Hi Friends,
I've decided to return to doing a column here but with a specific focus. I'd like to have this column center on poetry, namely poetry that is spiritual in nature. Some will be my own. Others will be from other poets. But the aim will be poetry that speaks to the spirit. For the first week of this project, I share my own. I wrote it years ago after visiting my hometown of Hudson, New York. It was winter and I was waiting in a parking lot whose snow piles were being visited by seagulls. The evocative scene inspire this poem:
Snowtown Meditations
I.
At sometime,
a snow-plow made mountains in this
empty parking lot.
Seagulls settle camouflaged
and singing this morning.
The mountains were once kingdoms of mine.
I climbed,
climbed kingdoms.
Crying queen-less
I climbed,
cried alone to thrones
and sat invisible to overtakers,
blind of doubt.
In the succor of snow
and in the snow's mirror the moon,
prostrated, I would pray, stay.
And the shallow winds somehow entertained.
I listened, smiled, then fell to sleep.
II.
In another morning,
the seagulls without the scent of seas awoke me.
The might of suns' light
acknowledged it to my eyes.
Those quaint kingdoms
melted to saltless seas where seagulls still played,
where an embrace embraces the powerless, eternal flow.
III.
The night brings confusion.
The night brings doubt.
The night brings anger.
The night brings doubt.
Opening the hidden child,
behind the torn curtain I cry.
The night brings snow now.
IV.
the snow and sky are different hues of the same color.
a child in a snowsuit quits the creation of snow angels,
and peers to the heaven where they supposedly come from.
the stars are scattered crystals mirroring snow sheets.
the child is alone, feeling alone, not noticing
the cold. snowsuits can protect for a while.
the hollow, hallowed wind of meditation exclaims the night.
the child releases all movement for a moment of pause,
pausing the creation of angels that melt not away but up.
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