Category Archives: Spirituality

September 7, 2022 · 2:40 pm

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 ®️

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August 16, 2022 · 1:38 pm

Being Sung To Life – prosery by Paul Vincent Cannon

At dVerse Lisa is hosting Prosery with an invitation to write a piece of prose (144 words) including a line from the ‘Chambered Nautilus’ by Oliver Wendell Holmes Snr.

The line is: “Through the deep caves of thought I hear a voice that sings.”

dVerse Poets – Prosery – A Voice That Sings

“Practice listening to your intuition, your inner voice; ask questions, be curious …” Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Being Sung To Life

I’m not sure how long I sat, or conscious of the passage of the sky twins, sun and moon, or that I’d strayed from where I’d begun. Neither hunger nor other need pressed upon me as I Travelled my mind freely. Having lost my original intention, which I noticed was neither good or ill, it just was, I lost myself in myself seeking pieces of something that would make a picture, no matter how abstract.

I sifted and rolled thoughts as sweet things on my tongue, taking pleasure with each one. Initially this maze was a swirling mass, then suddenly, through the deep caves of thought I hear a voice that sings my secret name. Just that. Nothing else was sung, but I implicitly understood its energy. Nothing was given, yet I received so much. There is a wholeness when being sung to life.

Copyright 2022 ©Paul Vincent Cannon

All Rights Reserved ®️

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July 7, 2022 · 2:25 pm

This Place – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon

Photo: Another sunrise over the Blackwood River, always the hope of a new day, a beginning.

“To live without hope is to cease to live.” Fyodor Dostoevsky

This Place

I want to touch this moment
of winter's sun bleached sky
the butterflies and the life-giving 
rains of plenty collecting generously
along my awakening path,
to embrace this stasis of feeling
welling up past my words,
which are full without sound,
moving past the sweeping edge
of life that sits openly outside my
door and take off my shoes to walk 
this sacred ground, the place of 
discovery, catching my breath
between sorrow and love,  
inviting me to a wholeness of
questions where answers are
never sought.


Copyright 2022 ©Paul Vincent Cannon
All Rights Reserved ®️

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June 14, 2022 · 9:47 am

How Can I Spell You? – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon

At dVerse Sanaa is hosting the Quadrille (44 words) with an invitation to write using one or all of the meanings of the world spell.

dVerse Poets – Quadrille – Casting A Poetic Spell

Photo by darksouls1 at pixabay.com

“Every spell is a journey.” Lawren Leo

How Can I Spell You?

Samhain's thinness is an invitation
to rend the tissue between worlds,
she came at noon to smudge my door
and wait the moon to pass,
that hour came and our worlds collided,
by dawn I was spent,
her spell ended,
and she had gone.


Copyright 2022 ©Paul Vincent Cannon
All Rights Reserved ®️

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December 7, 2021 · 3:03 pm

Honour For The Stolen – Prosery by Paul Vincent Cannon

At dVerse Lisa is hosting Prosery (144 words) with an invitation to write including the sentence “I dress in their stories patterned and purple as night.” from the poem ‘When we sing of might’ by Kimberly Blaeser.

dVerse Poets – Prosery – Lost – Found/Lost/children

Photo: still shot from the film ‘The Rabbit Proof Fence’ a story of three aboriginal girls forcibly taken from their mothers and placed in a town far away under white control in oder to assimilate them and exploit them. The film is based on the true story as told by author Doris Pilkington who was taken from her mother at three years of age, in her book of the same name. Known as the Stolen Generation, children were forcibly removed over generations between 1884 and 1969.

“In their grief the women asked why their children should be taken form them.” Doris Pilkington ‘The Rabbit Proof Fence’

Honour For The Stolen

The darkness of enlightened men voids my world in a sadness too weighty to even speak. They pretended to save the world as a ruse to colonise and dehumanise those they encountered in every land who they deemed to be sub-human. Your arrogance is too great to measure and your refuge too trite to count. 

You cowards, you hid behind your public schools, your venture capital, your egos and your hypocrisy in claiming the purity of the bleeding Christ, which raises bile in my throat and fire in my gut. You knew full well the moral weight of your actions. I weep for the loss of life in all its experience, and I dress in their stories patterned and purple as night. I cannot bring them back, but I can honour the beauty of their presence and name the meaning of their lives.

