For the inner ear, the voice of the ves­sel of silence is an embrace
felt by an infi­nite num­ber of scribes.
It is my wish to offer here an oasis of present day poetic
pens.

Each month i shall invite new poets to breathe with, and they in
turn will bring guests of their own.

Poetry Cor­ner at TIFERET has evolved out of Donna Stein’s
enthu­si­asm to nur­ture the spirit of beauty in all its forms.

silent lotus

August 2010 Silent Lotus’ Selected
Poets’

Dick Holmes

and his guest Max Reif

Sadiq Alam

and his guest Naomi Stone

Dick
Holmes

APPALACHIAN ALEMBIC

From now on,
I’m going to write
my poems on fallen
sycamore leaves and
toss them from the
peak of Hawks­bill Moun­tain.
I’ll wear only the edi­ble,
includ­ing myself.
At sun­set, I’ll glide like
a hawk over the misty gorge,
just for the fun of it.

TRAVELING LIGHT

Among the crowd, I
rec­og­nize the per­sona
emerg­ing con­texts have been
inclin­ing me toward
and set out with him.
It’s a long jour­ney we go on
through hell and heaven
and back between, though it
takes only an instant
to get to our des­ti­na­tion.
Along the way, the ten zil­lion
things I never really wanted, after all,
reveal their empti­ness. This
comes as no sur­prise
to my sage trav­el­ing com­pan­ion;
it’s what he’s been telling me
for ages. Now here it is, the
unex­pected, bril­liant elegance.

Born in Kansas in 1949, Dick Holmes has lived else­where since grow­ing up there, but the nat­ural beauty and soli­tude of its vast fields and skies have con­tin­ued to inform his aes­thetic sen­si­bil­i­ties. “For me,” he writes, “poetry is a spir­i­tual quest, a form of lan­guage for com­muning with the Divine Beloved. As such, com­pos­ing a poem is more of a lis­ten­ing, tru­ing med­i­ta­tion than a writ­ing activ­ity. Over the years, my poetry writ­ing prac­tice has guided me in every aspect of my life, from psy­cho­log­i­cal growth to spir­i­tual sur­ren­der.“ Dick is the author of a large col­lec­tion of poems enti­tled Recipes for Grat­i­tude (Pure Heart Press, www.mainstreetrag.com/DickHolmes.html). He is a fea­tured poet at AvatarMeherBaba.org (www.avatarmeherbaba.org/erics/dickholmes.html) and at Poetry-Chaikhana.com (www.poetry-chaikhana.com/H/HolmesDick/index.htm) and is a reg­u­lar con­trib­u­tor to the Poetry-Chaikhana.com Forum. For the past thirty years, Dick and his wife Bro­nia have been teach­ing Eng­lish to inter­na­tional stu­dents at the Uni­ver­sity of South Carolina.

Max
Reif

TO A VISIONARY WHOSE NAME I’LL NEVER KNOW

This is to you, lady who smiled at me

as I came out of the sub­way at 14th Street

and walked down 6th Avenue in the win­ter of ’74,

hav­ing just arrived in New York. Gen­tle feath­ers

of snow had just begun falling from the black
above the street­lights. Pass­ing you,
I felt myself taken into your
eyes, and sud­denly

was no longer a con­fused young man

won­der­ing whether every next step was the right one,

but a Light-being, love built into his cells, 
lean­ing for­ward,
poised to give.


Thirty-five years later

I still walk those tun­nels of your eyes,

down the line of your smile,
toward that per­son you saw in me.

I’m 62 liv­ing in Cal­i­for­nia now, still try­ing “to pen­e­trate into the essence of all being and sig­nif­i­cance, and to release the fra­grance of that inner expe­ri­ence for the guid­ance and ben­e­fit of oth­ers by express­ing in the world of forms truth, love, purity and beauty.”(Meher Baba). Very rich time, right now. My web­site, WHAT REMAINS IS THE ESSENCE, can be found at http://www.realnothings.com.

Sadiq
Alam

Soul-fish swim­ming in God-Ocean

this soul-fish swims
in the God-Ocean
and keeps won­der­ing:
’where is this
ancient, nos­tal­gic
thirst of water
com­ing from?!’

the lover dogs of God
are howl­ing all along
from the time of separation.

remain unseen
the ancient lovers’
ever flow­ing tears,
because
since aeon
they’re cry­ing
inside this
vast God-Ocean.

Where is the Cen­ter of an Infi­nite Circle?

stop being ego-centered
and merely self­ish.
you are not
the (only) cen­ter of the universe.

amidst this ever expand­ing
Infi­nite cre­ation
we are in an Infi­nite Circle.

and know that
every point inside an Infi­nite Cir­cle
is it’s Center.

Ser­vant and Seeker of Truth, SADIQ ALAM is Edi­tor and Author of INSPIRATIONS AND CREATIVE THOUGHTS (www.mysticsaint.info), an inter­na­tion­ally acclaimed weblog pub­lished since 2005. It cov­ers a wide range of themes includ­ing Inte­gral & Com­par­a­tive Spir­i­tu­al­ity, World Faith Tra­di­tions and Mys­ti­cism. Sadiq has a strong inter­est in Sufi teach­ings and East­ern reli­gious / spir­i­tual tra­di­tions. He devel­oped an early inter­est in Spir­i­tu­al­ity which led him into the study of Sufism through the teach­ings of Hazrat Inayat Khan. He took ini­ti­a­tion into the Sufi path in Decem­ber 2007 by tak­ing hand with Shaykh Muham­mad al-Jamal of Jerusalem, a guide in the Shad­hili Sufi lin­eage. Presently Sadiq lives in Dhaka, Bangladesh. http://www.mysticsaint.info/

Naomi
Stone

Dance of Cre­ative Freedom

If I am patient

and let my heart lead,

each word that appears
on the page,

flames out from the sparks
leaping within my heart.

The dance is chore­o­graphed

by the winds of love,

like the breeze of the mys­tics,

or the breath

of the Beloved,

to move in the sway­ing beauty

of invis­i­bly mov­ing music,

toss­ing and touch­ing

and playing
with my hair.

Oh how could I name the lover

that leaps from my heart
and sur­rounds me

with the beloved­ness of life,

who surprises
me with an embrace

that expands the soul!

My mind has melted into colors
and light

and feel­ings that slip away

and van­ish

if I reach out to touch them.

How do I allow this unknown spirit,

this hov­er­ing near­ness,

to cra­dle my being
in a divine fusion

of beauty
that flees from form
and defies description!

Faith in Love has new mean­ing

as it opens its arms

to my heart.

There is no answer

to the bewil­der­ing mys­tery

that keeps me awake

to greet the dawn,

except to risk every­thing

and sur­ren­der

to the glo­ri­ous Beloved,

veiled in the mist
of the envelop­ing cloud

of unknowing.

Poetry Cor­ner Monthly Archives

POETRY CORNER by silent lotus … JUNE 2010

POETRY
CORNER by silent lotus … MAY 2010