Strings of Great Silence

These musings are a celebration, a meditation on the great tree of life, its fruits of sorrow and beauty, and the mystery of the great silence from which it came. The words that follow are a carving from the tree. And so I offer to you, the reader, these poor words, dry chips of wood, to be mulled over and finally laid upon the altar of the great silence.

In this incarnation, I would like to acknowledge & thank Chaplain Chris Highland for his support & kind words in this project and Suzanne Ellison for typing this jigsaw of words -- really! Much love to the above and to all the walkers of the long street of life -- who wait breathlessly for the blessing of the sheltering sky.

Bob King
Winter 2001

Dazzling Strings of Light

Each night
The star's far light
The candle flickers, flickers,
While the heart hangs on one note.

Each morning,
The glory of breaking light,
of the sun on fire,
and from its flaming light,
creation's garden is born.
And in you my brother
the same light, the same fire

Each night
from the dark pool-of thought-
Memories flicker-flicker, nightshadows.
They dance in the darkness,
beyond the campfire
Hidden deep beyond
the light,
Shadows swelling like
a giant wave
-and-
My soul
a flickering candle
On the dark sea,
awaiting the

Final flood.

Madness,
the mind
drugged
by pain,
seeking the
abyss of darkness,
the fall
Into sheer nothingness
the cave
of death.
But at the still center
of
Nothingness
a
seed
roots.
The cave dissolves
into the flowering
light of
earth shattering love.

White stars drifting to earth
Flaked white softness.
Sacred robes of earth (such fine threads!)
These tiny crystals of snow.
The earth (myself too), glistening,
Now setting foot
Into the white stillness
Listening,
Hearing only
My footfall,
Seeing only whiteness,
Feeling my heart melting like white tears
Into the vast white stillness.