from BARDO

The stars are in our belly; the Milky Way our umbilicus.

Is it a consolation that the stuff of which we’re made

is star-stuff too?


– That wherever you go you can never fully disappear –

dispersal only: carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen.


Tree, rain, coal, glow-worm, horse, gnat, rock.


Roselle Angwin

Friday, 8 February 2013

teachings from Dog & Wolf

A sutra is an ancient Indian wisdom teaching. It's normally fairly short. 

I take the view that everything can be our teacher – if we take that view. So when I go out, I pay attention to the lessons brought in the shape of other beings, human and non-.

My book of poems and prose poems, Bardo, includes some (if you click on the cover icon to the right it will take you through to the publisher's site and, with any luck, my page and some sample poems).

Here's a teaching from the Canus tribe!



dog sutra

sky is a permanent question
 
gods come in thunder and lightning

every trail has two possible endings

anyone you meet is a friend until proven otherwise

nonetheless, do not trust where you land up until you’ve seen a winter, met those who consider it theirs

on the path a stray, your alter ego, follows you home under the stars


*

wolf sutra

even in this wastelot of a pen, this wolf is a poem: all claw and sinew; at rest, utterly relaxed; otherwise alert and muscular, ready to leap and spring; lean and fit and even in play fully awake, no superfluous weight or unnecessary action








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