Poetry: Soul Outpost Cantos 3-4

Canto III – Luminous Clarity

My downstairs neighbor sweetly strums the Guzheng after Sunday breakfast

The radiant music flows through the cement floor into my tiny cloister

In the room next to me, my future wife teaches English to anxious middle school students preparing for their monthly exams

Their critical class rank measured down to the fourth decimal point

I drop Southside urban blues into the mix

The interplay of guitar, guzheng and grammar weaves a magic spell over my keyboard

Transitory illusions float about the unheated 8×10 room

A flint-hard bed, cheap wardrobe full of flotsam and tarnished vanity occupy the space

I stretch out in a corner on a 120 kwai (about 18 dollars) rope webbed lounge chair, looking at my reflection in the soot stained de-silvering mirror

Warm myself over my laptop as I peck away – chasing after quixotic dreams

Ponder the bare nature of existence

A distant spectral lighthouse

Beckons from shadowy shores

Commands from the gloom

Relinquish the soft sanctuary

Besieged by rough aggregated necessities

From the emptiness comes the real

Coalescing from disparate energies

Balanced on the head of a pin

Poised on the razor’s edge

There, gleaming beyond the shoals

Rises the miraculous morning star

Brilliant, white heaven’s fleck

The emptiness falls away

The void fills with light

The interwoven thread spun on the karmic wheel

Traces ephemeral patterns in corporeal space

The same energy that pulls tides around the planet

And lifts gossamer wings

Returns to heaven with each baby’s breath

This ripe potency powers all-from nothing

A divine light pierced my ever-questing heart

The imperfect darkness was illuminated

As I crossed the threshold

My old path was obliterated

Immutable sparks flared

Birthing moments of luminous clarity

With my new track consecrated

Hunkered down in my soul outpost

I gaze towards the blue horizon

Canto IV – Skyborne Heart

We first revealed our vulnerabilities in a guarded manner

Hard-fought habits transformed into trust and faith in the future

Wounds healed and laid to rest – we nurture one another

The heartbeats of half a lifetime grant us scope to explore

Hoping to discover a course through to the infinite

Pray the metaphysical landscape reveals unknown portals

Out of which, we create moments everlasting

These lustrous threads of forever are ours to weave as we will

Love now sings through golden wires between us

I so avow – part of my heart will e’er be skyborne

Together we fashioned a mote of immortality which grants us its splendor

Basking in the vivid intensity of love’s grandeur

At night we hold hands in our sleep

Reassuring each other that even as we dream

We are not alone

My love’s waking eyes deliver my soul from dim night’s extinction

Here in the dawn of our new life we found a splinter of paradise

On which we float about the turbulent chaos of the everyday

Our revitalized faith in the future has brought us peace

I push to make my mark

Scratch my name into the pantheon

So that I can drip my essence into the altered emptiness

And claim a speck of eternity for her

Love’s titanic tides roll across the face of the deep

A blue-green expanse sparkles over the eternity of devotion

Circling round the framing fire – I lift the shadow-veil

Touch of light against dark fills my mended heart with hope

Melts the delusion from my eyes

Open the Way forward

Watch me fly

Published by cewheeler

Writer/Artist:12 years in China – univ. lecturer: writing,poetry,culture; editor – magazine/newspaper & actor. 40 years students of the Tao. Traveler. Father. Read my books at: amazon.com/author/wheelerce

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