Thursday, October 26, 2023

The Path


Plow your fields in the Unborn.
Release your hands from the plow.

Drop now the reins of the ox of mind.
Let the fields grow of themselves. 

There are no furrows within the fields.
Only places to endlessly cultivate. 

Atop the fields, clouds float,
Not clinging to the sky.

The sky is not attached to the clouds.
Its illimitable blue is a polished mirror.

A mirror that absorbs all objects
But reflects none.

Stare into it and you shall see
What you are, will be, and have always been. 

In these fields, it is easier to stomp the earth,
Planting seeds with the foot and miss the ground
Than to stare into this mirror of sky
And not see it.

 

A Visual Riddle

By Ramon Brooker













The ocean, the sky, the shore
Like a visual riddle, a rebus,
Suggest a word. 

But this picture, meant for the amusement of children,
Confounds.

These visual riddles are seen
And in their seen-ness
They are one
With the unseen
That is wordless.

 

Tuesday, October 24, 2023

A Sudden Breeze


Travelers Caught by a Sudden Breeze


By a sudden breeze
That enrings me like a small bell,
I am called
To receive a private, informal audience with the Moon
This night.

As my preceptor, she gazes at me
As I gaze at her,
Neither of us speaking-
Just a long hush between us.

We sit loosely cross-legged,
Experiencing completeness.
No thoughts come to either me or her
In the afternoon we share.

I have no questions.
She has no answers. 

Notes:  Shoken: a private audience with a Zen abbot or preceptor.

Agura: sitting in loose, cross-legged meditation.

Wednesday, October 18, 2023

Shore of the Beloved

















Wind pours against your face.
It touches with two hands 
And brings it closer for a kiss.

This is the shore of the beloved.

Surf unrolls…
Here white suds search
The cream of dreams,
Reach their limen and return,
Bringing new hopes and visions
With every new wave.

Each rings hidden clocks in the rocks 
In swirling surf
That unscroll around your feet 
With the foam-born goddess.

Many hands twist within them
As do many within the sea
And within the wind
To tell time
From timelessness. 


Monday, October 9, 2023

Bitten Moon


 
Thin crescent Moon @ not so bad Astrophotography
 
Gnawed by ravenous winter,
A bitten moon 
Bleeds white
Into the snow.

Serrated wisps of clouds shred,
Clamping down hard like jaws 
Tearing thin, pale flesh.

Crying far into the sky,
Wolf-winds whine through the trees,
Their fangs of cold 
Striking and devouring everything
That is too alone.
 
Still, you trod on this night
Beneath this moon
Slowly eaten away 
Inside the freezing winter of time.

You have a home to journey towards. 

.
How to Paint a Glowing Moon | ehow
 


Thursday, August 31, 2023

Vision at Sunset in the Oakland/Berkeley Hills

 Eucalyptus Tree Grove in Berkeley « Inhabitat – Green Design, Innovation,  Architecture, Green Building

Like smoking thruribles pendulated 
By the ancient hands of patient priests,
Eucalyptus trees sway in the shifting fog, 
Wafting their incense of limbs and leaves 
Inside the church of hills.

Within the herd of flaming beams at sunset 
Goats feed on canticles of underbrush
Bleating, "Halleujah! Selah! Amen!",
The charisma of fiery winter clouds 
Enringing them in aureoles.
 
Moved by the scriptures of high winds,
The eucalyptus are etched by the hand of God upon the copper sky
And the Divine signatures of the boulevards and high-rises below,
A Passion stretched out on the crucifix
Of intersecting streets, their heavenly destination guaranteed,
Expand in the misty, theurgic distance
Of Divine Drama, salvaged.

Like probationers,
The hills and trees stand penitentially
In rigorous prayer and fasting, performing devotions,
Committed to the deliverance
Of their souls. 
 
All is Revealed.
 
The heavenly planes above
Are mere shadows of 
This world.
 

Friday, August 11, 2023

Balneum Mariae

 


Divine vapors steamily kiss the face
Of every amorous surface
From which God looks out upon you.
 
Surrounded in recurrences of water,
You are bathed in mysteries.

Sphinxes emerge from the mosaic
Of tiles swirling on the shower wall,
Encompassing you in the enigma 
Of your senses, riddling your mind
From nonage to senescence, night and day,
Their cordon extending along the avenue 
Of your mysterious destiny, 

And you bathe.... 

 


 

 

 

 

 

 
 
The nerves of body-mind opening at dawn,
Awakening to
The aura of white Egyptian roses 
Rising out of the desert, scattering their albescent sepals
In the rain that spills from your shower-head. 

And you sing, "O VITRIOL!" 
 "Visita Ineterioa Terrae Invenies Occultum Lapidem!"

Again, visit, visit
The interior
Of Earth
 
And purify, purify
Again, rectify and refine
That which is base within you and the world

And you will find
The Rock of Ages,
The Hidden Stone
That supports all Perfectly: 

The soul and body purified
In the Sea of Mary's Bath-
The Heat of Jesus
Nourished by Her Waters. 

Notes

Mariae Balneum, also known as Bain Marie, is a water bath or double boiler, a type of heated bath used in alchemy and to this day in science, industry and cooking to heat materials gently or to keep materials warm over a period of time. It literally means "Mary's Bath."

VITRIOL.  Visita Interiora Terrae Rectificando Invenies Occultum Lapidem: "Visit the Interior of the Earth and Rectify/Purify it to Find the Hidden Stone."   An alchemical motto.

 

 

 

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About Me

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Greetings, My name is Jon Landon. I am a native of the San Francisco Bay Area. I I can write everything from Poetry to Technical Writing, I am a UC Berkeley Alumni ('88)