Category Archives: Spirituality

March 10, 2023 · 3:46 pm

There Goes The Family Again – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon

At dVerse Laura is hosting Meeting the Bar with an invitation to write a tercet, choosing from a list either a compound word, or three words connected. I chose Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

dVerse Poets – MTB – Three Way Split

Image found on pinterest.com

“The world is charged with the grandeur of God.” Gerard Manley Hopkins

There Goes The Family Again

1. Typical father, running late of excuses,
drove his son to the Bethlehem saloon
for his starring role in a nativity play,
and the customary custody handover,
or Mary would let him have it.

2. What is it with Spanish mothers,
is it true that every second male is 
named Jesus, for god's sake why?
Are they all fishermen at play,
pulling coins from the mouths of fish?

3. The father ordered a second round,
the bar tender leered long at Mary,
dad drew and shot him full of that
one hundred percent  proof 67 spirit,
that got him cupid in the heart.


Copyright 2023 ©️Paul Vincent Cannon
All Rights Reserved ®️

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January 14, 2023 · 3:13 pm

That Immanence Thing – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon

“I like the sea: we understand one another. It is always yearning, sighing for something it cannot have; and so am I.” Greta Gabo

That Immanence Thing

All at once the world came in,
I felt it,
the bird's feathers touched my soul,
it offered such a sublime, electric song
which made me tremble and 
surrender my fragile breath
in a ripe sigh,
for the idea of the thing,
an unknown held
as a jealous secret,
now echoing through my body
like rich magenta solace
gently brushed in generous strokes.


Copyright 2023 ©Paul Vincent Cannon
All Rights Reserved ®️

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December 14, 2022 · 5:17 pm

Of Dark And Light – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon

At dVerse Sarah is hosting Poetics with an invitation to write about bringing light into the darkness.

dVerse Poets – Poetics – St. Lucy, Bringing Light Into Darkness

“I cannot love another soul so dark it eats up others’ light.” Lauren Kate

Of Dark And Light

Light bringer,
you held your own darkness
in a neglected corner of your life
until it weighed you down to earth,
cast out yet newly found,
that ancient double of good and bad
all wrapped in monochrome,
which simply hides those
uncomfortable distinctions;
even so, your young proteges
follow your example,
some say by deceit,
others say by shine,
all the while reminding us
that we are all bearers 
of dark and light.


Copyright 2022 ©Paul Vincent Cannon
All Rights Reserved ®️

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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

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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
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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
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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
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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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