I straddle behind you on the motorcycle the sun tans our faces, your back rests content with my steady warmth —
we wander through little known byways where roads are rough and vines overgrow their bounds, and we meander with butterflies across meadows of wildflowers
then suddenly the sky breaks open, pours rain by the buckets, as wind and water pelt our faces and little streams flood our pathways —
I close my eyes, hold you close, in a little while you bring us to a tavern decked with rain-soaked begonias: we step inside, into laughter and song.
The Light by the Window the doorknob felt cold you stood there your eyes— I could not enter them only silence I waited for your voice to call me back only silence I stepped into the night the light by the window flickered blocked by your shadow
While reading Hermann Hesse’s “The Living Word” (from Seasons of the Soul), I was struck by a quiet and enduring truth: that the Word, however sacred, however beautiful, is never meant to be held at a distance. It must be lived, or it loses its life within us.
His poem does not argue this, it simply reminds. And in that reminder, something in me answered: What happens when truth is no longer contemplated, but encountered, when it is no longer spoken, but beheld?
I found myself returning to a poem I had written some time ago, and I now read it differently:
When Truth and I Behold Each Other
When Truth and I behold each other, my heart pulsates to the tempo of the soft- spoken mist of rain that tiptoes after the last bellow of the drunken thunder has been silenced —
I forget this leavened flesh, I am no longer a tree walking in my tannin espadrilles, the alabaster egrets carry my gesturing branches across the turquoise oceans —
I am left with my eyes sown in the meadow of the galaxies, primordial light-years turn transparent corneal sheaths into the sun’s corona —
the brilliance is beyond diamonds.
— D. G. Vachal
Perhaps this is one way of receiving the “living word” — not as something we hold, but as something that overtakes us, reshapes us, and carries us beyond ourselves.
lilies, sparrows and grass 
You must be logged in to post a comment.