Category Archives: mindfulness

There’s A Certain Bliss In Losing Time – Prosery by Paul Vincent Cannon

At dVerse Lisa is hosting Prosery (144 words of prose) with an invitation to use the line “On this day, without a date, on a back street, dusky” from the poem ‘My Friend Someone’ by Charles Simic.

dVerse Poets – Prosery – Charles Simic: Finding Our Pack

Photo: Taking a slow walk in the State Forest at Kirrup.

“People create all kind of fancy watches and clocks, never stopping to realise that they’re building monuments to the greatest of all thieves.” K. Martin Beckner

There’s A Certain Bliss In Losing Time

Some time ago, over three thousand years, give or take, Joshua claimed that God stopped time. I’m really not bothered whether or not that’s true. I’m captivated by the possibility. I have days where I’d really like to stop time so that there is nothing. I don’t want for something, I want for nothing. There’s a certain bliss in losing time, especially when even self is forgotten and, no one, no thing intrudes, not even myself. The bliss is accentuated in knowing I could stay there or, I could come back at any second, after all, nothing is a choice. Propinquity, that’s the thing, being close to stopping time.

Joshua also claimed that when God stopped time, a whole day was lost. Lost days have no name, no date, so on this day, without a date, on a back street, dusky, I walk into nothing.

Copyright 2023 ©️Paul Vincent Cannon

All Rights Reserved ®️

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Love Wins Out – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon

“World belongs to humanity, not this leader, that leader or that king or prince or religious leader.” Dalai Lama

Love Wins Out

The separation of peoples,
the division of colours,
the disappearance of culture,
the incarceration of peoples,
the eruption of concrete walls,
the ranking of right religious views,
the diminishing of political views,
the eradication of human rights,
the ending of the individual,
the destruction of community,
all have been tried,
all have,
in the long term,
ultimately failed
the power of love and connection.


Copyright 2023 ©️Paul Vincent Cannon
All Rights Reserved ®️

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Filed under Free Verse, injustice, life, love, mindfulness, poem, politics, protest, quote

And What Now? – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon

“You and I are all as much continuous with the physical universe as a wave is continuous with the ocean.” Alan Watts

And What Now?

Time,
what a beautiful intersection,
crossroad of divine encounter -
what happens now?
An irrational search for the
superstition of reason or
immersion in breathing,
pathway to dreamworlds,
opportunities of discovery
extending forward into the 
world by vulnerability,
and what now,
do I fall in love?


Copyright 2023 ©️Paul Vincent Cannon
All Rights Reserved ®️ 

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The Moment – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon

“Every day is a journey, and the journey itself is home.” Matsuo Basho

The Moment 

Sitting
at day's end,
a belated summer inferno,

I should pack away the chairs,
but why end the moment.

The beer bottle is sad,
tools still on the ground,

I notice a rogue sucker on the lemon tree.

Perhaps it is time for me to go.

A fantail twits and flits mosquitos,
the setting sun suggests a verse,
O to be bitten by such love.


Copyright 2023 ©️Paul Vincent Cannon
All Rights Reserved ®️ 

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Joining The Flow – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon

“Be the flow.” Jay-Z

Joining The Flow

The long ache that desires to flow
into the sea of subconscious tides,
a weightless journey being
carried on the back of sighs,
breathless, with expectation
in a long storied epic of
being born a fish on land
who discovers the dream,
written long ago, where
thoughts give way to feeling,
and all fish are one.


Copyright 2023 ©️Paul Vincent Cannon
All Rights Reserved ®️ 

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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

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An Ever Changing Past – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon

Photo found at careersinpsychology.com

“The past is never where you think you left it.” Katherine Anne Porter

An Ever Changing Past

Have you noticed that memory is always now,
that the now that is now is not the now of today,
or the now of yesterday which is but a memory,
and let's not even consider the now of tomorrow,
for who knows what that will conjure,
but it will be a memory that is the past
in the present tomorrow,
the big question intrudes,
what is it that is memory?
Is it the present always making sense of 
an ever changing past?



Copyright 2023 ©️Paul Vincent Cannon
All Rights Reserved ®️ 

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What Would That World Look Like – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon

Image by John Hain from Pixabay

“The greatness of a community is most accurately measured by the compassionate actions of its members.” Coretta Scott King

What Would That World Look Like?

I wonder, often
what a softer world would be like,
where no one needed a suburban fortress 
or to defend their gender choices,
to be free live their skin wherever,
and hold a view without it being 
fundamental to not sitting together,
being free of geographical mindedness,
stepping out of claustrophobic profiles
and poisonous ideological immaturities.

What if we held each other like a new born,
or trusted each other like a first kiss,
took a risk on the adventure of discovering
the stranger we are in other's eyes,
living beyond the certainties of knowing,
to look into another and begin to see life,
refusing to avoid the words of neighbours,
instead, listening to the novellas of journey,
sharing the narratives of uncertainty,
feeling the depth of their pain.
What would that world look like?


Copyright 2023 ©️Paul Vincent Cannon
All Rights Reserved ®️ 

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When I Think Of Them – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon

“Death is but a transition ….” Elizabeth Kubler-Ross

When I Think Of Them 

When I think of them,
and I often do,
that great cloud of saints,
I wonder,
sometimes aloud,
what it might be like in that
mystery of the great transition.
I like to think they are smiling
as they look on
amused by our flail at life,
our constant stab in the dark,
a reminder of their own
incomplete efforts
to perfect life.





Copyright 2023 ©️Paul Vincent Cannon
All Rights Reserved ®️ 

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Filed under death, Free Verse, life, mindfulness, poem

My Niggle – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon

Image by holdendrils from Pixabay 

The political masquerade of Scientism is killing science.” Thomas P. Seager

My Niggle

I'm confident that the golden rule is universal,
that's meta, a lingua franca so to speak,
and there are other values and principles 
common across the world like
good manners and non-harming.
It would be true to say that, thankfully,
religion continues to be positively deconstructed,
and folklores have been successfully mined
for nuggets of valuable experience,
while science has blossomed,
bearing much fruit for its labour.
But there's a niggle,
I detect a small dark shadow of ism at its edge,
a fundamentalism lurks in the labs,
wanting to preach like some temperance preacher
about the evils of the seven deadly sins
which prevent us from peak health, 
longer living, and productivity,
salvation by economics.
All doubters (who are true scientists, and theologians)
will be put to shame,
guilty sinners no less,
but I don't need your sermons,
just give me the science.


Copyright 2023 ©Paul Vincent Cannon 
All Rights Reserved ®️ 


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Filed under Free Verse, life, mindfulness, philosophy, poem, quote, Science