The ‘am’ is where…

[David Filippone]

[Photo:  Wave Reach – Photo by @smitherspix]

Ken’s poem has me thinking about what Rinpoche wrote…

“Knowledge and time begin a dialogue right in our midst. How does ‘now’ imply all times? How can it be that being is ‘now’? Starting right now, I can look into existence and time together. My ‘am’ is that space where knowledge and time intersect.”
….’Sacred Dimensions of Time and Space’, by Tarthang Tulku, p.111

SPRING SONG
by Ken McKeon

I am the band, the lover, and the screen score,
I note up the last, side by side,
The prints dotting up the snow are mine,
As is their wash away in dear springtime,
The names don’t matter,
Only the floating notes we are do that,
The reeds and willows,
The humped up dunes,
The barely tilted flats of sand,
And finally the sea,

The little stilted long beaked birds
In their prance and poking
As they lift tiny crabs into the air,
I wander there across the dark mirrors
Of sky and sun,
I greet the dank coils of washed up kelp,
I hear the cries of gulls,
I run with heavy driving legs,
And stumbling fall
Into the face of a breaking wave,
Sudden joy lives in the living tumble,
That is the child’s known song,
The youth sings there,

He climbs up the roaring echoes of the crashing surf
He summits and slides down
Each and every moment of his life,
With luck he strokes out further
Into the deeply given
Passages of an ever looming eternity,
These are the gifts of childhood,
The givens of a presence
Akin to an embodiment of a god,
Sea to shining sea, I’ll say,
And now the sea itself,
And, then, an ever even further out,
A temple’s ringing bell,
One’s ears awash
In the sounding
Luminescence of the holy stars,
Time and Space, speak to me, speak through me,
A knowing infinitely rare,
And as common as a grain
Of surf wrought sand.

 

• This topic was modified 3 years, 1 month ago by David Filippone.
• This topic was modified 3 years, 1 month ago by David Filippone.

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