"nembutsu" poems
Your name will be forever on my lips,
careful and yet ceaseless, even grand.
I will dance to your compassion, kiss
the world’s forehead and hold its hand.
Grace will be the text my life produces,
your own handwritten transformation.
Your life and light will caress the bruises
of experiences, complete illumination,
enlightenment, from darkness to light.
My foolish self will plumb the depths of
power, take love’s lantern to the night,
to blindness. I, restless one, will find rest
in the boundlessness of unearned favor,
his mighty wind filling my sails, a savior.
Mar 23, 2014
Mar 23, 2014 at 8:22 PM UTC
For though we might,
We cannot fight the wind;
Try as we may,
The mist eludes our grasp;
Shadows defy our clutches,
Rainclouds form,
The sun and moon rise and set
Despite our will;
Controlling nothing,
Still we do not see,
And frame our lives with an order
That is illusion,
Timetables and inventories
Of ignorance;
Labels and times and convenience
We set in stone that crumbles
Like sand before the winds
Of Impermanence;
Change is the symphony,
And fluid the score
Of this dharmakayic waltz,
And though we dance
We fancy ourselves but
Onlookers to the show;
That when the crashing finale
Resounds -- as it must --
We stop our ears and wail;
Not seeing, deaf to the choir
That has but turned the page
To sing a new song;
Our own melody ended,
We fade only to be played anew
From the string of another bow;
The song goes on, rising, falling,
And Bliss is the one
Who follows as the Piper leads
With Namu Amida Butsu.
May 27, 2019
May 27, 2019 at 2:38 PM UTC