Copyright 2021 ©Paul Vincent Cannon
All Rights Reserved ®

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November 22, 2021 · 4:48 pm

The Ordinary Sacred – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon

Photo: sarangib at pixabay.com

“…. we exist together in a sacred field of meaning.” Joy Harjo

The Ordinary Sacred

The plaque offered to peg one of those 
'our lady of the moment' moments, 
a memory without words, companion 
to possibility, opening the fire of
ancestors , asking the question,
what next? A jumbled melange of 
intentions? A triumph of the ages?
or the feeling of saffron, the taste of 
incense and, all the while, inching
toward the ordinary sacred.


Copyright 2021 ©Paul Vincent Cannon
All Rights Reserved ®

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June 25, 2021 · 1:43 pm

Close By – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon

Photo: Cape to Cape trail just south of Ellensbrook

“Those who dwell among the beauties and mysteries of the earth are never alone or weary.” Rachel Carson

Close By

I saw you once,
in that far off place of my youth,
where I felt I knew you in my 
mother's shadow by the basilica,
but soon you faded like yellowing
wallpaper in a dark back room,
and then you were gone and I was
unanchored in the storms as I 
searched museums and breviaries,
only to find you close by, hidden
in dragonflies and thistles down
uneven tracks, alongside 
decomposing logs where
wattles breathe gladness.


Copyright 2021 © Paul Vincent Cannon
All Rights Reserved ®

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June 19, 2021 · 3:25 pm

Dispelled – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon

Photo by Christopher Campbell on Unsplash



“Freedom from desire leads to inner peace.” Lao Tzu 

Dispelled 

Cog toothed maniacal, steel eyed
gangle trap, biting the tender throat 
of my hours, viral spreading,
life sapping, dull billboards, those
hypertense sucking creepers of
wounded hearts, in thrice silence
dispelled meekly by the outward 
breath so detached in the soul's
crystal laughter drifting beyond 
the cries of the minute keeper to
a stillness beyond cogito to tears 
of joy raining on the inside. 

Copyright 2021 ©Paul Vincent Cannon
All Rights Reserved ®

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May 12, 2021 · 2:54 pm

I Wonder – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon

At dVerse Sarah is hosting Poetics with an invitation to write a poem around the word blue.

dVerse Poets – Poetics – Blue Tuesday

Video: Shoalwater Bay looking west to Penguin Island.

“Between stimulus and response, there is a space. And in that space lies our power to choose. And in our choice lies our growth and freedom.” (attr) Victor Frankl

I Wonder 

Where sky collides with earth,
where oceans meet with clouds
in indecipherable moments,
a conversation easily irrupts,
translated between something 
grounded and something free,
I'm not always certain of the 
meaning but it doesn't seem to
matter, this convergence is
devoid of portent, words as
worlds so light, soft as night,
spoken in tones of translucent 
blue sounds that enfold me
and I wonder when I will return
beyond my between.

Copyright 2021 ©Paul Vincent Cannon
All Rights Reserved ®

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April 30, 2021 · 2:42 pm

If I Had A Light – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon

At dVerse Mish is hosting Open Link Night, the night we make our own choice of poem to post.

dVerse Poets – Open Link Night

Photo: Reserve trail walk adjacent to the Hardy Inlet.

“Anything we experience, no matter how challenging, can become an open pathway to awakening.” Pema Chodron

If I Had A Light

If I had a light I could see my way,
or perhaps a map where I could chart a
path, but it remains indecipherable,
though neither dark nor fogged in my
mind's eye, it is simply a discernment
of journey, a surprise awakening, a not
this, instead, perhaps this or that in a 
lived experience, all the richer for its
misdirections, its hidden meanings,
even its lack of clarity is a decided
gift of discovery, which, in the end
seems quite natural, a hindsight
twenty-twenty, a reverse of 
understanding of how we go,
not where or when we go, but, 
as we go we discover so much of
our beginnings with self and the
strive to transcend it.

©Paul Vincent Cannon

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