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The Shekinah
 
 
Mount Sinai has its history of the nameless appearing as fire within a bush; and then again, not as a mountain-shaking wind, nor an earthquake and not even a fire, but as a gentle breeze. On Mount Carmel the nameless fell as fire and burned up the sacrifice, the wood, the stones and the soil, and also licked up the water in the trench. On another sacred mountain a shining cloud voiced the name of the nameless transfiguring the familiar before our eyes.
 
Here, on this day, within my eyes, the peaks of the Southern Alps fold up as joined fingers from the bowels of below. They become playgrounds of light in enfolding clouds, hiding and revealing sun and moon and stars. The folds of the mountains muscled in snow and shadow, the soundless depth of fiords, the sheen of cascading waters among alpine trees unfold continuous streams of change.
 
Countless are the poets who try to exhaust the nature of the scenes I behold yet fall prostrate in silence. Artists too find no further use for their tools and canvases after dashing off incomplete brush strokes in ink.
 
Shall I now, this day, strain to become at one with the ineffable, plummeting into the depths or soaring into the heavens? Must I too remain at peace with discontent as birds are with wings?
 
Night after night I strain against the stubborn rigidity of words and the finitude of my imagination as I seek to exhaust the ever-changingness of the day and the night within them.
 
through the mist
day after day bitten
to the core
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winter's end
light pulls back
to the surface

THF Per Diem Archive
S. Pierides December 2014, Light & Dark

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the tui's descant
irridescence teetering
at the edge of light

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sea breeze —
the end of time
rustling

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may day —
flowers re-occupy
their shadows

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may day —
a geisha flowers
within her

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night of stars!
the hairs on the nape
of my neck

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amazing!
I awaken still me
after sleep

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cancer ward —
nursery rhymes tick-tock
bitter clear

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gibbet dawn . . .
the jangle of silver
dangles down

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the echo
after ever after
autumn silence

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stillborn lullaby
the stretch of the milky way
between our voices

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autumn road . . .
the sound of emptiness
in my footfall

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south-sea breeze
a colonial oak's
death rattle

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not expecting
such fucking fruitfulness
this pulp of love

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dead silence
the scattered remains
of a big bang

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grey Buddha
a halo of hydrangeas
soften the stone

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see how time
reshapes my silhouette
cast by moonlight . . .
far away a half moon
rises out of my past

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fourth act . . .
my soliloquy
in the clouds

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bird loud day
the after-echo
of nothing