Contemplative Transciptions

Ma Yuan's Scholar by a Waterfall
Ma Yuan’s Scholar by a Waterfall

It jumps from thought
to no-thought like
riding over cobblestones.
Uncomfortable and enchanting
all at once.

Watching waves tumble over
each other in their race
for the shore, I
see men crawling
over their fallen dead
scrambling for sand

Now I see your face
or is it our face?
It is sad and unhappy. Tied
to old people, old ideas.
It can’t see it’s own
beauty for the wrinkles.

Is this poetry? Skimmed
off the top of my thoughts
and thrown away like
cream from milk?

Is this thought?
Mere images that
play on and on. An old
phonograph: scratchy and
tinny but irresistibly
charming?

Some say that’s what
love is like. Wonderful
in the most useless of ways.
I always thought love
was a silver bullet
to the head that
sadly doesn’t kill
you. Only leaves you
always mumbling about
your slippers

Or is that old age?
It’s hard to recall
They come and go, and
go and come. As waves,
as men, as music that flirts
about the ears…

mist rising from the water.

Author: Jonathon

Would rather be out swimming, running, or camping. Works in state government. Spent a youth reading genre-fiction; today, he is making up for it by reading large quantities of non-fiction literature. The fact that truth, in every way, is more fascinating than fiction still tickles him.

One thought on “Contemplative Transciptions”

  1. Very lovely. I like “music that flirts about the ears” and “uncomfortable and enchanting” and “scratchy and tinny”. It all moves together nicely, and I like the graphic with it.

    (The news from my present antiquity about “mumbling” to oneself: (1) speaking aloud to oneself helps select one focus of attention from the tangle of a lifetime’s brain; and (2) it’s addressed to someone, the cat perhaps. If love is companionable, then the topic of slippers, shared, is as good a pretext as any to reach out, if ineffectively.)

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