Archive
MONDAY’S POEM: Echoes 3
It’s a dreary Monday here in the Middle Atlantic region, heavy with rain. I found a heavy poem from a series I had written on time (last Monday’s was the first in that series) and how it might operate extra-dimensionally rather than linearly. It is so easy for us in the west to think of time as a unidirectional vector: past as tail, present as shaft, future as arrow point shooting out in a single direction. But what if time is more like a bubble, sometimes expanding, sometimes contracting; what if?
Echoes 3
Echoes need emptiness.
The reverberations of time
Bounce within the hollow bubble
Of now.
Write for the future.
They need your poetry
Out there for some distant when
To exist.
There is no now,
Only the echoes of yesterday
When the world was made new
For all.
Write for the past.
There is no then without these words
Remembering those who remember
For us.
©2014 Richard W. Bredeson. All rights reserved.
MONDAY’S POEM: Echoes 1
My newest grandson, Tristan Wallace Bredeson, is here for a visit from California. He is just over three months old now, and beginning to show a delightful personality. He has been just about the most perfect baby I can imagine; he only fusses a little when he is hungry or needs a change! We are having a delightful time with him!
A new generation of Bredesons leads me to the poem today. I wrote it two years ago, but it seems to apply even more as the next generation, the next echo sounds forth. And with my son and grandson with me now, I do catch myself using expressions and words from my past, my parents. Are we learning lessons and moving on to new ones or are we just echoing within the chamber of time? Maybe the answer to this question is “yes”!
Echoes 1
Dad’s voice moved from
My ear to my throat
At breakfast. I heard
Him clearly: A non-sensical
Expression of his.
Mom’s voice jumped out of
My mouth with no thought
Or control behind it. It
Was clear, critical; some
Rule was broken.
Where is my voice? Has it
Been silenced by the tides
Of Time; lost in the returning
Ripples from the
Wall of Beyond?
Is the Wall of Time moving?
Is the sphere expanding?
The already learned lessons
Echo from the cold surface
Teaching, preaching.
Will we ever learn?
©2014 Richard W. Bredeson. All rights reserved.
FRIDAY’S POEM FROM “RHYTHMS AND CYCLES” – The Chamber of Time
One of my favorite teachers, Martín Prechtel, is a master of languages, among many things. He teaches that the Tzutujil Mayan language has no verb form of “to be.” This makes it very interesting to speak of the past or future; in fact the Mayan peoples don’t seem to mind this “missing” grammatical component and are quite happy living in the present! Would Western civilization be a bit more content if we stopped using “to be.”
Imagine the possibilities!
With this in mind I riffed off one of Martín’s teachings about living in the middle of time for today’s poem:
The Chamber of Time
What if reality is nothing more
than a huge echo chamber?
Time in this reality is nothing more
than an echo returning.
The Holy, Goddesses, Gods
are nothing more than our
reflection in this chamber.
And we, nothing more than theirs.
To be sure the rhythms, ebb
and flow, dynamic play of
Light and Shadow in this
Hologram are a multidimensional mix.
The chaotic complexity settles
into karmic patterns, polyphonic,
kaleidoscopic interplay of
a multivalence array, to be sure.
And the echoes, like the breath of the
Holy, like our own rhythms,
beats, breaths, reverberate
Through this panoply of reality in time.
©2014 Richard W. Bredeson. All rights reserved.
FRIDAY’S POEM FROM “RHYTHMS AND CYCLES” – The Future is Now
Today’s poem is a reprise from a few months ago. It comes to mind as we look toward Rosemary’s Possibilities Playshop next week. In this event we use our intuitive skills to “plan forward” toward our “bodacious wish” for the future. How does the future and all our planning (we in the west or so good about planning!) relate to the practice of being present, living now? This poem gets at that cycle and enigma of time.
The Future is Now
If the future is now
Dreams are now.
This is Dream Time.
And is the past now?
Forgiveness is now.
This is the lesson.
Now is only now,
Past time, Dream Time,
All one now.
©2014 Richard W. Bredeson. All rights reserved.
PS: If you are in the vicinity of Annapolis, Maryland, check out the Playshop opportunity: Here’s the Link
A FRIDAY POEM FROM RHYTHMS AND CYCLES – “The Future is Now”
Rosemary’s Exploration, posted today on her blog (look for it here next Wednesday), is about choice, about choosing our family, our life, our Truth. It’s about rewriting our stories the way we want them to be lived and told.
I came across this poem before I read her article; they seem to go together. All time is NOW. When we live in the present every moment is a moment of our choosing. Dream into your own reality!
The Future is Now
If the future is now
Dreams are now.
This is Dream Time.
And is the past now?
Forgiveness is now.
This is the lesson.
Now is only now,
Past time, Dream Time,
All one now.
©2014 Richard W. Bredeson. All rights reserved.