a day spent
on a book of trees

ash and aspen
almondmaples
and sycomore fig
walnut redwood
willow laurel
white birch, spruce, fir
acacia pine and banyan
elm linden
palm cedar
myrrh hazel
hawthorn
cypressjuniper
applemyrtle
orange oaks
mulberry pear
pacific rosewoods
sweet chestnut
yellow showers
rain trees

i am staying. slowly munching on a day, perched on a branch of dreams. shelter, sense and solitude crowned to the windtides. the bells toll a reading to its close. unchanging. loose leaves falling on forestground. a nearness receding, shading their common sun.

Revisioning

Five years, my friend, since I overheard
your tears because the universe was silent.
I never went as far as you, not pushed
to desolation’s reaches, but the nights
were almost as cold. From the past
a memory of beginnings made me watchful;
taking strange paths under indifferent skies
I longed to recognize the rare, distinctive
kindling in bone—its warmth was human.
If this was what I sought, affirmation,
of life so very nearly lost, it made
the terror of your anguish beautiful;
the chill of a silent God a heavenly fire.

Suffering burns us clean. This baptism we share,
though what in us is deepest seems the hardest
to surrender. And see now here, despite time’s
ruthlessness, love reduced to ash may feed new roots.

I live by faith now, as you do, discerning
in solitary spaces the freeing of the soul.
We listen still for voices, pay them heed,
but fashion from their words our own responses.
Revisioning is more than finding trails;
it is to move through dead ends to horizons.
it is to see new signs within old lands,
the ancient furrows break like children’s smiles.

Lee Tzu Pheng

endpoint

journey beyond the end...
21 - 27 sept. 2006

Be patient toward all that is unresolved in your heart.

Try to love the questions themselves.

Do not seek the answers which cannot be given,

because you would not be able to live them.


And the point is - to live everything.

Live the questioning now.
Perhaps you will gradually,
without noticing,
live along some distant day,
into the answers...

rainer maria rilke