Portraits & Poems of Eclipse for Ramesh – a Revision

A revision of my earlier post, "Poems of Eclipse for Ramesh & 
Wayne", to update the verse formatting.   
These were written in 1999:  a sequential dialogue of Ramesh's 
Advaita teaching with the ongoing difficulties of life. 



                                 **
   TO RAMESH

 I do not have to go anywhere else but here   
 to hold your hand, smile into your laughing   
    elder dove-hawk eyes   

 and thank you   
 for helping my understanding   
 rock steady; whatever rock   
    may roll,   
 nothing can alter the rock itself.   

 Jane loves mountains and rivers.   
 Mountains and rivers   
 move within the people   
 and break the outline of her heart.   

 Who is jane, indeed -    
 the projectionist - the   
 indispensibly inefface-able   
 Tarot card in her long floating dress ?   

    No matter.   
 The rock is that   
 as well as the mountains and rivers.   

 Companionship when the outline   
 which separates us, breaks   
    is indescribable.   

 Companionship   
 when there are no persons   
    is indescribable.   
 The companion ship of being   
    is indescribable.   
 The companionship of no earth, no trees,   
 no people and nothing to think or see or be   
 in any direction, is indescribable   

    naked of every sight   
    and containing everything.   

 Such is tantra, web of the universe,   
 the sparkle of its mountains and rivers   
                                                      11 July 1999


  A high tide at Alet in Brittany
                                  **
                                  ..

      WHEN YESHUA WENT UP THE HILL TO PRAY

 Thunder draws the bow   
 across a barometric current.   
    It shouts.   

 Thanksgiving trembles in   
 my string when she is tuned,   
 like light from primrose spilling   
 bright stars in a grassy bank,   
 dazzles the camera, a blur.   

 Wild flowers are light sources.   
 They answer the sun.   
    They pulse.   
 Bluebells in a photo, fade   
 to a hint of amethyst,   
    too bright.   

 See how we connect   
 through what we   
    do not see.   

 When YESHUA went up the hill to pray,   
 leaving his lambs asleep,   
 he rested from the multitude.   

 In the soul’s deepest rest,   
    as Eckhart says,   
 is prayer which is silence,   
 making the primrose shine.   
    It shines because   
 there’s nothing to stop it shining.   
    And nobody.   
.
.


                                 ..      

      RIGHT ANGLE CROSSING OF NODAL RIVERS

 Certain types of stress   
 may be removed for good,   
 but what remains is variable   
                    (as Swami Liquorman would say).   

 For instance: a relative integration   
 into the herd of sheep,   
 their concerns with wool;   

 For instance: release from the drama –   
 to clarity, peace,   
 but the gears still turn my wheel;   

 For instance: One who is free   
 recognises another,   
 unobtrusively.   

 A line of destiny shivers,   
 at crossroads. ‘Rivers’   
 renouncing the known   
 may in one another, drown.   

 Conception’s silence is the GAP   
 where streams of current   
 in one another’s wave, fragment   
 to an interference that doesn’t add up.   
 From the gap, as death exhumes,   
 a flowing mystery resumes.   
 What is your and my cross   
    of life? Awareness!   

 Shock plummets through   
 the shivering ship   
 reaction, flinching, from the nails,   
 strata sagging, breaking timbers,   
    as before sleep   
 sudden stumblings on the rock,   
 fog of nerve-ends jangling bells.   

 The secret of soul shock     
 is to soften it open.      
 Let it be. Let the alarm be not   
    walled up or out.   

 As Robert in Arizona used to say,   
 it is preordained while you lie asleep on the gears.   
 Awakening has no preview, nothing, no way.   
 No-one knows where the car might go. Who cares ?   
                                                        7 July 1999                                                                  ..


                                  **
                                  ..
    STONE IN THE RIVER BED

 If God removes a rock or obstacle   
 upraising the wave of standing-over,   
 the understanding coming strong, itself   
 rolls the rat that sat in the river, away.   

 So, what happens? Why!   
 The whole standing-over lot falls down   
 to the bed of the river, melts as   
 the ever it was, the river, the river, the river.   

 Dislodging a stone from the bed of a river   
 is a wondering weight to feel.   
 My language is not flowery   
(as accused)
 but applied, precision tool.   

 The words dropped in the gap   
    are not mine.   
    They come.   
 Then I polish the pebble,   
 inward casting, better to see.   
 The corner stone I yesterday heaved, and could not place,   
    and wanted to cast away,   
 today shifts into true, the treasure   
 exposed, the Stone.   

