Bluegrass Buddha

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._N._Taber

Deep thinking, especially perhaps when it takes a wishful or wistful turn, may well take us to the the most wonderful if unexpected places...

BLUEGRASS BUDDHA

Pensive, cross-legged

on the sandbanks of time

wishing the tide away...

watching the flotsam and jetsam

of long, happy hours

swoop and dive like gulls

chasing crumbs thrown

by this child, those watchers,

from a sandcastle’s tower

on a blue glass sea of dreams

Oh, happiness, reminding

like specks in a kaleidoscope

even as it turns, like earth

around the sun, of days gone

forever, never to return...

Good, bad, halcyon days

chasing after crumbs

thrown by this child-watcher

from a castle of half lies

on a bluegrass sea of dreams

Listening to The Man play

and, oh, so wishing the tide away
if only for peace of mind,
entering into a past-present future
working and reworking
mind-body-spirit on behalf of ghosts
that would have us avoid
the errors of their ways, lead us
not into temptation
on a bluegrass sea of dreams

Copyright R. N. Taber 2005

[Note: An earlier version of this poems appears in A Feeling For The Quickness Of Time by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2005.]