“I’d love to give you something but what would help?” Ikkyu
Zen
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Category Archives: Spirituality
Zen – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon
Filed under Free Verse, life, meditation, mindfulness, poem, quote, Spirituality
Know The Invitation – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon
Photo: bigbenpartners.com
“What makes the desert beautiful is that somewhere it hides a well.” Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Know The Invitation
Those days do come,
they surprise
arriving unannounced and uninvited
days where before, we caroused and
rejoiced with wine and fine food
only to be usurped by a pressing sense
of dry bones and a yearning for
something more,
something deeper,
something beyond,
and as this desert deepens,
to know the invitation and
to look for the very things that
nourish the soul.
©Paul Vincent Cannon
Paul, pvcann.com
Filed under Free Verse, life, meditation, mindfulness, poem, quote, Spirituality
Mystica – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon
dVerse Poets – Poetics – Smoke and Mirrors
Photo: istockphoto.com
“The journey not the destination matters.” T.S. Eliot
Mystica
I wanted to be sure
that the threshold could be crossed
to leave the paracosms of childhood
those parental certainties,
cassocked beliefs
of vaulted minds,
mortared cracks of real,
I picked up the almanac of my life
and it frittered away
like so many burnt pages,
fragile and flaking,
faint and indecipherable,
certainty sliding,
via negativa evolving
an apophatic line,
a Dionysian celebration,
if somewhat muted,
in the joy of not knowing
that you were there
but everywhere.
©Paul Vincent Cannon
Paul, pvcann.com
Filed under Free Verse, life, mindfulness, poem, quote, Spirituality
Ever Yearning – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon
dVerse Poets – Lost In Translation
Laura at dVerse has challenged us to look at three poems and write our own.
Photo: http://www.shutterstock.com
“… of the eternal Face without gestures
and of the kingdom without form.” Gabriella Mistral ‘Anniversary ‘
Ever Yearning
As deep calls to deep within me
slowly I untangle
the habits of the mind,
perhaps now my heart can see
as ever yearning through
the fog of all that is
drawing me ever inwards
that I might see your face
as if for the first time,
you who are eternal stillness,
come, let me see.
©Paul Vincent Cannon
Paul, pvcann.com
Filed under challenge, Free Verse, mindfulness, poem, quote, Spirituality
Attending – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon
Photo: http://www.zyto.com
“The soul always knows what to do to heal itself. the challenge is to heal the mind.” Caroline Myss
Attending
Outside her box she attended to her breathing
setting aside the rivers of consciousness
that on any ordinary day might drown her,
and settled for nothing that was yet something
without it being anything at all,
and later she could only imagine
that she was fed by angels.
©Paul Vincent Cannon
Paul, pvcann.com
Filed under Free Verse, meditation, mindfulness, poem, quote, Spirituality
Seamless – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon
dVerse Poets – Open Link Night
Photo: pixabay.com
“Feelings come and go like clouds in a windy sky. Conscious breathing is my anchor.” Thich Nhat Hahn
Seamless
To contemplate breathing
now there’s a thing,
a rhythm of
an inward and outward breath,
so simple really, and yet,
where is the juncture
the beginning or end,
though differently constituted
there are no parts
neither this or that,
just one continuous
seamless movement.
©Paul Vincent Cannon
Paul, pvcann.com
Filed under life, meditation, mindfulness, poem, Quadrille, quote, Spirituality
Belief – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon
Photo: Uluru at sunset, a calm and peaceful place, an ancient place, a deeply spiritual place.
“belief, like love, must be voluntary.” John Updike
Belief
Of orthodoxy there is no real centre
except of ink on paper
where imagination dies
a thousand deaths
in a rut of doctrines and dogmas
that pierce the heart
and erase the future,
imprisoning vision,
punishing hope,
and yet we are all heterodox
bringing our creative spice
to the great universal stew,
an ever changing recipe.
©Paul Vincent Cannon
Paul, pvcann.com
Filed under challenge, Country, Free Verse, life, mindfulness, Philosophy/Theology, poem, religion, Spirituality
Transported – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon
Photo: pixabay.com
Transported
He often sought the solace of the hallway,
to capture views and hold them
ever dreaming escapes
touching the light on the
gleaming window frames
then travelling to worlds yet to be discovered,
one day he was so utterly transported
he was unaware of the passage of time,
and he wakened in a cloister,
the air was welcoming and he
determined to stay as long as possible
feeling drawn to the stillness
and the faint sounds of
plainsong that washed over him,
he’d never known such peace.
©Paul Vincent Cannon
Paul, pvcann.com
Filed under Free Verse, life, poem, Spirituality
Where I Am – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon
Solitude/Solitary – RDP Thursday
Photo: One of my favourite places, Jindalee, a true solitude as with many places in the centre.
“The soul that sees beauty may sometimes walk alone.” Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Where I Am
Can I really bear myself
in silent quarters close,
to shut the door of every noise
allowing my mind to freely wander
and not count the cost of clocks
or the doings of productive minds,
to surrender instead to a
productive nothing,
can I trust the silence that
brings me to myself,
can I be with me,
just me,
for wherever I am,
there solitude waits.
©Paul Vincent Cannon
Paul, pvcann.com
Filed under bush walking, Country, Free Verse, life, meditation, mindfulness, poem, Spirituality
We Never Even Noticed – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon
Image provided by Willow Poetry
We Never Even Noticed
How we solaced in the truths of our elders,
to hold to pristine shibboleths of hollow ground
that all was hallowed in a superstition
of moralised purity,
that we promptly set in stone,
and there we held you in mawkish admiration
so unfounded, somehow projected,
believing that you held us too
because we were so good at our own game
given to saccharine views of life,
there we were, fulminating righteous wrath
against love itself
the very given of nurture,
and we called on your name as talisman
without so much as a fibre of authenticity
preferring indulgent expectation
dressed and redolent in disconnect,
and you, imprisoned in your architrave,
looked on in sorrow and wept
in your powerless state where
our dogmas kept you,
yet you dared to ask from your eyrie
disturbing our common good,
What moved us or
how did we reach into the pain of neighbour?
Indignant silence was
followed by sanctimonious justification.
Your loud shout of anguish rent the air
then a mighty crack
as you effaced in surrendered humility,
recognising our inability to be aware
so selfishly content that
love was adulterated,
poisoned,
defunct,
perpetually crucified,
and we never even noticed.
©Paul Vincent Cannon
Paul, pvcann.com
Filed under challenge, Free Verse, life, love, poem, Spirituality
