Meditations in Fast Times: 7. Words are a music that should really be just words

                 7.

Words are a music that should really be just words,
quothe the conflicted scribe.

Could words mean so much,
if there were nothing poetical about them?

Words, naked against the silence,
cannot be so transparent,
or what is the point (still or trembling)?

My heart overflows with the songs
I have learned from birds;
they sing to announce their rights—
all tongues must be skilled pens,
each a sword to defend justice and truth,
pointed and crafted, learned and remembered
—as well as to celebrate the communion of sunlit joys.

Along the way and wave,
words are like the intentions we pave—
for what poetry does not its people save?

— and each step we take
is eased by the music we make;
words must intend, when addressed,
to soothe the savage and his aching breast,
to be medicine that smoothes each crease,
to be the incantation announcing peace.

© 2014 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

Meditations in Fast Times: 3. The continuous rumble

                  3.

The continuous rumble,
the watery babble,
the trending of disaffection
continues apace;
forward we tumble,
we rabble scrabble,
neither ending the dejection,
nor seeking to displace—
this no-wise movement
is how houses usher,
divide and fall.

Birdsong and flowers,
dappled light through trees,
lure one away from the smoky,
first world drawing room;
out through the French doors,
in through the hedge,
and into the garden we go,
following deception,
we do not know.

Ah, to breathe!
The lively stillness
dispels all former torpor
and mindless twittering;
the freshness of all that is real
reaches out from the day,
singing like a merry bell peal,
tugging the spirit, as if to say
your cares I beguile
for the while
you are here.

The soul cannot well thrive,
no matter what plot might contrive,
away from the gardens of Paradise;
tending the diverse flowers,
for weeks, for days or just hours,
allows one to realize
the duty bounden
on each person’s part
to nurture the beauty in one’s heart,
the garden of where you are.

© 2014 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

Meditations in Fast Times: 2. Tolerance, she said

                  2.

Tolerance, she said,
is well enough and good.
Acceptance is better.

Acceptance
of conditions,
a simple recognition
of a basic truth:
each and all are.

The storm, settling
in for a daily dose,
clattering, cluttering, close—
an exertion
gripping mind and soul
—holding self in a
grip of judgment,
casting a dark cloud
over possibility;
simple
is the most difficult
condition of all.

The rhythm of feet to floor,
the staccato of many voices
against a descant of driving rain,
these are reminders;
the vastness of experience
is no different than the center
that is home,
and each foot fall,
each whispered prayer,
each meal lovingly prepared
is refuge taken in now
and everything.

The thunder and lightning
startle one from reverie;
muscles suddenly tense,
then release
into realized truth:
acceptance is nothing less
than an intimate engagement
with all things.

© 2014 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

Meditations in Fast Times: 1. Coming down from the highs

                        1.

Coming down from the highs,
coming down from the heights,
separating from the rights and rites
to settle,

first formless,

then in form,

informed
by stillness at its fulcrum,
stillness as close to rest,
as can be achieved in a lifetime
—neither a resignation,
nor abdication,
but an embrace of liminal space,
in which to consider
the moment;
clay, after all,
            can only grow so tall
before gravity,
or a confusion of tongues,
causes it to fall;
But now, at least,
is an acceptable time
to consider the limits of dust,
the rewards of oblative ablution
and what treasures lie
beyond substance,
within, perhaps,
the gift of apprehension
or the embrace of possibility
as—sic transit mundi—

we flutter in moth-like suspension
before the light,
betwixt and between.

 © 2014 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen