Bells

el arco de cabo san lucas under white and blue sky
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An odd

Turn taken,

And now the road goes by beside

Burned cities all forsaken

And the ashes of fields are crumpled into dust.

The canyon wrens

No longer fly near here

And their guiding spirits

Seem to have no wings,

A numinous cloud blocks

The lunar rays from shining

While the moon forgets her phases, just

As the sun

Is lost, setting in the cave by the sea,

When the tide

Has turned out of sight

Yet beyond the time still gone,

The dragonfly flits

Anew through rainbowed fountains;

The light of heaven sings

High on the shimmering

Branches of the holy mountains

Beyond the impenetrable night

Of hidden majesty.

“Abhaya mudra”

“Fear not” – but only follow

Ganesha,

Always wise,

With eyes

Of emerald light.

Go,

Where the black-chinned hummingbirds fly,

That host

of angels,

Who stay

Unwavering, steady on their way

Brave in the bright

Wind of dawn

Above the sea crashing long

On the rocks

Where all begins, again and yet again

Within the bells

Of Shiva,

Far along

The wave-bent coast,

In the still-sung, rising song

Of the Holy One.

In the mists of the bells of Shiva,

in the winds of the song and

The ringing of the seas.

© Copyright Sharon St Joan, 2023

The far-glimmering hill

silhouette of tree under half moon
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India

Forest,

Rock stone lake,

Red cliff flowers on the road to the moon;

Tracks run into the curled sea of Malta,

Where the wind songs break.

Back then

There were many obelisks, all

Bright and speaking –

Not like today

When

The smoke whispers only

Sad tales of decrepitude,

And there are no beings singing

In the clouds,

Only shrouds

Of emptiness.

When

Will the gray

Seagulls return

On wings of yesteryear,

On dreams not yet forgotten?

When will the spirits, imbued

With magic, fly up through

The night mists –

Rain-hissed?

Having slept,

The cobra

Rocked from side to side,

Friend of Narayana,

From the sea-green tide,

Alert, considering

Where to slither next,

Ancient being,

The one

Who used to ride among the stars,

Ancestor of many,

Who writes his text

On sandbars,

Ocean-swept.

Long ago

Then

Legends lived of hero

And saint

And those wiser than us by far.

There

Were crowds

Of bumblebees who count the stars.

Even now, doorways go

From the cavern

In the lake

To the mystic palaces of the tall

Wandering beings

Who still hear

The tales of centuries long slipped away,

Their shadow-light faint

Beyond the sea.

When will the time come then?

Soon

After the smoke of the fire has spewed

Down the valley

Will there arise

At last the moment of

Wildflowers, wandering moths, butterflies,

And little ones

With deep black eyes

And strange smiles of kindness?

There

Where

The wind sighs

Still

In the tall pines

And the bright moon

Shines

High

Above

The far-glimmering

Hill.

© Copyright Sharon St Joan 2023

Why look at the past?

sand desert statue pyramid
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Some of us don’t find history very interesting. Once in my own distant past, I, unfortunately, had a fourth-grade teacher who had memorized the names of every single U.S. vice-president.  Even at the time, at my young age, I thought that memorizing the names of vice-presidents was not a very imaginative use of one’s time.

However, thank goodness, there is more to history than memorizing names – or the dates of battles – which used to be an important thing to memorize.

An extraordinary number of us, however, do find history dull. Sadly, that may be due to our own level of ignorance. Finding the past dull says nothing about the past; it only says something about the dimness of our brain.

Let’s say I have a friend – someone I met not long ago – just a friend – someone I might meet at the dog park or maybe the neighbor down the street.  Maybe someone a bit older who has lived a long life. If I decide that the person’s life has been boring, then I will never bother to be interested in his or her life. I will never ask a question or express any interest. I will never learn anything about this person.

Maybe my newly found friend speaks six languages or has traveled around the world several times – or spent several years in the Peace Corps – or was a prisoner of war – or a criminal in prison for many years – or nearly died from an illness – or has a family with children and grandchildren – or is an immigrant who grew up on another continent – or the winner of a Pulitzer Prize – or is a famous poet – or won millions of dollars in the lottery – or is a brilliant concert pianist – or is an astronomer with fascinating theories about the universe – or is a hero who risked his life to save his comrades in Vietnam – or is a billionaire, but isn’t telling anyone – or used to be a bank robber.

All this might be quite fascinating, but I may never know if I never express any interest at all in the life of my friend. If I am just not interested, then I will never know how much I am missing or how much I might learn.

This is how many of us approach history. We assume that the present is pretty much all that is relevant and that the past could contain nothing that would be of the slightest interest to us today.

This is like saying that the only place that is of any interest to us is the town or city that we live in. The rest of the world does not exist for us – there are no countries, no continents, no vast expanses of ocean, no cold polar realms, no hot tropics, no jungles, no exotic foreign places – no forests or deserts – no planet earth at all really. Just the street where we live, and that’s it really.

