Category Archives: meditation

March 14, 2023 · 1:35 pm

In This Moment – prose by Paul Vincent Cannon

At dVerse Merril is hosting Prosery (144 words of prose) with an invitation write a piece of prose which must include the line –

“In space in time I sit thousands of feet above the sea.” from ‘Meditation In Sunlight’ by May Sarton.

dVerse Poets – Prosery – Meditation

Photo by Admiral General M. ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ GodShepherdly 33277089*: https://www.pexels.com/photo/photo-of-a-man-sitting-under-the-tree-737586/

“Breathe and let be.” John Kabat-Zinn

In This Moment

In space, in time, I sit thousands of feet above the sea. I can see everything, all things are passing through me, I can feel it all. In this moment I weep for the joy of everything, while yet I am weeping in sadness, a grief for all things. I notice the tiny wren’s nest, the perfection of a dewdrop, the great leviathan in the deep, a robber fly in the damp corner. That child’s face who is its heart, a mixture of feelings finding a way. The noise of humanity, louder than any nest of squawking hatchlings celebrating life and the urgency of desire. Here I lightly sit, taking it all in, right in that tender moment between the inward and outward breath. It is unconscious, beyond the mind. There is no soaring, no looking down, this is embodied, the journey deeply within.

Copyright 2023 ©️Paul Vincent Cannon

All Rights Reserved ®️

23 Comments

Filed under meditation, mindfulness, prose, quote

Tagged as , , , ,

March 9, 2023 · 1:27 pm

Then And Now – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon

Photo: motionarray.com

“Gratitude is when memory is stored in the heart and not in the mind.” Lionel Hampton

Then And Now

I knelt
under the washing line
in meditation
plucking sun burned weeds
from cracks.

Overhead the washing
flicked,
crisp,
cracked
in the breeze.

Then 
I was running,
through familiar grass
with summer in my hair,
and hope in my heart.

Now
I return,
walking towards the day
with autumn on my face,
and hope ever in my heart.


Copyright 2023 ©️Paul Vincent Cannon
All Rights Reserved ®️

12 Comments

Filed under awareness, Free Verse, life, meditation, memory, poem, quote

Tagged as , ,

December 16, 2022 · 2:52 pm

In My Springtime – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon

At dVerse Grace is hosting Meeting the Bar with an invitation to write a poem in the Zen style. For more detail and examples please follow the link below.

dVerse Poets – MTB – Zen Poetry

“When the body and mind are at peace, all things appear as they are: perfect, complete, lacking nothing.” Dogen

In My Springtime

I saw a road and 
I set out on its journey,
seeking the songs of magpies,
a spring soliloquy of life.

In the walking
the road was not a road,
the journey was not a journey,
there were no songs of magpies.

A little further and
the road was a road again,
the journey was mine and I 
began to understand the songs of magpies.


Copyright 2022 ©Paul Vincent Cannon
All Rights Reserved ®️

28 Comments

Filed under awareness, Free Verse, life, meditation, mindfulness, poem, quote, Zen Poem

Tagged as , , , ,

November 15, 2022 · 12:48 pm

Letting Go My Thoughts – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon

#2022 November PAD Chapbook Challenge

Day 15. 15.11.22

Prompt: write a thoughtful and/or thoughtless poem.

Letting Go My Thoughts

When I finally unpack the weekly shop,
so many different things I
put them all in their rightful places,
and then I close the cupboard doors,
sometimes with a sigh,
not resignation,
more a sense of anticipation.

As the candle flickers shadowing the room,
I close the door of my mind
having put aside all the stuff of the day,
and centered,
I repeat my word,
softly letting go of my thoughts
moving with the great tide.


Copyright 2022 ©Paul Vincent Cannon
All Rights Reserved ®️

12 Comments

Filed under Free Verse, meditation, mindfulness, November 2022 PAD Chapbook Challenge, poem

Tagged as , , , ,

August 2, 2022 · 3:06 pm

The Whole View – Haibun by Paul Vincent Cannon

At dVerse Merril is hosting Haibun Monday with an invitation to look up, and write about the experience.

dVerse Poets – Haibun – Look Up

Photo: Bluff Knoll, first you have to go down before you start to climb up the mount, here covered in fog and rain. This was a great days climb and well worth the experience.

“Everything in the universe has a rhythm, everything dances.” Maya Angelou 

The Whole View

My experiences of looking up are experiences of momentarily leaving myself, placing myself in the cosmos, letting go any singular rootedness and finding community with all things and all beings, animate and inanimate, rocks and trees, mountains, the sky and all it holds. I don't feel diminished by the bigness of it all, I feel included, and I feel moved to include all things. In that sense of acceptance comes a deep sense of harmony and belonging for me.

