In a world

Self-Portrait
(Click here to listen to me singing this)

In a world
A world of our creation
In a world
Of our imagination
You will see
what you have
learned to see
You will feel
what you have learned to feel

Can you see
nature's startling beauty
Can you feel
her moving mist of peace
It's up to you
to reach for higher things
It's up to you
to seek for meaning
'Cos it's a world
A world of your creation
It's a world
of your imagination

Part the clouds
and touch the sky
Always there
and reaching high
Shake the dust
from off your feet
For underneath drums
Love's constant beat

In a world
A world of wild enchantment
In a world
Of sweet intoxication
Poets roam
sometimes in desolation
The lost come home
from numbing isolation
'Cos it's a world
A world of their creation
Yes, it's a world
Of their imagination

Part the clouds
and touch the sky
Always there
and reaching high
Shake the dust
from off your feet
For underneath drums
Love's constant beat

It's a world
A world of our creation
It's a world
Of our imagination...
Of sweet intoxication...
You create...your world
You create...your world

Copyright 2009 Lucy Lopez

Magic!

Redland Bay by Lucy

Once again
the day withdraws
into the
vast unknown
hiding all
of life
in watchful
darkness
Such magic
right before my eyes
that what was once
emerald, jade
and peridot
cobalt, sapphire
and ice
are now coal-grey
shrouded
as if
by the veil
of night
Right before my eyes
day has become night!
Magic, I say
nothing less!
The same
spell-binding magic
when my fear
becomes
freedom
right before
your love-filled eyes.

Image from http://www.bctree.com

Let’s rush madly into sweet enchantment. Leave your troubled heart right here for it weighs you down. Besides, who needs a heart when you’re about to enter the heart of life and love itself? No, my song of heaven, leave it here, right here. Then let’s rush madly into love’s open heart, let’s be swallowed up in timeless enchantment where every longing shall be finally put to rest.

There is nothing so sweet, so turgid, so close to bursting. Not even the plum nor the grape, ripened to perfection under the sun, compares with the fullness that awaits us in the heart of enchantment! To ponder it would simply drive one insane. Yet to enter it, ah the ecstasy! Don’t even try to put it in words unless you are prepared to turn mad.

I wondered where you were

I wondered where you were as I walked in the rain, that pouring rain.

No you did not.

Why do you say that?

Because if you had wondered, you would have instantly felt my presence. You cannot wonder about me without finding me.

I do not wish to argue.

Nor do I, my forest of enchantment, nor do I. But, where is there argument? Surely none here!

-sigh-

Let me take your sigh and twirl my hair around it.

Oh you do speak such nonsense!

Have I made you smile, my loveliness?

Only a little. There is an economy one must exercise with smiles.

Oh?

Yes.

Well, then, is there also an economy with frowns?

No, frowns are unpriced for they occur rampantly. An infestation, really.

Then I shall savour your rare smiles. But, so as not to be wasteful, I shall savour your frowns equally. Either way, I shall delight myself.

You do please yourself.

Yes, I do.

Very well then.

You are!

You are
a speck of enchantment
whirling dervishly
in the eternal playground
of love

You are
a mystery
pretending to be
ordinary

You are
a longing
endlessly longing
for itself


You are
god's sacred space
a shrine for
adoration.

Nature's Elements deifying Me

"I see the spectacle of morning from the hill-top over against my house, from day-break to sun-rise, with emotions which an angel might share. The long slender bars of cloud float like fishes in the sea of crimson light. From the earth, as a shore, I look out into that silent sea. I seem to partake its rapid transformations: the active enchantment reaches my dust, and I dilate and conspire with the morning wind. How does Nature deify us with a few and cheap elements!"

From Nature by Ralph Waldo Emerson at http://www.emersoncentral.com

How, indeed, does Nature deify us with a few and cheap elements"!

I was speaking to a friend on the phone this morning and in the middle of our conversation, I heard what sounded like the cheerful chatter of birds all the way across two suburbs! I interrupted to check if it was in fact as I thought. "Yes, it is", she said. I could hear the bright smile in her voice, delighting in this 'cheap element' of Nature's that we were able to share at the one time!

The call of birds often brings my mind back from its incessant wanderings to the here and now, interrupting its unproductive preoccupations with a gentle reminder that here and now is where the fullness of my life comes into its own.

Right here and now, as I type this post, I am still aware of the mild anxieties incurred as I have prepared for my month long trip overseas. I am hesitant to call it a holiday, perhaps because the various 'matters' that I am leaving behind and which I will have to attend to upon my return still sit close to my chest (almost literally). They are not life-shattering matters but they are life-influencing ones, such as tax returns and accommodation and income and animal friends.

For a month, I shall be physically away from all these concerns. To what extent I'll be able to remain mentally and emotionally distanced from them is something that my intentions will determine.

So I intend now to let it all lie quietly until I return. I intend now to remain 'here and now' while I am overseas!

I feel lighter now and there is a smile on my face. Something has lifted. I have shifted from what 'has been' to what is becoming as I intend it! There is hardly a sound of birds and the sound of my typing is the loudest sound around.

Ah, now I hear it, the evening call of a pigeon - ooo -oo. And another call of another bird. Three notes, this one. And the soft shadows that fall as the first star of the evening appears, heralding no doubt the arrival of the moon. All of this in constant greeting of the god that I am. I return the same greeting to each in recognition of the god that each is. Truly Namaste!

And truly, Nature's elements deifying me!

Yielding to daily Graces

One of my great longings is to write that piece of prose that will lodge itself in the hearts of many, filling them with sweet enchantment, thrilling them in unimaginable ways to leave them drowning irredeemably in love! Could anything be better? Not much, I don't think!

"An enchanted life has many moments when the heart is overwhelmed with beauty and the imagination is electrified by some haunting quality in the world or by a spirit or voice speaking from deep within a thing, a place or a person. Enchantment may be" ~ Henry Louis Mencken
(From http://thinkexist.com)

There exists for each of us a state of consciousness that is enchantment itself. It is the enchantment of the child, suffused with wonderment and thrill. I long for it. No, I don't mean in a way that holds me back from engaging with life and all its shadow play. I do partake as fully as I can in the creative work of staying alive as well as I know how to. But what I long for are those runaway moments when, rather unexpectedly and to my breath-taking delight, I find myself in the softness and freshness of new life, a new form of beauty, disarmingly so!

Perhaps this is why I so love softly, falling rain. It seems to caress life forms, blessing each one indiscriminately. You know it, I'm sure.

Yesterday, I sat in bed with my laptop, as I have been doing in these recent wintry days, working away, stopping often to watch the rain fall upon the native just outside my bedroom. I am certain the green leaves on it looked even greener and the raindrops suspended from their tips were priceless diamonds. I knew the 'diamonds' would disappear in time, but while they lasted, I remained enthralled.

Water has this way of enveloping you so completely, it's silly to resist! What could be more intimate? Air, which we take so much for granted, is just as complete in his embrace. It is these moments of recognizing and yielding to daily graces that I long for. They leave me feeling full of something. I think they call it life.