Everything We Know

Let's just forget it,

if you catch my drift.

Let's just walk away from everything we know.
We're talking about a lot of knowledge,

I acknowledge.

But just think how corrupted it is,

how sullied by the daily thrust and parry

of our divided world.

It's my belief that the radical act of walking away

will sweep out the space of our hearts,

making room,

making elegant, splendiferous room,

for what is to come.

 

And look!

Watch those little heart-dwellers

creep back into the still, swept space.

peering cautiously at you.

Tempt them with morsels if you will.

Invite these pure and innocent denizens

to share the newly emptied space of your heart.

Perhaps you will awake to find them

ministering

to your needs.

 

 

Copyright © 2019 Ann Tudor
Musings blog: http://www.scenesfromthejourney.blogspot.com

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Write Truth

Open, sesame!

Will that magic phrase unlock

the obdurate blank surface

and reveal the meaning I'm striving for?

 

Will "open, sesame!" painlessly give me

similes, images,

juxtapositions, ironies?

 

Probably not.

I'll have to come up with these all by my lonesome,

and they won't come easily.

 

Aim for truth.

The right truth—mine or yours?

Write the right truth, no matter how small.

When written right,

small truths expand to fill the space.

A tiny truth, if it's the right one,

is as big as a star, and as far

from my doing as the star is from us.

Writing is manual labour, says the poet.

Breaking rocks all day leaves me

with a pile of rubble.

 

 

Copyright © 2019 Ann Tudor
Musings blog: http://www.scenesfromthejourney.blogspot.com

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Saying Nothing

The bliss of silence must be learned.

As babies we treasure our sound loosed upon the world.

And then we learn words and

we share ourselves as if such sharing

is our birthright.

 

How glorious, then, to turn to silence:

no careless expression of thought

or feeling (overwrought).

Instead we recognize that we are larger

than speech.

The connections that sustain us

are clean,

when we no longer have to explain ourselves.

 

My past, your past—

to reveal these would be the work

of a lifetime (and tedious for all).

How much wiser, then,

to still our voices.

Silence.

Bliss.

 

 

Copyright © 2019 Ann Tudor
Musings blog: http://www.scenesfromthejourney.blogspot.com

Amazon Author Page: http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B00JI4758O

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Loving the World

Is it supposed to be so hard?

Born with a gloomy aura,

I struggled

to love my world.

 

But it became easier with each passing year.

If I live long enough

I hope to love my world freely.

Effortlessly. Wholly.

 

In the meantime, I balance incensed righteousness

with the robin singing as if just for me,

the cardinal insistently claiming his territory.

I read the day's measure of bad news

even as I am overwhelmed

by the sweetness of the Japanese tree lilac

at my fence.

 

My murderous thoughts are mitigated 

by the blooming linden tree,

its branches high above the pavement,

its scent drifting to me

as I pass beneath it.

 

That's all I have, in the city:

a cardinal, a robin, sweet shrubs.

 

But sensual delight instructs me,

eventually,

in the art of loving the world.

 

 

Copyright © 2019 Ann Tudor
Musings blog: http://www.scenesfromthejourney.blogspot.com

Amazon Author Page: http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B00JI4758O

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