Strong Tears Through Days & Night Moon

Strong Tears Through Days & Night Moon

New Moon  February 27, 2025

Whatever I encounter is my life.

-Kosho Uchiyama

Poetry of the moon’s beauty

in such ugly frightening times

is one possible way of becoming

I look with existential dread

to the plum blossoms & willow catkins

as they manifest themselves in ocean air

The changed air above the waters

resting or not in their turbulent life-giving boils

each indivisible spot divides & merges

I want a home in bewilderment

this is a delusion of this sentient being

& perhaps this wildfire nightmare of war is it

For a circle to roll & come ‘round right

a patient must fully accept who they are

a bird, a fish, a sky, a drop of water

The new moon dharma is impressionistic & incomplete

giving off reality vibrations of emotional power

quiet & wide as the base of a volcano touching bottom

I would like to be a hot seam of red fire

a searing fissure at the ground of being that just is

as it is: a movement toward form & away again

I would like to see & know myself as kin

harmoniously manifest as a relative mote

in this fierce incomprehensible cycling gale

Applied spirituality as a bodhisattva worm calls me

I only wish to be that I may be with others made whole

for this beautiful mother earth, beginningless gratitude.

Poem by Qayyum Johnson

Painting by Suiko McCall. Escalade the Very Sky, 2018. Ink on paper, 11×14″.