Be like a tree
Let the dead leaves drop


Rumi

Poppies

Poppies
Mary Oliver

The poppies send up their
orange flares; swaying
in the wind, their congregations
are a levitation

of bright dust, of thin
and lacy leaves.
There isn’t a place
in this world that doesn’t

sooner or later drown
in the indigos of darkness,
but now, for a while,
the roughage

shines like a miracle
as it floats above everything
with its yellow hair.
Of course nothing stops the cold,

black, curved blade
from hooking forward—
of course
loss is the great lesson.

But I also say this: that light
is an invitation
to happiness,
and that happiness,

when it’s done right,
is a kind of holiness,
palpable and redemptive.
Inside the bright fields,

touched by their rough and spongy gold,
I am washed and washed
in the river
of earthly delight—

and what are you going to do—
what can you do
about it—
deep, blue night?

Poetry event

This event about finding inspiration for writing is taking place in London in November. I will be in Scotland teaching T'ai Chi, but it looks great.

Drinking The Mead of Poetry

We must risk delight. We must have the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless furnace of this world.

Jack Gilbert, US poet, d.2012.

Recent discovery for me. I just finished his superb Collected Poems, I recommend them.

Wildness

True wildness is sometimes 

just one word

Left with care

In exactly the right place

Everyone thinks reclaiming wildness 

is something worth doing

But we know

It is undoing something

Wildness is our undoing

Sam Masich arts

We have just had a lovely few days seeing our dear friend T'ai Chi Master Sam Masich. We met a Taichi Caledonia many years ago, and have hung out since whenever our lives allow. In the new T'ai Chi studio we have almost completed, pride of place goes to a beautiful ink painting made with one brush stroke, from the founding myths of T'ai Chi. Sam gave it to me in 2009, but it will now get the wider viewing it deserves. Like Mark and myself, Sam makes music and art as well as teaching his internal arts. If you'd like to see more of his great drawings and paintings, many of which are available for sale, have a look here. Here is a picture of the painting in situ. Thanks to Sam for a great visit, and much insight. Friendship in Tao is a great joy. I have been rereading the 9th Century poems of Han Shan, and even then, drinking tea or wine on a boat, and laughing with friends on the Way was greatly valued, and worth a good poem.

I call to my friends, picking lotus,
Wonderfully afloat on the clear river,
And forget, in my delight, how late it grows,
Till gusts of evening wind whirl by.
Waves scoop up the mandarin ducks;
Ripples rock the broad-tailed mallard;
At this moment, sitting in my boat,
Thoughts pour out in endless streams.

(Trans Burton Watson)

Preserve Open

I choose the circle not the square.

I want the bare bones of belonging
not the drapery
which holds dust in all its folds
made of all my shed skin and dirt
and yours too

How many more years
will I witness winter trees
fuzzing with leaf?
their dark branching lines
against England’s grey skies.
These black bones support
the muscles of my mind’s eye

I cannot know.
So I cultivate open
and then
I preserve open

The House of Belonging

Thanks to Anja for lending me 'The House of Belonging', a collection of poems by David Whyte. They are great. His website is also really good and full of his work.

Late night on National Poetry Day

Just back from a long day working, wondering which poems to put here. There are so many possible choices since I put aside my childish aversion to poetry ( I always favoured prose, or lyrics serving music). Now, some of my best friends are poets :) I arrived late to the poetry party, and Rumi, (in translated versions by Coleman Barks) was a gateway drug. So here's a couple of favourites,

We don't need wine to get drunk,
or instruments and singing to feel ecstatic.
No poets, no leaders, no songs,
yet we jump around totally wild.

No better love than love with no object,
no more satisfying work than work with no purpose.
If you could give up tricks and cleverness,
that would be the cleverest trick!

Roger McGough's 'First Day At School' was probably the first poem I ever memorised, and 'The Lesson' by Michael Rosen probably the second, when I was about 8 years old. We learned many psalms at Sunday School, (and goodness knows how many hundreds of Victorian hymn lyrics still clutter my skull, along with descant parts for most carols.) More recently, I have come across much excellent poetry in the Dark Mountain books, and have discovered some wonderful writers, but I am still a novice. So if you have a particular favourite, please share it with me.

