The Deep Hours
Wayfaring Poems on the Themes of Self, Memory, Liberation, and World
——— “Castor and Pollux” Most see twin stars. Moon-lit travelers know them as cicada eyes. ——— “Back When” Back when I was in love with the shimmering world there was a girl. I couldn’t speak her language but I would’ve run off the ledge of a mountain to chase after her sunset. Now the dark of night is my bride. —— “Footfalls” — to the First Peoples I saw them today in the high hills. Soft brown feet shuffling their way to the sun temples again to renew the light of the world. ___ “Unhooking & the Sovereign Gaze” – a scent trail Woman: Deconstruct the Animus. As the old feminist bumper sticker says: You need a man like a fish needs a bicycle. Brothers: Deconstruct the Anima. Do you really want to wander all the years of your days being pulled on by tethers and hooks? We’re not taught to break this trance but the “ideal inner image” is the only scent trail you need. The world is filled with playboys and sorceresses. Do you not think this is what the Buddha was talking about when, in the presence of Mara’s alluring daughters, he cast his eyes downward, and said: “The Earth is my witness. I am liberated…”? —— “Offerings From the Heart-Mind of the Thunder Mother” Delicate moss. Quiet trickle of crystalline water. Invisible stream-fed world. Hard to believe the Thunder Mother made all this with nothing but a few slivers from the silver dawn. Her teaching remains the same after all these years: Memories become all the more precious when you realize they are fading. ___ “By Crook Rather Than Hook” If you step out into the night air and it is thick with dust nestle your face into the sleeve of your Dark-Enigma robe; be filled with the deep, sheltered breath of the ancients. We Are Them. Right there both arms bent at the crook hands resting in your lap is relief from these war-torn winds. Remember the line from the old Wayfaring song: Go to and fro as you must, as you must, but don’t abide in the clammer of the red dust. Just this just this single breath of return can put your Heart-Mind back on the Way. It’s why we incense our robes. It’s why some put cypress oil in their hair. It’s why we present the ‘All’ of ourselves to the pageantry of the sing-song dawn. It’s all to remind ourselves that the edict of this hard world is null and void in the deep hours in which we work for our true reward. The Red Dust World says: Your value is commensurate to the degree to which you wear out body and soul. Behind lantern-lit courtyard walls, in hidden hills of long practice, a different edict holds sway. ——
© 2026 / Frank Inzan Owen / The Luminous Procession: Poems From Within and Beyond the World of Red Dust
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soundworld: “Glowing in the Depths” / Dialogue of Water / Alio Die & Lorenzo Montana
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