But this is not true of history. The past is not just populated by dull Europeans or unknowable Africans – or boring people who somehow lived out their dull lives before the Twenty First Century. And if you go back a few hundred years — perhaps we might be telling ourselves — they most likely lived in caves anyway.

The Americas

Before the four centuries in which what we now call America has existed, on the continents of North and South America, there were, at a bare minimum, ten or twenty thousand years of culture – with fascinating myths and stories about nature, the universe, the stars, the animals and the plants. In the Americas, people built some of the biggest pyramids in the world and giant cities with complex irrigation systems and incredible works of art, unequaled anywhere. Their myths and the stories provide an extraordinary depth of awareness, insight, and knowledge about how to relate to life and the universe. There are stories about Gods that give a profound spiritual perspective – far more beautiful than anything most of us can imagine today. There was writing extending far back over many centuries, and there were calendars with numbers to keep track of time over not just thousands, but millions, of years. There were worlds upon worlds that we can no longer even imagine.

Africa, the Pacific Islands, India

In Africa too, there were vast movements of people. There were great cities built of stone in southern Africa. In the Sahara, which is now a desert, there were thriving wetlands filled with herds of animals and many people who left their art and history printed on the rocks over ten thousand years ago. In Egypt, there were pyramids, many temples, and gigantic works of art like the Sphinx, believed by some authorities to have been built tens of thousands of years ago, with a level of mathematical precision that cannot even be understood or matched today. There was an awareness of various levels of being with which we have long ago lost touch.

In the islands that dot the Pacific, there are hundreds of giant stone megalithic monuments, including some recently discovered that apparently go back for over 20,000 years.

In India, advanced culture goes back at least seven thousand years, to the Indus Valley Civilization which had elaborate city planning, paved streets, sewage systems, and a complex “modern” civilization, with writing, mathematics, and elegant public buildings as well as private houses. Later, around the first century BCE, there were brilliant Indian scientists and mathematicians who created the number system that we still use today – without which, the current world economy would have remained an impossibility that could never have been developed.

These scientists understood the solar system, the nature of stars, atoms, and gravity; they knew that the earth and other planets revolved around the sun – at a time when people in Europe saw the earth as flat. They had many precisely accurate measurements of physical aspects of the earth and the entire solar system. It would take Europe until around the fifteenth century to rediscover some of this knowledge – known so long ago in ancient India.

The Stone Age

If we go back a bit earlier to Gobekli Tepe, the amazing site uncovered in Turkey in recent decades – it goes back to at least 12,000 BCE. There, giant, beautifully shaped stones in around twenty huge circles were built with precision and accuracy. The entire site was buried and is gradually being excavated.

Here is another thing to think of – many thousands of years ago, at a time that we think of as paleolithic – or the Old Stone Age, when people actually did live in caves – during the times of the Ice Ages – how do we know what was in the consciousness of these people?

Some of the cave art in Europe consists of the most startingly beautiful depictions ever created of animals. It is the equal of any artwork anywhere over a span the ten thousand years or so that followed, up to and including today.  Should we not draw from this the conclusion that these people, far from being primitive, were instead aware and conscious of many levels of reality that we may simply have lost touch with. They seem to have had a profound connection with the inner spirit of the animals they portrayed in art.

What if?

We “modern” people pride ourselves on our technology, which is indeed truly remarkable. But, all the same, it is still technology – it is not a vision of the nature of worlds and universes.

What if magic and miracles are real?  What if all the Gods that modern science dismisses so easily are real and true presences? What if things as they are, are far, far different than our current, scientific, physical, worldview allows?

What if our modern age has got it all wrong – and profound truth and beauty lies just beyond our reach? What if we must journey back a little in time to gain a truer and deeper perspective – to catch an unforgettable glimpse of the immense beauty that is – that we, as the human race have since lost touch with – and that we need to rediscover – if not in this age – then, after the ending of this age, in the brighter age that is to come – one way or another – sooner or maybe later?

A persevering interest in the past – in history – can open doors to many worlds of deeper understanding.

© Copyright, Sharon St Joan, 2023

The dance of Shiva

black and yellow bird perched on tree branch
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Within the snow

See

The raven-winged worlds of wonder

Become the beginnings and the endings,

The souls who are the one

Soul –

The re-awakening beginning

And the ultimate ending, broken asunder.

The soul of the snow goes

Drifting by on the many rivulets,

You

Who

Are no one and everyone,

The soft-spoken spirit

Of the call of the night heron,

Floating over the waters

Of the black lake

Of eternity,

Where the boatman

Dips his pole

Toward the far shoal,

Awake

Now, with all the children of the stars,

Sons and daughters

Of heaven,

Who are dancing –

Dancing

The dance of Shiva,

The one Soul.