 See how the water rolls away, and on?   
 See water, stone, stone, water, wall of stone,   
 fluid, all of stone, cold, hand in water, solid current   
    presses my hand   
 just like stone, which it is,   
 flowing, chuckling, splashing, racing   
 river, mountain, stone, sky, space.   

 Hand in current, ‘cross the river flowing   
 imagines a solid surface, pushing it.   
 My hand, now rivering rivulet,   
 the current itself is showing.

 The standing-over wave resounds   
    high over the stone,   
 a curve of space and time and planets   
 into the hidden presence of stone,   
    tickle the stone,   
 guddle it like the sides of a fish,   
    tease   
 gently from bed if the time has come,   
 to chuckle and roll.   
 The current does that, not I.   
 Should I move before its time, one stone,   
 the nature of the river bed   
    is stones.   
                                                        7 July 1999
                                                                  .
.

 Ramesh at Home - a sketch from life

                                  **
                                  ..

    FISH

 My standing-over sounds and choirs,   
 and cries out DOH RE ME   
 (from the depth we cry to Thee ...)   
 but a smoothly flowing   
 river, you’ll note, is quiet.   

 In this “write” a stone became   
    a fish.   
 No sound uplifts the hidden matter,   
    it swims,   
 receiving opening halls   
 of flow, upstream or down,   
 or across the stream, does not   
    resist.   

 Like a bird in the breeze, the   
 fish is aqua-dynamic,   
 may come to the surface, you see,   
 hello little fish, then gone again.      

 I don’t want to guddle this   
 fish or flip it onto the bank   
 for its natural element   
 is my teacher ;   
    but   
 open the root,   
 where I am right now.   

 My pipeline into earth   
 is not behind closed doors.   
                 Ah yes !   
          Ah yes !   
                   Got you ! ...   
                                 but let it go again.   
                                 Never seize or trap the fish   
                                   or it will die   
                                 and be your belly-concept only,  
                                   in all your dreams   
                                 a flavour far too strong for life.

                                 I think that’s   
                                 enough for now.   
                                                         7 July 1999

.

 ramesh at home
                                **
                                ..
.
      EASE OF JUST BEING SHIFTED

 If you drop a rock into a pool   
 shakti rises, turns   
 it into a fish.   

 If a Fool patiently all day waits,   
 the Moon arises to the bait.   

 Weary, by noon’s end,   
 felt my dowsing around with fish   
    is foolish.   
 The leading role of my masque,   
 disapproving the task,   
 scolds my lethargy – not   
    a kind friend.   

                   Yet as   
 the bed where it lay, levels,   
 the Stone itself unravels:   
 a hollow that held   
 soft silt embedded,   
 the sky has seen.   

    I hope   
 that if my follying sits a-fishing all day still,   
 a High lunar Priestess will   
 my following entice, beyond   
 the fringe capacity   
 of my Foolish cap-&-bell capability   
    to “cope”.   

 Here in the living-room, meanwhile   
 My unsuspecting spouse   
 serenely contemplates within our house   
 his intelligent Companion –   
    quicksilver Knight by sleight   
    of holy Bishop, the Rook to pit   
 computerized ‘pon black and white – a Master pantheon,   
 in shades of courtly grey to dance , the winsome imp beguile.   

 My rocky river stone brought to rest   
 gently today, is only shifted   
 to an ease of being, solidity just   
 coming alive, watery bed sun-bright uplifted.   
                                                          8 July 1999
.

Tarot Fool & Priestess

DOG DAYS AND FISH-HOOKS

When the pores close up   
and rain pours upon unforgiving stone,   
my tell-a-vision is left to herd   
the leaking word. 

Unable not to spin the top,  
gone is all I saw so clear   
to a blur or mere   
foolishness, mine alone.    

In the piglet's trough where they feed,   
how stupid indeed   
my words:  "Oh! now there's peace and light
on waves' crest, here in sight!"   
   
All my boast can see   
is troughs at sea.   
The way got blocked again with stuff half seen   
and over-workings on the screen.

Let it be -   
does the cog which clogs the wheel   
care what consciousness  
does or does not do today?   
If it is honest, it cannot miss. 
In service to ME, it is coffined.   
In service to Being, it is defined -  
a limitless clogged-up-ness.   