Scottish Taoism

The Way up north

Is alive and well

The method is made clear:

'Dinna fash yersel'.

Cold Mountain by Han-shan

Do you have the poems of Han-shan in your house?

They're better for you than sutra-reading!

Write them out and paste them on a screen

Where you can glance them over from time to time. 

Poem 100 in the Cape Edition translated by Burton Watson. 

After four days' T'ai Chi

Here I sit drinking ginger wine

Reading Han-shan's 'Cold Mountain'.

My boat isn't going anywhere.

The Seven Stars are astern, 

Soon it's time to sleep;

And dreaming me can play

As the rat patrols the gunwales. 

Lost

Lost

Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you
Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,
I have made this place around you.
If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here.
No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
Where you are. You must let it find you.

-- David Wagoner
(1999)

This little house

No smaller than the world

Nor I lonely

Dwelling in all that is. 

Kathleen Raine

Kate Tempest - Let Them Eat Chaos

If you don't watch anything else on Iplayer this year go now and watch Kate Tempest on BBC2 from tonight, performing her new album. Unbelievable performance, every word real and true. Tears falling as she touched every sore point. What a woman of insight, a shamanising oracle right there in The Rivoli, Brockley - the new Delphi?

The Guest House

I receive emails from the Barn Retreat, part of the Sharpham Trust, which incorporates excellent places to go and meditate, which I wholeheartedly recommend. In amongst the news this came yesterday: a poem (in translation, I think by Coleman Barks) that I have loved for over 25 years. I am posting it here as it is pertinent to our struggles with ourselves. In delusion we fight the bits we don't like about ourselves, and big-up the aspects that make us seem more appealing, more acceptable, perhaps more spiritual, more together, or whatever it is we are judging ourselves on today. Below the poem is the comment that followed it on the email.

This being human is a guest house. 

Every morning a new arrival. 

A joy, a depression, a meanness, 

some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor. 

Welcome and entertain them all! 

Even if they're a crowd of sorrows, 

who violently sweep your house 

empty of its furniture, 

still, treat each guest honourably. 

He may be clearing you out 

for some new delight. 

The dark thought, the shame, the malice, 

meet them at the door laughing, 

and invite them in. 

Be grateful for whoever comes, 

because each has been sent 

as a guide from beyond.

The Guest House, Rumi

Mindfulness meditation trains us to be present and aware of all that arises. This includes noticing our own 'shame, dark thought and malice' and accepting it as part of the human condition. We then develop the habit of meeting our discomfort with the same compassion we would have for an agitated four-year-old child, fearful because they accidentally upset a friend at school today.

Silentium

Be silent, hide away and let
your thoughts and longings rise and set
in the deep places of your heart.
Let dreams move silently as stars,
in wonder more than you can tell.
Let them fulfil you – and be still.

What heart can ever speak its mind?
How can some other understand
the hidden pole that turns your life?
A thought, once spoken, is a lie.
Don’t cloud the water in your well;
drink from this wellspring – and be still.

Live in yourself. There is a whole
deep world of being in your soul,
burdened with mystery and thought.
The noise outside will snuff it out.
Day’s clear light can break the spell.
Hear your own singing – and be still.

By Fyodor Tyutchev, Trans. Robert Chandler.

• From The Penguin Book of Russian Poetry, edited by Robert Chandler, Boris Dralyuk and Irina Mashinski, published by Penguin Classics 

Sappho

I don't know what the right course is;
Twofold are my purposes.

Sappho, Trans Aaron Poochigan, Penguin Classics.

Picked this slim volume up on a whim in my local library, as I work my slow way through the Western Classics, to augment my feeble education in this area, and to intersperse with my current re-reading the Taoist Classics. What a find.

Over eyelids dark night fell.
Invisible.

Tribute

Return to me you shadows of my former self

my cloak of secrets, 

my true wealth.

For are we not of rupture born?

The master potter breaks her perfect plate

in dark of faith to recreate a vessel

more of wonder than of ease,

which speaks to those who seek,

not merely please.

By Mary harrison, after this year's weeklong intensive. Thanks for letting me post this wonderful poem. 

 ..."Negative Capability, that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason ..."
- John Keats, quoted by Stephen Batchelor during his Dharma talks, when he said that this may be the best description of Zen available in English.