Home Coming

For whomever may be experiencing anxiety, illness, or uncertainty about what is heading our way, may Ken’s poem celebrate a home coming to the preciousness of this very moment.

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Matin For Kwan-Yin * (a poem by Ken McKeon)

Offer what you will, pray as you can,
Chant whatever secret names you know,
The gods show up only when they want to,

Maybe they wake with an inkling of desire,
A creeping sense of lightness,
A shadowy inclination,
A soft resolve to harden into view,

And there they are,
Magically suspended
In a clear blue realm,
As open as the sky is
And just as windless
As a frothy tumbling sea
Of light can ever be,
All trembling, all,
Shimmering inwardly,
With the delight found
In the far calm
Of a near breath,
Of a rising heartbeat,
Of a freely given smile,
The fellowing of our eyes
As we rise as one
To begin again our day.

And chimes sound
From the apartment down below,
And the dishes clearly will not do themselves
So I’ll chip in what’s left of me in age,

And behind me the French doors
And beyond them the deck,
The green garden, an open
Pleasing realm enameled with leaves
And blooms of flower and tree,
And a statue of a goddess
Who settled within us so many years ago.

*

  • Kwan Yin is also known as Chenrezig and Avalokiteshvara.
  • Avalokiteshvara, the Bodhisattva of Infinite Compassion, may be the most well known and beloved of the iconic bodhisattvas. Throughout all schools of Mahayana Buddhism, Avalokiteshvara is venerated as the ideal of karuna.  Karuna is the activity of compassion in the world and the willingness to bear the pain of others.  The bodhisattva is said to appear anywhere, even in hell realms, to help all beings in danger and distress.  Excerpted from http://buddhism.about.com/od/thetriyaka/a/avalokiteshvara.htm

 

 

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