© Copyright, Sharon St Joan, 2023

In Nenmeli, life begins all over again — Forest Voices of India

By Sriya Narayanan Once a sparkling village bustling with biodiversity and economic activity, Nenmeli in Kanchipuram, Tamil Nadu, had watched its green cover fade over the years. The village lands deteriorated over time A grueling water scarcity issue followed. Young residents were forced to migrate to cities to look for work and the elderly stayed…

In Nenmeli, life begins all over again — Forest Voices of India

Two fruit bat friends — Forest Voices of India

A Great Indian fruit bat in the wild Over two years ago, in April of 2020, two Giant Indian Fruit Bats were rescued from Bangaluru City, in south India, and brought to the WRRC (Wildlife Rescue and Rehabilitation Centre). Both are males that weighed 390 grams and 410 grams (nearly one pound each). The Covid…

Two fruit bat friends — Forest Voices of India

Kamakshi’s Light

forest during dawn
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In a meandering land of mystic moons,

At the waystation

Between the worlds – unremembered, translucent,

Walking, not yet understanding,

Beyond the shifting sand dunes.

At the crossroads by the river

Of fish glimmering, shimmering,

In a sliver of moonlight

Waits a boat of mist,

In a time that is no

Time,

In a place that is no place,

We walk before the dawn

In a land of gentle grace,

In a land of mist and stars.

As we climb a tilted rise,

There ahead a mountain looms alone,

Home of fir trees, of summer’s moss,

And winter’s cold,

Of crystal stone,

Eclipsed in silver wings of snow

Of thrice-weathered rocks,

Of beings old

Older than the earth – from long before,

Of grandfathers that go along on a bent cane,

In the time that never was – sure-footed, wise,

Beyond a fog-inducing year

Of history

Come unpinned,

In a land that will wait,

Just past the wooden post of the gate,

There, where an angel’s footstep shone

On the dark

Valley floor – benevolent,

And be waiting, for the dawn that breaks,

Transcendent,

For the golden eagles to lift into the clear sun,

Once more,

Into the deep blue,

To fly,

To cry,

To lift their sky-

Engulfing intent

In awakening days

Of lakes

And the white, waving wildflowers,

The rose-enchanted nettles,

That sing songs of ancient power

In the cool wind

Anew

Where Kamakshi,

The black, opalescent one, ringed in every mystery,

She who is mother of the forest,

Of springing deer

And sparkling fawn,

Of flocks of horned lark,

Of the long-billed curlew

Who tiptoes across

The water’s edge then turns to glance

Again at the light-calling pinion jays,

While Kamakshi gathers up her winged petals

Of joy

Anew,

Now to dance

In the bright-

Singing rain.

© Copyright, Sharon St Joan, 2022

****

Please visit the website Forest Voices of India:

https://forestvoicesofindia.com

Notes {1675} ~ MYSTICS {29} ~ Ramana Maharshi — DiosRaw

Ramana Maharshi /rəˈmʌnə məˈhʌrʃi/ (30 December 1879 – 14 April 1950) was an Indian Hindu sage and jivanmukta (liberated being). He was born Venkataraman Iyer, but is mostly known by the name Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi.

Notes {1675} ~ MYSTICS {29} ~ Ramana Maharshi — DiosRaw

Within the rain

gray owl on tree branch
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Within the mystic rain

An echo

Calls toward the distant gateway

To a deer-enchanted meadow,

While the white-

Crowned sparrow

Finds her intended way

In the bobbing boat of cottonwood leaves

Along the weaving river of one day,

One

Afternoon.

Then, soon,

When the windows rush on by

From the train

That goes,

Where

No one knows,

In the evening

Of a lost spring,

In the foothills of the Western Ghats

Where the young Ganesha

Plays,

Picking lots

Of blueberries

For his mother, Parvati,

Eating a few –

Just one or two —

Trusting in the bright winds

Of eternity that growl,

That run past the rain,

Past the lumbering bears that prowl

Over the green hills of the forest of mist,

Of ashwagandha

Trees.

(Where does the rishi Agastya live now? Where

Does he walk long before the dawn

By the riverbanks of rain-washed song?)

And, way out beyond the moon

The deepening darkness – punctuated

Like the islands of the oceans,

With the star-winged flight

Of legions

Of strange-patterned flocks

Of owls, all though the night,

(Though owls do not really fly in flocks)

Now the hours of dark have hesitated,

So the spirit, Ayanar, patrols

The village outskirts, his course

Goes round and round,

Brave on his tall horse,

Who, now and then, drops his head to drink,

While reflections glint within the bowls

Of the pool by the stream,

There pings

The lilting sound

Of tadpoles

Who play among the rocks,

All waiting to grow into frogs that will sing

Deep songs

Within the dream,

To bless the mystery of the being of all souls

Who are the One Soul – Brahman,

While the rain falls

Within the silver calls

Of the long-eared owl,

Awake, in the ever-misted night.

© Copyrght, Sharon St Joan, 2021

If you like this poem, you might also like this website, Forest Voices of India https://forestvoicesofindia.com