The way of American Al Anon hero   
paved with sonorous "Oh   
Mother fucks and Holy shits",   
with jovial laughter roars  
giving scant ear to choice bits   
of sentiment that blister at the oars.    
Salt of the alky tank, his sage sobriety   
helped reduce his popularity.   
The people went off feeling edified   
upon the wagon but   
a little sad.  

Cloud with brightness shining round or through the edge   
is my depression with   
tiny tasks of clothes and teeth,   
and a simple life's a weary hedge, 
toiling at my archival debt. 
I hate hot weather, I boil and sweat.   
Lonely?  Can't stop chattering?  monkey moans   
feeling bored, tired, fidgety, drones. 

Stuck.  Life too full - fool, foolish,  
heavy chatter.   
Stuck. And curious it is,   
alive and stuck, to own   
my issues. Personal behaviours   
are wearyingly irrelevant.  

When stuck, light floods in and chimes,   
There's nowhere to go.  
The way she feels obliged to spell it out   
at all times!   

The truth is stuck, stuck up and bored.   
Consider day after day this song   
crossing a river   
(no banks to board)   
with a staff, a poole, a pen to feel me along.   

Of what accord my tiny gleams,   
the triumphs few?   
Step, then step, then step, don't slip -   
foot forward, the view   
is walking -    
strange it is to be me, like being you!   
an insect, deep beyond belief.   
Nothing can "help" - not this   
writing, not a teacher, not anything.   

Life,   
I'm a ravening basket case.   

This to realize, awe inspires   
for nothing can help   
the water of life -   
no hope. No end in sight. No goal.   
No change. No charity. Why?  

This is real - not badges   
with sages upon them to wear.   
With no fantasy to prop 
my spirituality, what progresses?  
Ow! my ankle   
misjudged the hidden rock,   
tumbles into and as the flowing river!

Caught I am, as fish   
on the hook, this open-ness.

.8 July 1999

Devotion

**

..

Water, stone

            PRESSURE POINTING

I found a pressure point   
in my left hand, whose sore signal   
probed, released   
a tingling trap in upper arm.   

Like this, a teacher   
gently penetrates the core.   
The kink slowly slow uncurls 
by ancient acupunctural science.   

Wherever the sore signal manifests,   
apply the gentle there, there -   
let it tell.   

Pull up the core with the seed.   
Your patterns bring you home. Honesty   
pulls up my taproot   
with the mouldering weed.   

Leaning on the points of life, that touch   
is unavoidable. I till the field for decades.   
The meridian comes out and up   
and seasonally discharges.   

There are parcels undelivered   
from the post-office of my   
Under-being. In sight is seeing.
Seeing doesn't mean seeing something.  
It moves the finger to write.   
I learned this, 
exploring tantra, art of touch, of love.   
Nothing in the web   
of days, months, years,   
changes, or gets better, or what ever.  

Touch continuously   
taps the combination   
here, there, everywhere, the same place.   
I have my ideas, but what are they? 

How can I see the ineffable   
except that it is   
through crest and trough?

11 July 1999

Ramesh at Gut Schermau    

        UNKNOWN FACTORS OF FASCINATION

Loving you in the being-with way, 
could, through frameless window   
touch him, here and now! 
Our separateness is a myth.   

The unknown quantum A appears in B   
through souls C, D, F or X,   
like electron's double rotation.   
Positive and negative "spin"  
through virtual and manifest seas   
are our polarised probables.

WE KNOW NOT WHAT WE ARE - (but are "known"...) 
and I certainly am not those   
crotch-forks in the street   
going to parties, to dimly drink   
unanimous uni-formity.   

What am I?  Which hidden part   
proliferates, up-rises, ripples?   
Which of you, within those I see,   
seeks out and touches me?   

Under the ground 
the life sparkles, warms,   
is husbanded in ways   
we cannot conceive.   

Indifferent to the container,   
and spilling unique into each and every One, 
each and every one thinks he or she 
begins or ends!   

and we play these unknown factors,   
ciphers of fascination to one another   
in T.S.Eliot's four quartets   
till we close the book -   

the mystery breaks here on the beach   
in wave after wave after   
wave after wave unending   
from the mist: out of dingy daily mist.   

If a gentleness comes through the probe   
upon that place, why not?  

Who cares if I get tired and sore   
and obsessive over tasks   
and way the wrong things?

11 July 1999

 

Ramesh openly

**

..

**

See also the earlier blog in this series – “A big Peach of Yin and Yang –  Advaita Poems”

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