EPISTEMOLOGIES

                              
                             One way of knowing’s by excursion,
                             Running around to find things out;
                             Another way is by immersion,
                             Looking inward, not about.

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SNUGGLE

                         In the ambit of my armpit snugs our pup,
                         A little after dawn, when we get up,
                         But for the while we warmly can enjoy
                         A mood that busyness will soon destroy.

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 THE GIFT

                    One day in my first year away at college
                    It seemed my mind accessed a higher knowledge,
                    An ecstasy of insight into All,
                    Enlightening my mind before my fall
                    Back into ordinary consciousness
                   That left me vaguely able to express
                   Before that visionary moment waned
                   The marvel of the insight I’d attained.

                   All that remains, five decades afterwards,
                   Enhanced by what occult research affords,
                   Is my conviction that a human mind
                   Can travel to a hidden realm divined
                   By an extraordinary subtle shift
                   Attained not by intent, but as a gift.

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ENLIGHTENMENT III

                    We don’t want to believe that when we’re dead
                    We’re gone, but only gone from Earthly life
                    And passed on to another plane that’s said
                    To be eternal, blissful, free from strife,
                    Which some call Heaven; others name it Source,
                    The provenance from which all life derives,
                    Assigning us a latent, innate course
                    That in our next life we may realize
                    Or not—which means we may return to try
                    Again, our goal being growth in consciousness,
                    Which can be registered from low to high,
                    The former causing dullness and duress,
                    The latter being our aim: enlightenment,
                     A state that wise ones say is Heaven sent.

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MARBLEIZED WATER







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WONDERING

                      What makes an old year end or new begin?
                      Not just the dictate of a calendar;
                      Perhaps it’s something in the global spin
                      Around the sun that makes new years occur.

                      Three hundred sixty-five (or leap years -six)
                      Days constitute the cycle of our year,
                      And yet why is it not some other fix
                      In its strictly predictable career?

                      But better than such wondering is to thank
                      Whatever Cause or Source brought this about:
                      The space we fill might just as well be blank
                      And from the universe our kind left out.

                           For otherwise, how would the Cosmos know
                           That it exists and can such wonders grow?

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RED SKY HALF-MOON MORNING







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