life: acoustic & amplified

veils

“It’s all empty, empty,”

he said to himself.

“The sex and drugs. The violence, especially.”

So he went down into the world to exercise his virtue,

thinking maybe that would help.

He taught a little kid to build a kite.

He found a cure,

and then he found a cure

for his cure.

He gave a woman at the mercy of the weather

his umbrella, even though

icy rain fell and he had pneumonia.

He settled a revolution in Spain.

Nothing worked.

The world happens, the world changes,

the world, it is written here,

in the next line,

is only its own membrane—

and, oh yes, your compassionate nature,

your compassion for our kind

💞

Enlightenment by Vijay Seshadri

we are all

children in the room

holding our breath

ready to feel something

anything

real

again

David Whyte tells us

all we really need to live

this moment

is to be half a shade braver

by tomorrow morning

or at the end of this day

or this sentence

or this breath

I take the hopeful inhale

moving into the

courageous exhale

that small victory

releasing me towards

the moment

when he tells me

to turn and look at myself

through the torn veil

and ask myself

that question

I have been refusing

to ask myself…

Yes, it’s right there….

What would it look like

if I really lived as my best self?

💞

Amy Lloyd

THE OTHER SIDE

The sun shines on both sides of our world.

When it sets for you

it rises for me.

When the snow settles

in silence upon the trees

and all growth halts,

here it has blossomed

and life is rife

among bird and bush.

Yes, at the toss of a hand

the coin flips,

between death’s door and life’s threshold.

The seasons change,

or the day’s light declines

before we know ourselves.

The glow of twilight

a last burning

before the descent of night.

A coin lies in His hand,

yet however it falls

it’s right side up.

Somewhere the sun is shining still.

Held in summer’s embrace

we can attest to that.

In winter’s chill

and dimming light,

we need someone to recall to us,

what’s on the other side.

💞

Ana Lisa de Jong

Living Tree Poetry

January 2018

May morning be astir with the harvest of night;

Your mind quickening to the eros of a new question,

Your eyes seduced by some unintended glimpse

That cut right through the surface to a source.

May this be a morning of innocent beginning,

When the gift within you slips clear

Of the sticky web of the personal

With its hurt and its hauntings,

And fixed fortress corners,

A Morning when you become a pure vessel

For what wants to ascend from silence,

May your imagination know

The grace of perfect danger,

To reach beyond imitation,

And the wheel of repetition,

Deep into the call of all

The unfinished and unsolved

Until the veil of the unknown yields

And something original begins

To stir toward your senses

And grow stronger in your heart

In order to come to birth

In a clean line of form,

That claims from time

A rhythm not yet heard,

That calls space to

A different shape.

May it be its own force field

And dwell uniquely

Between the heart and the light

To surprise the hungry eye

By how deftly it fits

About its secret loss.

💞

John O’Donohue