constantly caressed his chin, his legs tangoed on their own under the table, I speculated, of course, it was his way of coping in public, who knows, but it's plausible, even so, some people just cannot sit and savour their coffee, which was always an excuse to stop and smell the beans. Copyright 2022 ©Paul Vincent Cannon All Rights Reserved ®️
I Wonder Which Way? – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon
At dVerse guest host Christopher is hosting Poetics with an invitation to write about choice.
dVerse Poets – Poetics – Choice
“Freedom would be not to choose between black and white but to abjure such prescribed choices.” Theodor W. Adorno
I Wonder Which Way? If only I could decide, decide I would though, I note, the cheshire cat held no particular view. A coin, a card, a fleece might do, but at some point the trolley bus comes for us all and, though it doesn't matter, one way or another the dilemma must be resolved or forever remain in stasis, immobile, arrested, atrophied, is it fear? We can only choose one way at a time, and go we must, but I wonder which way? Copyright 2022 ©Paul Vincent Cannon All Rights Reserved ®️
Filed under Free Verse, life, poem, quote
Shedding – Haibun by Paul Vincent Cannon
At dVerse Mish is hosting Haibun Monday with an invitation to write about Shelter.
dVerse Poets – Haibun – Give Me Shelter
“A house is a home when it shelters the body and comforts the soul.” Phillip Moffit
Shedding
I sought the rusted sheets with popped springhead nails that constituted a place of imperfect refuge, where the wind rattled the loosening sheets with devilish thoughts of crisis, and the rain laughed in penetrating bullets of inaccuracy that threatened reality. The corrie strained and shifted with metallic moans that wrenched my gut as the rain drenched my sense of doubt.
In the shed I shed tears of sorrow as the storm passed both within and without, and I longed for the assurance of summer’s dry calm, that quiet air of warm repose offering slow, delicate thoughts of life so different to this winter of my soul. In letting go I found a peace of incomplete and imperfect arrival, with none of the expected sophistication of a revival of soul, just the plain ordinariness of self understanding.
In the shed I shed my skins of old, like a python letting a season’s past regress, and the salt that burned my cheeks retired. And though the memories are retained I no longer own them. This place of shelter from the elements is shelter from my storm.
Winter's rusted sheets let water slowly leak in my soul is hidden Copyright 2022 ©Paul Vincent Cannon All Rights Reserved ®️
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