Spring Poems 2023. My first Poetry Month.

April is Poetry Month so I decided I would give it a try in 2023. This challenge is for beginning and amateur writers to produce one poem a day throughout the month of April. That comes out to a total of thirty poems. I plan to update this page with many of my favorites over the course of this Spring. I hope you find some you enjoy. Maybe you even consider writing a few of your own?

Outgrowth

Years have I longed to get to a conclusion
what the Buddha endeavored to inculcate
the self doesn’t exist… the self it is only an illusion.
Part of me seems so the same and stagnate;
is myself as a child someone that is no longer here?
Or am I like the rings on a tree -
Baby, child, adult outwards; this remains to me so unclear.
Of all things can I not explain the familiarity of me?

I have an interest in locales that don’t change,
with the list nowadays becoming daily much less.
Now at school nothing there did they rearrange,
I count that a tremendous unintended bless.
My early kid mindset is little at this point left,
seemed I was moving to a much higher scheme
with tireless expanding and long earned deft.
What became of that long ago dream?

The Narrowed Focus

Two months in the desert coming to an end
Arrived with a workload out of control
Some duties complete now to others to send
Pushing hard rewarded with some wonderful lull
Balance between life, work off kilter.
Very little mediation and now lost in thought
Mental chaos scantly a filter
Long to restore clearheadedness I before sought.
Days same from one to the next
A step towards newness on this path I traverse.
New skills learnt I can now flex
I want not my momentum to reverse.

Only a day left in the desert as I prepare home to fly
what will become of this brand new season?
Veer from sameness to diversity I must try,
the need to be changelessness lessened its reason.
As I go back I’ll say no to thousands of things,
for how else will anything be done right?
Those with endless lists which they cling,
let it go if you ever are to take flight.

Burning Up

Sitting in church while only a teen.
It is so different this stage how someone learns
from that point to the present and all between.
“God is not like George Burns”
I hear from the pulpit “he’s no fuddy-duddy crank”
What type of higher power is that?
The real God you’d want to thank…
but this portrayal no one venture a chat.

Now years later his films streaming free,
and I, waiting, expecting displays of a curmudgeon.
But he describes misunderstandings I did not expect of thee.
Admission of failure is much better then bluffin’.
Better to be honest,
that is the least he could do…
How can a person extend trust
constantly told that which cannot be true?

Thanksgleaming

Growing up this I remember being told -
Be grateful in all this which you have bathed,
Devastation overflow in that other abode.
and yes I was thankful to be so unscathed.

Its been long since I have much different slant.
Bind thanksgiving to your highest potential,
just that others may live in scant
being your best is really what should be prudential.

だいきち

Noticed bad fortune invites itself and will forever stay.
The Good is plentiful but pay mind how rapidly gone.
Hesitate its whirlwind approach and it slips miles away.
Take heed this subtlety resist its strong ensnare forlorn.