I make myself an empty ball;

An empty tube, so that the All

Can pass right through; can fill me up –

A couplet speaking oracle,

A sage who hints at miracle,

Mystically receptive, empty,

Dim and sharp, deliberately,

Partly intellectual, partly automatic.

See: a sanded, gardened beach,

A hammock twined ‘twixt fir and birch,

A body, panty clad and glad

To be alive and lying;

Privileged. Sun high in high July;

Wind that’s plying sun and heat.

Sun plus wind -

Body’s pleasure almost sinful.

In an hour, waffles at the neighbors when -

With tiny boat from gardened beach,

We’ll row across the narrow stretch,

Be whip-creamed, waffled, berry-stained,

Coffeed high, this sun-high sky,

Hot day, wind dry: an hour till then.

But now I’m here upon a hammock-

Empty empress, calm inside.

A lake of space winds down the taste for exaltation

Caused by thought and inspiration,

Leaving thought and inspiration

To the masses.

© Lying On A Hammock Handling Existence 7.11.1995  Circling Round Nature; Circling Ropund Reality;  

Arlene Corwin

           Listen To The Silence

Listen to the silence.

What do you hear?

A plane from far comes nearer,

Overhead, then

Gone again.

No airplane.

Listen.

In your head the ear is ringing.

Nothing’s dead.

A thermostat is going on

Or shutting off:

The click is gone.

Listen carefully,

For in the silence comes the thought

That blocks out hums,

The nineteen-hundred’s omni-sound.

Silence too, is all around.

It feels, it thrives;

For in the hive of thought,

‘Tween cells and pulses there is peace;

No taking in, yet there’s release:

Song without a pulse or wave,

Nothing to achieve,

No system to believe in.

Listen.

©

Listen To The Silence 95.3.22 The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative;   Arlene Corwin

           Faith Is A Chemical Dynamic

Faith is a chemical dynamic

Affecting cells, making them fresh:

(The celestial and flesh)

Not a dogma, cant –

More pledge, a pact;

The brain engrained in wish and want

With roots spread out in waiting

For a door to open wide,

And you a bride inside.

Faith sanctifies.

It unifies.

It systematizes without system,

Sees the thread in things uncommon,

Making fractions into one:

It always gives an added power,

Energy beyond the hour;

Puts a slant on everything,

(Which is its strength and shortcoming.)

You never go beyond its vision,

Never get beyond its zone.

No clever man or master plan

Or great endeavor pulls the lever.

In itself a friendly law,

It is specific to your wishes.

Faith is bound by its tradition.

Nothing great can be erected,

Nothing lasting be affected.

Leave the hills, reach for the stars:

Faith is chemically dynamic.

©

Faith Is A Chemical Dynamic 95.7.17 Nature Of & In Reality; To the Child Mystic;

Arlene  Corwin

.

            Covering The Arguments

What does it do

To the personal you

If I blaspheme or blast off?

Do you think that God minds,

Is insulted by minds that are blind?

God is bigger than that.

He laughs at the ill-behaved brat

‘Cause He loves a good joke.

He loves the whole earth

While he waits for us patiently birth after birth.

He’s such a nice bloke

You can talk to Him any which way that you feel:

Feeling is only like smoke.

©Covering The Arguments 95.2.24/05.4.23

A Sense Of The Ridiculous; To The Child Mystic;

Arlene Corwin

          All At The Same Time

I like to start the day with coffee:

Half black power, half au lait,

Turn on the Beeb, begin a poem.

Taking down a favorite tome-

A little read – I clean the bedroom,

Roam downstairs and get involved.

The menu solved, I wipe the floor

Then jump-rump to piano where

I sit, playing a tune or four.

Go back and start a bread. Then yoga

In a toga or a sweat suit,

Standing on one foot I eat a fruit

Then fetch the radio and go outside

To clip a hedge

And while in motion find I dredge

A title, line, a word or two

From deep within the conscious. Whew!

I saunter back because I’m haunted

By the drive to write it up,

So then, undaunted, drink another cup

(I know it’s bad) of caffeined brew.

(It’s such a pleasant thing to do).

Then turning art toward starting lunch,

Poetic hunch aside, I stretch -

A bit more yoga. Oh, the post:

Walk up the road –four hundred meters.

Smell the air. What could be sweeter?

Well, that’s taken care of most.

It’s flame October, mushrooms wanting to be picked.

I’ve time to rove o’er hill and ditch, bog and moss.

I’ve no success.

Through trudge and brook and mushroom book

I know no longer where to look

And bear my bucket home again, no worse for wear,

Free from care, lungs filled with air.

Resuming chores, my song, my rhyme,

My coffee, yoga – ah, it’s time

To greet my husband, feed the cat,

Giving all my warmth to that.

Feeding husband, cat and me – triple-sided chat for three -

I fall from grace and watch TV

Awhile, then go to bed and read -

Perchance to sleep, to dream – or maybe

Stand ten minutes on my head,

Tell God I want to do His will,

And then at twelve, lie quite, quite still.

©All At The Same Time 95.10.31

Circling Round Nature; Circling Round Woman; Our Times, Our Culture; Coffee Book;

Arlene Corwin

A serious writer writes daily – or not.

A serious painter paints daily – or not.

A serious painter or singer or player

Paints, sings, plays, takes part

In the art of his heart,

The Processes; Creative, Thinking, Meditative; Vaguely About Music;

Arlene Corwin

The heart of his art.

Whether doing or gazing

Or lazing about

With his snout in a book,

His foot in a brook.

If motionless days upon end,

Still he is no schnook,

For in rest is a growth, in stillness a fount,

An upward intention the senses can mount.

Without any force is how art forces through,

Through veins that the gods have imbued

With vitality, gifts and endurance.

Art is endurance.

But there’s no insurance;

An artist is never secure.

In a way, he is pure.

But the gift is to ride out the day

And then stay.

Atomic Network

 Not anti-

Nor asocial;

I wake, walk, work , wok –

My wick alone.

Perceiving that collaboration

Gets things done.

But dharma choosing slow and long.

Deficiency or built-in song?

That there are multitudes like me,

Means I is always you is we,

That in the multi-layered groundwork

The diminutive atomic network.

Is discovery

Of self.

© Atomic Network 10.3.2009

I Is Always You Is We;

Arlene Corwin

Still Developing

 Sigh!

I

Had to turn on lights this morning.

Out of bed, pajama chilly.

August was the grand finale.

Now it’s fall with chums commending

Autumn’s scene,

A curling up with some good book,

The taupe/red/green,

And Halloween’s

Supposed to compensate for what the summer took.

I

Sigh.

© Still Developing 10.11.2009

Circling Round Nature;

Arlene Corwin

You cannot cheat.

To do it right, you meditate.

But purity, devotion, faith

Have subtleties that hide

Till they decide

To take on meaning

In a knowing that’s a flowing

From conception to revealing:

Self-disclosure’s evolution

Is a time dictated aggregate.

Revelations Big & Small; Time;

Arlene Corwin

In The Void of Vanity

 A young and pimply boy,

His only joy

In lifting weights,

Finds muscle forcing,

Tossing weights for

Bicep, tricep, pectoral and dorsal,

Teasing, testing gristle

In the void of vanity;

In the wake of youth not yet awake,

He chases what he doesn’t know

For what he thinks is true.

And when I think of all the suffering

He’ll have to go through…

I’m annoyed with vanity.

©In The Void Of Vanity 10.10.2009

Circling Round Vanities;

Arlene Corwin

,