I find a sheltered place

I find a sheltered place
Here among the sand dunes
Behind me, the muted roar of the waves
In front of me, directly, remnants of hawthorn

Turned, black, and grey, and spiky
By the days of midday sun
Today my lunch is, a mindfully eaten
Prawn and mayonnaise sandwich

On wholemeal bread
Rather less mindfully
I guzzle the zero sugar Sprite
A sort of poor man’s lemonade

That I write this is exactly
As how I thought a shelter ought to be
Exactly how I imagined
That a writer might find his place

For the words not to be worried
But thoughtful, at one with the world
If it was ten degrees warmer
If the sea could be clear and blue

If the creepy crawlies
Did not creep all over my page
If all of that were true my friend
This would not still be such a quiet place

Of course I do not
Have to take an aeroplane
Or climb aboard
A luxurious small yacht

Which would take me
Down the Adriatic coast
From Split to Dubrovnik
All the while with eighteen other couples

Whom I may or may not care for
Although, in any event, I am quite sure
A very different sort of shelter
Would be formed

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In today’s meditation

In today’s meditation
I ended up back in the Bow room
It was not as intended
I meant to go somewhere altogether different

That a previous incarnation of meditation
Was stronger
Than the recently viewed images
May say something about my mind

About the flexibility, or the lack of
For the fixations previously fixated
Or perhaps of being nearer to a truth
Than the truth I choose not to let go of

Yet, as Maslow says
I can be both engineer and poet
Which in this instance I take to mean
I can be both meditator and voyeur

That I choose to light up my life
Or I could say, that I choose to take shelter
In that which can no longer be reached
Also may say something about my mind

About its complications or its simplicity
About its divergence or its convergence
About its old habits or its new explorations
About its lack of, or its depth of memory

Back then to the Bow room
The feeling of welcome, of security
A still place, yet with huge windows
To watch the world pass by

As those womenfolk did
With their wheelbarrows
Transporting hardcore
With occasional breaks for a cigarette

As they construct
The pathway
To the old church or
The new contemplation shelter

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I may not be here always

I may not be here always
But I am here right now
I don’t step on diamond causeways
But do feel near myself somehow

It is true I was once in Vienna
For a little while
Soon I will go to Sienna
To savour the Italian style

Railway carriages will be my shelter
For mile on Tuscany mile we ride
A smile for this springtime delta
With the mother of the bride

Not that I could help her
For the daughter is in charge
And in that heat we may swelter
While the vino is served so so large

These are different days
Than what they might have been
Yes, these are convoluted ways
The like so so seldom seen

The path could have gone elsewhere
The shelter not so secure or calm
A passion still to find there
To walk out arm in arm

But with neither land nor money
The prospects were not so bright
Far from the milk and honey
It became hard to see the light

I may not have been here always
Though I am here right now
I didn’t see the diamond causeways
But did find myself somehow

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I write this

I write this
While just sitting, just listening
To Adyashanti’s discourse
On just sitting

He asks
What does it mean
To do nothing at all; of course
I don’t do nothing, I write

And what do I write of
What do I question for myself
It is: can I find shelter in nothing at all
Can the nothing at all embrace me

I had felt, or rather I had seen
That almost nothing, that almost nowhere
I was driving on recovered land
I was on marshes and fens

It was a quiet time
Nothing was being asked of me
Shelter was my pencil and paper
My shelter was what I might think of

It was a gentle, generous place
Though my mind took me off elsewhere
I would, through time, use my memory
To distil what might or might not be

I cast myself into the openness
Into Adyashanti’s waking-dream
Where no outside activity
Would care to, or try to interfere

I was being, the rain was pouring
I was taken by the ease
Of which it was suggested
That I make a telephone call to the old shelter

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I am on an Easter break

I am on an Easter break
From my Home-Made PhD
The sky is blue
The breeze is cool
There is still much work to be done

The pampas grass stands tall and voluminous
The blossom tree more spindly
There is a tall hedge behind me
Where there are rattles caused by humans
Which echo the birdsong

This is the half-clear mind
Which sees, which records
Which almost settles itself
Yet which always seems to know
There is still much work to be done

That is, to find shelter
In the shelter of I
That is, to find shelter
In the shelter of my own mind
In the shelter of mine own body

Yes, I can observe
I can enter the awareness
I can tell you that the breeze
Tries to become a wind
Yes, it tries to become something other

And so it is
So it has been for so so many years
Time spent in thought of something other
With heart and soul outstretched, knowing that
There is still much work to be done

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