Listening
My father could hear a little animal step,
or a moth in the dark against the screen,
and every far sound called the listening out
into places where the rest of us had never been.
More spoke to him from the soft wild night
than came to our porch for us on the wind;
we would watch him look up and his face go keen
till the walls of the world flared, widened.
My father heard so much that we still stand
inviting the quiet by turning the face,
waiting for a time when something in the night
will touch us too from that other place.
– William Stafford –
from: West of Your City
~~~~~~~~~~~
Climbing the Golden Mountain
Silence is the golden mountain.
-Jack Kerouac
Listen. Turn
everything
off. When
the noise
of our lives
drifts away,
when the chatter of
our minds
sinks into
that perfect
lake of nothing,
then, oh
then we can
apprehend
that golden mountain,
always there,
waiting for
us to be
still enough
to hear it.
– Michael Kiesow Moore –
from: The Song Castle
Photo, Golden Mountain Gaurishankar, Nepal
by Heri Maharjan, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
~~~~~~~~~~~
listen
hiding in this cage
of visible matter
is the invisible
lifebird
pay attention
to her
she is singing
your song
~ Kabir ~
Sushil Rao translation
Art: “The Great Family” by René Magritte
~~~~~~~~~~~