To look at the grandeur of a tree and trace its linear circuitry, to reach out to the sky and know its infinity, to view the mountain and feel its strength and presence, are deeply moving for me. Looking up at this mountain reminds I am not the centre of life, not even my own, I am simply a part of the whole that seeks life together. To look up at this mountain is a reminder that I have no control over it and no need to do so. The call of this mountain is to take pleasure in its gift of diverse experiences that enable me to know a little more about life and who I am and a lot of letting go and not knowing.

Looking up the mount
I saw the heavens opened
jasmine tea goes cold 


Copyright 2022 ©Paul Vincent Cannon
All Rights Reserved ®️

30 Comments

Filed under bush walking, ecology, Haibun, Haiku, life, meditation, mindfulness, Mountaineering, nature, quote

Tagged as , , , ,

April 30, 2022 · 3:16 pm

And Stopped – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon

Photo: Anastasia Lashkevich on pexels.com

“Almost everything will work if you unplug it for a few minutes … including you.” Anne Lamott

And Stopped

You can keep going,
you really can,
sweating long days,
wringing out your energy,
defeating your body,
pushing,
pushing,
pushing uphill,
against the tide,
against the wind,
the clock always ticking,
mind racing circles,
circles racing minds,
total confusion reigns,
pushing we go,
but, what if
we went anti-clockwise,
wore underwear on our head,
turned down slow street,
blew bubbles,
tapped balloons,
did a handstand in the rain,
laughed,
sat,
and stopped pushing?


Copyright 2022 ©Paul Vincent Cannon
All Rights Reserved ®️

35 Comments

Filed under awareness, Free Verse, life, meditation, mindfulness, poem, quote

Tagged as , ,

December 2, 2021 · 3:55 pm

This Trick – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon

Photo: Kalayanayahaluwo at pixabay.com

“By experience we find out a short way by a long wandering.” Roger Ascham

This Trick

This trick, which is so startling,
a curiosity without answers,
my greatest reason for hope,
the ever developing question,
a gift of discovery to share,
to sit and be unfathomed in
unrestrained meanders free
of encumbered expectations,
a life unfastened, ready to be
explored as a new future. 


Copyright 2021 ©Paul Vincent Cannon
All Rights Reserved ®

20 Comments

Filed under awareness, Free Verse, life, meditation, poem, quote

Tagged as , ,

November 26, 2021 · 2:25 pm

Something – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon

At dVerse Mish is hosting Open Link Night – posting our own choice.

dVerse Poets – Open Link Night

Photo: Devanath at pixabay.com

“Real awakening comes with an inherent sense of integrity.” Adyashanti

Something

Something came out of me largely dark,
the success of a poultice of intentions,
avoiding, of course, any hemlock or such,
an ending far too premature for the journey.

The success of a poultice of intentions
and is restricted only by somatic fears,
an ending far too premature for the journey
should fear be allowed to take centre stage.

And is restricted only by somatic fears
where the body lays and lies so innocently
should fear be allowed to take centre stage,
would my centre hold in glorious duality?

Where the body lays and lies so innocently,
avoiding, of course, any hemlock or such,
would my centre hold in glorious duality,
something came out of me darkly large.


Copyright 2021 ©Paul Vincent Cannon
All Rights Reserved ®

45 Comments

Filed under awareness, life, meditation, Pantoum, poem, quote

Tagged as , , , ,

October 30, 2021 · 2:45 pm

For One Brief Glimpse – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon

Photo: found on pinterest.com

“Then stirs the feeling infinite, so felt in solitude, where we are least alone.” Lord Byron

For One Brief Glimpse

The ambered silence of sun's departure a
most glorious death the colour of woven
meditation rising from the russet humus of
solitude's joyful farewell, life's tributary
offering pause for breath along the plane
of letting-go the bubble and babble of 
fakery, prostituting the real for one brief
glimpse of an unmemed self.


Copyright 2021 ©Paul Vincent Cannon
All Rights Reserved ®

18 Comments

Filed under Free Verse, life, meditation, mindfulness, passion, poem, quote

Tagged as , ,

October 11, 2021 · 2:57 pm

Nature Reflecting – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon

Photo: Oak Park, a wetland reserve between Goomalling and Wongan Hills.

“One’s destination is never a place, but a new way of things.” Henry Miller (Probably riffing on Marcel Proust’s comment)

Nature Reflecting

Nature took a photograph
and held it steady for me to see
how water is contemplative,
reflecting what it sees in its
moments of undistracted, centred, 
stillness, embracing the beauty of
all its surrounds, holding the sacred 
space of song and winter's leafy
bounty, that I might rejoice in the
conversation we subsequently
engaged with deep, silent passion.


Copyright 2021 ©Paul Vincent Cannon
All Rights Reserved ®

31 Comments

Filed under bush walking, Country, Free Verse, meditation, mindfulness, nature, passion, poem, quote

Tagged as , ,