Jnana Hodson


     OPEN UNTO THEIR CRY

One fishes the heart
for apple flowers.

Another hunts cords that stain
the rumpled warmth still beside me.

Today it’s bored, indifferent, smoky eyes
in an airport lounge.

Not every ballet ends in a coupling dream.

A third opens an umbrella. Twice.
Dripping children.


     FOLDING HIS ROBE

             so far from his Tantric discipline
he saw how little his work
             reflected his training. still,
his outlook embodied moments
             of quiet detachment, an acceptance
of things in themselves and,
             above all else, the authority, delight, and awe
that push home, along unexpected byways,
             through sustained silence


     HE SAW

TURTLES in a shirt
desert flowers in profusion
the canyon GREEN for once
yellows and golds with some low light violets

as for DOGTOWN
a Chock Full o’ Nuts coffee can filled with peanuts
kept circling back —
Instead of a campus, it was a compound.

Sunday morning, while flute music wafted through their chamber,
coffee and pastries entreated them. Her throat was slightly raw.

The VOLCANIC ASH FILM coating the car would not wash off.
Not by hand rubbing.
Not by a commercial wash’s super-sprayers.
* * *                                         Going back through all the evidence,
                                        he hoped to relocate some vague sense he had lost.
                                        Maybe there would be a clue
                                        to a long-neglected joy or idealism. At least
                                        a mission transformed into harder metal
                                        through his extended solo act.


Jnana Hodson's work has appeared recently in Illuminations: Expressions of the Personal Spiritual Experience from Celestial Arts and Going Down Swinging in Australia. He is also the author of two published novels, including the recent Ashram: Adventures on a Yoga Farm, available at PulpBits.com.

 
 
 
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