I wished for a last smoke as I was guided by the patterns of old requests that there’s room inside this flame, why don’t you be my guest, break down the walls, let my sentence be this open book, each page a turning of you this slow breakfast Monday; breasts of chicken wing and tea, bottle of wine bed ruffled head inside me; what wonder this one then? Hmmm.
Hotel window bells of ringing, except the dancers have no clothes...what? More tea and too many memories. This was a promise left from before but now just this image left; and, oh the drunken head a swine so small a leaf this huge, found by light to wander where. Don't look too close there's not much to see in this wreck that floats,
Monk: “The beauty in your eyes. Ah, the moment’s thought written on the rock of the morning grey with thunder bells of fortune pealing that shout more than a yard down the stairs to fall up a pretty face to smiling tomorrow’s happenstance foretold today as the black bird of destiny calls you home back to the garden.”
Zen: “Now you sound like me.”
Monk: “They say you become most like the one you spend the most time with.”
Zen: “They?”
Monk: “It’s just a saying I heard somewhere.”
Zen: “I was wondering if you had got it from the villagers that come to take care of you at the temple.”
Monk: “Yes maybe.”
Zen: “...& the words came, oh so many words, of how to, and where to, and when. And the piano player played a great song of remember in between of it all. I wrote some of them down to occupy my time as I listened to the music, and drank the wind.
So many pretty pictures came too, on that ocean the raven saw in visions up-slip of the dream where many wander alone; but what can you say but do a prayer of blessing.
They say it was around midnight, but I say it was earlier than that, perhaps the last tear that fell from her face, or the blue dream that got lost in a bed that was never made; these things should never be said in a night full of stars that the lover, in that box of colours could make more to cry of.
The boat is awhirl in a clear serenade of silence where the muddy footprints accompany the shore of silence on that lake that holds a perfect stillness.
And then I looked out of the window and saw the darkness full of lights that shimmered, and I felt there was so much more: the water that drank me, and the hurt that came, the music that was being played and the legend of what was played; the quiet of now that said: this I ran to the edge of so many times, crashed over to where I began, called for inspiration in the snow showers, the dark trees of the mountain's sorrows, the ends of all the misty deeps where I saw the storm come as me, as I sat to take peace from it all.
And so, the kinesis of the power was mine to do as I may with as if the Elysian fields would not find me wanting in my hour; but not a soul could say that to me but my perfect partner.
I am with my love; would I know this? How could I? Wherefore in the midnight hour then: a happenstance? A backward glance to what went before; some kiss upon a bed that could never be mine; a disturbance, a turbulence of the ethereal risings, where things pass around the centre of all things, unconscionable as spilled water; and then the afterwards: the quiet, passive, that closeness of the journey to sleep, a distance of fulfilment in the wheel of its returning to same; the kindness of source, beckoning, yet knowing time will take it all away.
So, the wherefore and the when of it all breaks the tide upon the shore, where lovers ease their hurts and find their sorrows dissolved in the softness of that truth to hold and give that acceptance where love has no bounds.
A wind calls down this upon these shores, that tryst in all the open doors of the night, of a night holy.
It has already happened and we are living it now. Freedom is in the rain that falls that washes away the empty shadows. I will go home now.”
Monk: “Thank god, I can finally sleep.”
End of part 53
Images from Pixabay
