transition

Here I am

scanning the stars

searching for home.

I shall be

 returning quietly

to a lifetime

I've longed for.

ONG SOHUNG, Creator, I am Thou!

-Tarhata, 
July 31, 2013 2:50 am

Ithaca

When you set out for Ithaka

ask that your way be long,

full of adventure, full of instruction...

Have Ithaka always in your mind.

Your arrival there is what you are destined for.

But don't in the least hurry the journey.

Better it last for years,

so that when you reach the island you are old,

rich with all you have gained on the way,

not expecting Ithaka to give you wealth.

Ithaka gave you a splendid journey.

Without her you would not have set out.

She hasn't anything else to give you.

And if you find her poor, Ithaka hasn't deceived you.

So wise you have become, of such experience,

that already you'll have understood what these Ithakas mean. 

Constantine P. Cavafy

Ephemerae

No one discovers

just where we've been, 

when we're caught up again

into our own sphere (where we must

return, indeed, to evolve our destinies)

--but we have changed, a little. 

Denise Levertov,  Sojourns in the Parallel World

Beannacht

On the day when
the weight deadens
on your shoulders
and you stumble,
may the clay dance
to balance you.
And when your eyes
freeze behind
the grey window
and the ghost of loss
gets in to you,
may a flock of colours,
indigo, red, green,
and azure blue
come to awaken in you
a meadow of delight.

When the canvas frays
in the currach of thought
and a stain of ocean
blackens beneath you,
may there come across the waters
a path of yellow moonlight
to bring you safely home.


― John O'Donohue, Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom

the unseen

And they tell me that

This life is good

They tell me to live it gently

With fire, and always with hope.

There is wonder here

And there is surprise

In everything the unseen moves.

The ocean is full of songs.

The sky is not an enemy.

Destiny is our friend.

 -- Ben Okri

when you arrived here...

No, they whisper. You own nothing.

You were a visitor, time after time

climbing the hill, planting the flag, proclaiming.

We never belonged to you.

You never found us.

It was always the other way round.

-- Margaret Atwood

A Blessing for One Who is Exhausted

You have traveled too fast over false ground;

Now your soul has come to take you back.

Take refuge in your senses, open up

To all the small miracles you rushed through.

Become inclined to watch the way of rain

When it falls slow and free.

Imitate the habit of twilight,

Taking time to open the well of color

That fostered the brightness of day.

Draw alongside the silence of stone

Until its calmness can claim you.

― John O'Donohue

Desert Places

They cannot scare me with their empty spaces

Between stars—on stars where no human race is.

I have it in me so much nearer home

To scare myself with my own desert places. 

― Robert Frost

thought flood

Tonight, in the infinitesimal light of the stars,

The trees and flowers have been strewing their cool odors.

I walk among them, but none of them are noticing.

Sometimes I think that when I am sleeping

I must most perfectly resemble them--

Thoughts gone dim.

It is more natural to me, lying down.

Then the sky and I are in open conversation,

And I shall be useful when I lie down finally:

Then the trees may touch me for once, and the flowers have time for me.

― Sylvia Plath, Collected Poems

...I Am Vertical

(But I would rather be horizontal...)

---

The Mystery Of Man

We come from a distant past that we’ve forgotten

And now we look up and aspire to the stars

We are the mystery that even we can’t decipher

The mystery of man

The story is told in stone and broken arrows

In traces of cities unknown lost in sand

In colours and castle walls silent and unseen statues

The mystery of man

The wind stirs in the trees likes voices in dreams

And then just when it seems we know what it means

Simply its gone

The miracle is the mind asking the questions

Seeking to find itself if it can

Only to see itself endlessly echoed in mirrors

The mystery of man.

---

Karol Wojtyla (the late Pope John Paul II)

finding the words

One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple. 

― Jack Kerouac

The Test

Those who learned to be truly human

found everything in being humble

while those who looked proudly from above

were pushed down the stairs.

A heart that must always feel superior

will one day lose its way.

What should be within leaks out...

A Poem by Yunus Emre (1240-1321)

The Drop that became the Sea, translated by Helminski and Algan (1989)

half light and dusk

[Photograph: T. Estacaan, "Half Light" May 2013]

“Although

the cricket’s song

has no words,

still,

it sounds like sorrow.”

— Ono no Komachi, in The Ink Dark Moon, translated by Jane Hirshfield

Beauty

Photograph: Tarhata Estacaan, "The Real", December 2012

Among the grasses,

An unknown flower

Blooming white.

―Zen Haiku

The Sacred in Everyday Life

Photograph: Tarhata Estacaan "Rustic Kitchen", March 2012

  “Daily”

A poem by Naomi Shihab Nye

These shriveled seeds we plant,
corn kernel, dried bean,
poke into loosened soil,
cover over with measured fingertips

These T-shirts we fold into
perfect white squares

These tortillas we slice and fry to crisp strips
This rich egg scrambled in a gray clay bowl

This bed whose covers I straighten
smoothing edges till blue quilt fits brown blanket
and nothing hangs out

This envelope I address
so the name balances like a cloud
in the center of sky

This page I type and retype
This table I dust till the scarred wood shines
This bundle of clothes I wash and hang and wash again
like flags we share, a country so close
no one needs to name it

The days are nouns: touch them
The hands are churches that worship the world