Category Archives: meditation

April 27, 2021 · 1:58 pm

The Present Moment – Haibun by Paul Vincent Cannon

At dVerse Frank is hosting the Haibun (prose + haiku) with an invitation to write about the present moment.

dVerse Poets – Haibun – The Present Moment

Photo: Patrizia08, pixabay.com

“If you are depressed, you are living in the past. If you are anxious, you are living in the future. But, if you are at peace, you are living in the present.” Lao Tzu

The Present Moment

If I try to, I cannot reach back into all my yesterdays and reclaim them. And, even if I could, all that I would achieve is a reconstruction of days as perfect past moments. So I cannot reach back and hold any moment as it was. Besides I don't want to, the past is the past and best left as formative memory for better or worse.

The future eludes me in smoke and mirrors, the pathway is unclear, no plan is foolproof. Besides, if I could see even just a little ahead I would be adjusting my approach towards the perfect experience.

The most abiding feeling I have is of the fleeting present moment. That moment, the blinking of an eye, the moment between the inward and outward breath, which passes so quickly. These moments come and go and I have learned to treasure them before they slip into yesterday. But, to be in the present moment, I have to be present. 


under the branches
my inward and outward breath
present moment held.

©Paul Vincent Cannon

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February 23, 2021 · 1:57 pm

To Go – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon

At dVerse De is hosting Quadrille with an invitation to use some form of the word Go!

dVerse Poets – Quadrille – Going, Going, Gone Poeming

Photo: Sam Carter, at unsplash.com

“Without reflection we go blindly on our way ….” Margaret J. Wheatley

To Go

To be or to go,
do I need to go,
do I want to go
anywhere at all,
the mountains in the 
distance called me to 
their high places, but I 
preferred to go to the 
valleys of my heart
and dwell in presence.

©Paul Vincent Cannon

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February 5, 2021 · 3:37 pm

My Quiet Treasury – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon

At dVerse Lillian is hosting Open Link Night. dVerse Poets – OLN

Photo: pixabay.com

“When you do things from your soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy.” Rumi

My Quiet Treasury

I sat inside my quiet treasury of peaceful self
amidst a field of reliquaries sculpted from dreams,
with the eyes of the hidden ones watching closely,
sentinels of the night in communities of acceptance.

Amidst a field of reliquaries sculpted from dreams,
along narrow stone paths of adventure unknown,
sentinels of the night in communities of acceptance
who silently speak in defence of all that is valued.

Along narrow stone paths of adventure unknown
I plumbed the forest's deep guilty pleasures
who silently speak in defence of all that is valued,
and offered as generous joy overflowing.

I plumbed the forest's deep guilty pleasures
with the eyes of the hidden ones watching closely,
and offered as generous joy overflowing,
I sat inside my quiet treasury of peaceful self.

©Paul Vincent Cannon

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October 29, 2020 · 2:51 pm

She Went Deep – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon

VJs Weekly Challenge – Frost

Photo: activenorth.se

“What good is the warmth of summer, without the cold of winter to give it sweetness.” John Steinbeck

She Went Deep

She went deep, 
so deep that she opened the door 
of summer's heat to winter's cool
in a flash of such interior calm that
time slowed down a pulse of almost
nil and a half where the externals 
were clear for the first time and
she slipped away inside, distilling
everything to an unsurpassable 
peace of body held as she withdrew
the world from her heart under a 
canopy of frost so cool, the heat of 
life could not seduce and melt her.

©Paul Vincent Cannon

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October 19, 2020 · 3:43 pm

The Whole Circus – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon

Image: http://www.ivyexec.com

“Do you pay regular visits to yourself? Start now.” Rumi

The Whole Circus

I like that my dystopian corners are quieter,
and calm still weaves through the convoluted
clutter of the greek tragedies  of my life
that disturb the meadows of my mind,
as wind excoriates dry grass in late summer
of the distended days of fiction on fire with
lacerated confusion, so I simply shut the 
door and sat without expectation, letting 
the whole circus pass me by.

©Paul Vincent Cannon

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October 4, 2020 · 4:36 pm

Present – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon

Photo: Ormiston Gorge, NT

“From out of all the many particulars comes oneness, and out of oneness comes all the many particulars.” Heraclitus

Present

I sat in paradox and
watched my consolations
wash through me as water
runs through fingers in a 
nothingness of interiority,
a mystical, infused experience
that left me lighter and present
to myself in the lee of my desire
that once dark cloud now
dispersed.

©Paul Vincent Cannon

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September 17, 2020 · 2:30 pm

Of Threads – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon

Image: tomorrowstarted.com

“Breathe and let be.” Jon Cabat-Zinn

Of Threads

The point at which the
moment disappeared
is lost to me,
all that lingers is the feeling
of threads slipping, loosing, 
releasing me into a floating
drift in a space between
where I stretched out across
the sky so lightly that the stars
passed through me as
intangible procession,
and as the last thread unwound
I found myself beyond myself, 
I found myself true.

©Paul Vincent Cannon

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May 11, 2020 · 2:18 pm

Nothing – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon

photo-1558300629-7157feef55f8.jpeg

Photo: unsplash.com

 

“Such silence has an actual sound, the sound of disappearance.”  Suzanne Finnamore

Nothing

The mist kissed the water tenderly
and held me prisoner in the moment
that must never be squandered,
my breathing as fragile as the air,
waiting for an ending that will not come,
pulled into the juncture of realms,
lost in worlds where no thief resides
save that of my own inattention,
but I turn from that page,
even from the tempting words,
here I want for nothing.

©Paul Vincent Cannon

Paul, pvcann.com

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May 6, 2020 · 3:03 pm

There Are Moments – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon

dVerse Poets – Poetics – Solitude

Bjorn at dVerse is hosting poetics and has invited us to write about solitude while trying to avoid using the word itself.6AE55DF0-5D2C-420E-A901-F4DF5F165703.jpeg

Photo: Somewhere between Merredin and Menzies. The bush is my best solitude.

 

“The more ways we have to connect, the more many of us seem desperate to unplug.” 
Pico Iyer

There Are Moments

I gather myself in this place
where the quiet examines me,
knowing that I yearn for it
as a lover yearns for completion,
even so, I avert myself at times
from the uncomfortable rawness of
the self intimacy of such knowing,
preferring to skirt the edges
below the mask so worn,
and yet, there are moments,
fleeting, like the pause of a breath,
within which an elusive thought
awakens my soul.

©Paul Vincent Cannon

Paul, pvcann.com

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January 13, 2020 · 3:53 pm

To That Place Again – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon

VJs Weekly Challenge – Subtraction

manstandingsunsetcreditShutterstockcom.jpg

Photo: beliefnet.com

 

“God is not found in the soul by adding anything but by a process of subtraction.”  Meister Eckhart

 

To That Place Again

How many valleys and ravines have been
that perfect sense of standing on the edge
seeking subtraction by addition,
rather than simply surrendering
the me of me for the real me,
unravelling the complexity
of my false true self,
offering substitutes two sizes down,
placating the demons of acceptance,
rummaging the garbage of life
for hollow platitudes,
a reductio ad absurdum
that returns me unfulfilled
to that place again
of self emptying towards
onement.

©Paul Vincent Cannon

Paul, pvcann.com.

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