2013, Fourth Quarter, Seventh Selection

Thickets

If I've ever gotten wiser,

it's when I've learned to

love the thickets, and

forgotten about the summits.

When I bushwhack my

arduous way, 

by loving the bushwhacking,

even coming to befriend

the bloody scrape of thorn

upon my skin.

And hesitate to leave those

scrapes behind,

even despite the old

familiar tingle of freedom,

making its deliberate way

into the back door of my

bloodstream, foretelling of

the magnificent clearing

just ahead.

Even then, I go for one

last circle through the brambles,

let thorns once more draw

the blood that

wards away hubris,

for good measure,

for the gods,

who appreciate thoughtfulness.

And finally emerge,

half pretending I haven't,

knowing it is nothing,

though loving,

with my whole force,

everything there revealed,

new and old and all,

and committing to it.    

--Brian Burke

2013, Fourth Quarter, Eighth Selection

Awareness of Awareness

¿Cómo se vuela hacia adentro

En el cielo inquieto de la mente?

Abriendo las alas, confiado,

Planeando por encima

De todas las corrientes,

Mirando las nubes pasar.

No importa cuán negras

O cuán cargadas de arco iris,

Sabiendo que sabes

Que sólo son eso:

Pasajeros sin nombre

Sin destino

Sin cielo

Viajando contigo y en ti,

Sin realidad propia

A la que asirse.

Así se vuela hacia adentro

Planeando cual halcón

Y dándote cuenta.

--Lilyan de la Vega

Awareness of Awareness

How to fly inward
In the mind’s restless heaven?
Opening the wings, confident,
Hovering above
All the streams,
Watching the clouds go by.
No matter how black
Or how loaded with rainbow
Knowing that you know
They are just that:
Nameless passengers
Without destination
Without sky
Without their own reality
To hold on to.
Traveling with you and in you,

In this way flying inward
Hovering like a falcon
And realizing.

--trans. Deanna Hopper

2013, Fourth Quarter, Final Selection

Remembering the Big Bang

Before everything flew apart, separated,
it all happened at once. Spring ice storms
and summer thunderheads. Dead of winter
gray ground and mockingbirds high

in the redwoods telling everyone their song
was wonderful, worth stealing. Time was compact,
pressed tight so that birth and death overlapped
and, at any moment, love happened over and over.

Inside there was no outside. The day
your mother threw your brother down
the backstairs isn't separate
from the afternoon, several years

from now, under a cloudless sky.
The Mediterranean folds you into
her turquoise, malachite embrace, returns
you to the dark, salty womb of beginnings.

Death, impersonal—even a daughter's,
love too, passion
on a starless Sonoran night
as the cicadas buzzed,

sleep a restless, burning dream.
Before the Big Bang, everything,
holy and secular,
a story and a history,

told, over and over and at once,
no words, spoken or sung.
No separation,
no one, no other.

--Rebecca del Rio

Selected Poems, Third Quarter, 2013

Dear Full Moon Friends –We so enjoyed all our wonderful submissions! As you may remember, during 2013, we are Selecting Poems not monthly but once a Quarter. For this, the Third Quarter, we have seven Selected Poems, some long, some short. Here are the first two – enjoy.

To that question
You could never
Ask me,
I still don't have
An answer.

--David Clark

The Instagram app

has a lighten/darken edit button

A bodhisattva I know

uses it to travel

from darkness to enlightenment

and back again

Although why he would do this

is something I’m still trying to work out

--Richard Velez