the isness of this

Rain and night in my hair, my face, the fieldgrasses. In my mind over and over W B Yeats' words 'I'm looking for the face I had before the world was born.' Above the wind in the leaves I hear it, in my head, with the wonderful melody and arrangement by Mike Scott on the Waterboys' Yeat's album.

There is no more that needs to be said than this insightful little phrase, akin to a Zen koan, the teaching riddles that Zen masters ask their pupils to meditate on: 'What did you look like before your parents conceived you?'

Isn't that what we all seek, all the time – some sense of timelessness, permanence, behind the appearances of things, behind change and transience? And isn't that, too, what a good poem might give us*, or point to; for which we go to poetry, art, music, dance – or love?

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dusk falls on the trees
the blackbirds' thrushes' redwings'
small songs wake the stars

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looking everywhere
for love – forgetting we're all
already one

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dusk
this small wind
coming to rest
on my face

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© Roselle Angwin December 2013

* not suggesting these little haiku do, mind!