Sunday, January 31, 2010

Where Sweet Incense Burns

In silent stillness a lotus blossoms
Rising off the pond like a morning mist

When water hushes the ibis takes flight
Gliding on updrafts through a purple sky

A apple falls where spreading branches’
Shade cools the swami’s levitating soul

As thrushes warble a furtive fox blinks
And dandelions eddy on the breeze

Between some bushes a single moonbeam
Scales garden walls climbing through the vines

In a cold dark room where sweet incense burns
Reclines a stiff form its soul drifts away

2 comments:

gerry boyd said...

Nice capture of a moment. Reads like a haiku without the haiku form. A sense of stillness.

Unknown said...

Thank you, Gerry. That's what I was going for, a kind of cross between the feel and sound of haiku and the Zen koan, but without using the form, instead doing this is a kind of couplet form, though, not even a traditional couplet, I know. I just wanted to give that Eastern feel and break the rules, see if I could do it.