The Tao of Poetry...

                                                                           Poet, Ernesto Cardenal

​"What a thing it is to sit absolutely alone, in the forest, at night, cherished by this wonderful, unintelligible, perfectly innocent speech, the most comforting speech in the world, the talk that rain makes by itself all over the ridges, and the talk of the watercourses everywhere in the hollows. Nobody started it, nobody is going to stop it. It will talk as long as it wants, this rain. As long as it talks, I am going to listen." -- Thomas Merton

Poet, Ernesto Cardenal was a friend of Thomas Merton. Cardenal wrote often about injustice: he listened to the cries of the poor... Merton, as a Trappist monk, living in Kentucky, listened as well: he too, heard the cries all about him: racism and war, the Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam War... both poets, raged for peace: for an end to all of the completely unnecessary violence and cruelty that, both then and now, underpins the supposed "modern" world... but more, they embraced life, love, and the beauty around them...

​Poets are required to listen, like monks... 

​But, in point of fact, every human being is likewise required to listen... Most of us give the first nine months of our lives over to listening: we listen to our Momma's heart... we listen to the flow of her blood... we listen to the wonder of her orgasms... and this is just our beginning... Sadly, for most of us, we are seldom reminded as we grow to listen, to listen intently, excepting for the angry scold hurled our way... If we are profoundly lucky, though, the home in which we are raised is a place of safety for us, a place for books and music, and a place touched with reverence for all those things that enlarge our hearts with gratitude...

To listen deeply is also the beginning of true sight. Sight and the reception of sound are connected: together they are music, the voice of earth, sky, sun, moon, and stars... as has now been recorded, the Earth sings in motion as it spins and propels through space... The poets' task is to write upon her / his heart: to impregnate the mind with a vivid perception, not judgment, and an openness of pure receptivity: into this is...

​Is-ness is beauty. Is-ness is truth. Is-ness is being...

Here are a few lines from Reedgrass by Olav H. Hauge:

A waterfall stumbles
down its cliffside,
the mountain shivers
above the sheltered valley...

concluding with:

​By the estuary
reedgrass trembles,
empty seed-heads
bending toward shore.

​Is-ness is an invitation...

​This thought of an invitation reminds me of a line of Rumi's (as translated by poet Coleman Barks): The way you make love is how God will be with you... Now this is the purest of poetry: it is a startling invitation to live truly, deeply, meaningfully, and beautifully: in complete identification and surrender to Is... 

I Am is everywhere... I Am is the Poet... We are mirrors and pages... Who's in your mirror? What is on your page?