Ryokan

What is the heart of this old monk like?
A gentle wind
Beneath the vast sky.

-Ryokan

A revelation!
the bush's hidden heart -
sudden headlights.

Though quick to wither,
you exude Eternity -
gardenia bloom.

Over the mown oval,
vacant in the midday haze,
a breeze blows unnoticed.

Dark green inferno
turning the past to ashes -
the conifer tree

A palm frond thatched hut.
The sea wind in its fringed eaves
brings an inner ease.

blood-coloured tide -
summer rains have dyed the waves
with the iron cliff's oxides

Veiled in Summer's haze,
immortal as Mount Meru
- towering clouds.

Upon experiencing Self-realisation Wumen wrote the following enlightenment poem:

A thunderclap under the clear blue sky

All beings on earth open their eyes;

Everything under heaven bows together;

Mount Sumeru leaps up and dances.

Mount Sumeru is the central world mountain in Buddhism. This central axis is reflected in a human being as the Shushumna channel in the spine. The Kundalini energy leaps up the spine and dances on the crown of the head during Self-realisation.

A kookaburra
on a turning clothes hoist -
I miss it vanish

Branches in earth
and roots in the quiet sky -
buds are opening

Crowned with fresh needles,
surpassing me in silence -
The great pine's stature.

Bright white cockatoo
like a flag on a bulwark
gainst the tide of night

The world is a mirror
in which the Self sees itself -
night brings gusts of rain.

Ink-black winter storm,
creating its opposite,
whips the ocean white

like a well-thumbed book
the gate opens easily
-the overgrown path

(after Borges)

Desirous of breathing
the fragrance of Truth's springtime
we welcome the Breeze.

Teakwood cupboard
Steeped in the deep night of jungles
- the goddess of sleep...

by a hidden path
in Autumn's forgiving sun
a rose opens

a million hearts drum
for an elephant procession
- April clouds

always looking at

future, past and present

the mind is blinded 

From distant hills
a grey but rainless sky stretches
to distant hills

(After Kafka)

laid down over ages
the strata of crisp-cut pages
-brand-new history book

Molten, the idol "I",
in the blue crucible
of the summer sky

in the stillness
between two waves of the sea -
vilamba sandbar


(first two lines from TS ELiot)

A subtle anniversary -
this soul has completed 
an orbit of Self


-Jeronimus

girls' wear mannequin -
its hand-sewn sequin heart
speaks of sweatshops

-Jeronimus

In the courtyard 
of the temple of the sky
blooms a flower.

- Jeronimus, after Kabir

All that remains of
the infinite sea of night
are these words of ink


Jeronimus (inspired by a haiku by Jorge Luis Borges)

Rescued from the ferns
the grey watering can will rain
for the vanished clouds

-Jeronimus

The evening sky
is an old master painting
of a blue-ware bowl
-Jeronimus

Like gold, this blue runs
molten in the crucible 
of the summer sky
-Jeronimus

Like Isis' sistrum
cicadas' summer shimmer
exorcises thought
-Jeronimus

Kookaburras call
in jungles they've never seen,
thanks to Hollywood.

-Jeronimus

A cool conflagration 
roaring in the high canopy.
I melt in summer's forge.

-Jeronimus

Evening

In the night that comes,
these trees will still be green,
this sky still blue.
-Jeronimus

Cypress pines - brushes
dipped in the infinite ink
of marine winds

-Jeronimus

on the warming lawn
various grasses compete
like warring kingdoms


-Jeronimus

Plumes upon the green Earth's helm
bending in the still chill wind.
-Poplars by the roadside.

-Jeronimus
('upon' is archaic but it sounds well with plume and poplar)

Spring-summer

On the boundary
a hedge sends errant tendrils
toward the summer


-Jeronimus