Quickening Palingenesis

A Dispatch of Spring Equinox Poems

image: Naoki Suzuki

"When Sentinels Go Beyond"
- for the Sage of Arrow Mountain

Gray clouds above.
Magenta sky below.
Far-sight vista drawn near.

Sanctuary of rolling hills
fern-lined woodland shrines.
Only a few steps in,
the rising inner tide swells.

Grateful for what has been.
Mourning what will no longer be.

With some souls,
no matter how much time we spend with them
it will never have been enough.

Let us sip 
some of the medicine 
of memory.

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"Having Entered the Territory of Proper Placement, p.1"

Some nights, it's quiet tea in the darkness
listening to high winds, bamboo chimes, cicada.

Some nights, it's hexagrams bending time
revealing what the soul already knows
but wasn't quite ready to admit.

Some nights, it's dragon-riding:
Dark-Enigma ink on moon-white pages.

Some nights, it's remembering
mountain-caves-as-dark retreat-rebirth.

In the end, there's nothing that isn't a womb ---
even the next moment, even the next wound.

_____________________________

"Having Entered the Territory of Proper Placement, p.2"

Some days, I second guess this ancient road of poetry;
even five decades in 
there can be nights
when I'm convinced 
what lands upon the page
won't be anyone's cup of tea.

Then, two great sages 
who sometimes visit me, 
Rain Bursting From Cloud, 
Bloom Bursting From Branch,
chide me:

"Who are you 
to judge the Tao 
when it's flowing through you?"

_____________________________

"Wabi-Sabi Dream Guide"

When you feel you've lost the Way,
it may be the smallest rivulet of beauty
that brings you back to your Vision-Self.

There are ten-thousand worlds
on the back of a dragonfly's wings.

image: Ashlee Marie

_____________________________

"Quickening Palingenesis"

For the Spirit of Nature, Winter is a death.
A deep, slumbering sleep.
Why would it not be thus even for a seasoned Traveler?

For the Spirit of Nature, Spring is rebirth.
A simmering vitality.
Why would it not be so for a Wayfarer?

_____________________________

"Don't Overcomplicate It" (Dream Conversation #96)
-- after James Hollis

Don't overcomplicate it.

Alchemy is the process of True-Seeing
-- sometimes painful
-- sometimes challenging
-- always self-illusion-affronting.

It never happens at our preferred timing:
this burning-off 
what no longer serves our evolution
in service of what does.

______________________________

"The Eloquine Pursuit"
-- in honor of the work of Byron Metcalf

Every luminous procession:
intimacy with endarkenment.

History and movement of a passage made.

Try to pin it down,
corral it,
it will break free, 
evade,
with ferocious fence-breaking hooves.

Surrender categorical mind at the border.
Become a Quiet-Flowing-Human-River.

_____________________________

"Prescription from the National Academy of Internal Dreambody Medicine"

When a nation
loses capacity
to see the sanctity
in the life of The Other,
we must ask the Great Physician's question:
"What sanctity has died in the soul of my brother?"

_____________________________

"Vessel"

For some, the Dark-Enigma is a place of terror.
Terror of the unresolved, the repressed, the untransformed.

For others, the deeper strata is a place of friction ---
inner battles, obsessions, temptations; 
thirsts they can never quench
hungers never satisfied
itches they ceaselessly scratch 
because they really have a "rash."

There are others walking around
who have engaged in a deep dive;
inner excavation, off-gassing fixation.

They don't speak of their quiet freedom.
Slowly, they cease to be "an identity."
Instead, they become a vessel.
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(c) 2026 / Frank Inzan Owen / The Luminous Procession: Poems From Within and Beyond the World of Red Dust
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soundworld: "Essential Peace" / ACTIVATION / Byron Metcalf + Billy Denk