Sangha Sharing

Songs of Expression

During the recent Spring Retreat at Serenity Ridge — Living With Joy, Dying in Peace — Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche invited retreatants to share some “Songs of Expression”: poems, readings, songs, or other sharings. He noted that such collective expressions can be very alive and powerful. Below are a few sharings from retreatants of poetry and photographs.


Thunderhead

Miles and miles distant,
Yet filling much of sky onward,
Lone thunderhead floats in silence –
Culminating, cumulating, gestating –
Pulsating variations, bursts of lambency,
Flickering, flashing, incandescent nimbus womb.

Is there sound inside this cloud,
Where thunderbolts, contained within yet
Massively discharging, illumine a world
Juiced and shocking, throbbing,
Damply burning?

I stand, slack-jawed, in rapt
Amazement;
Others walk on, heads down,
Unseeing, unmoved,
Missing Nature’s
Astounding show of lights.

But somewhere not too far off,
I know,
Another soul
Thrills, witnessing what perhaps seems
Best described as an Unmasking of God.

— H.R. Gillmore, Virginia Beach, Va.

As the spring cherry blossom
Softly unfurls its petals and
One by one
Sends them skyward
In passing rivers of wind
So is my heart
When winter is ended

— Ana S., Chicago

— Photograph by Debi, West Virginia

Vast blue sky
rabbit cloud
vulture circles high above
my corpse-like pose
on the ground beneath.
prayer flags crisply flapping
tree tops budding
in the brilliant light.
sudden joy, simply there

— Dorrie Ameen, New York

— Photographs of Serenity Ridge by Carole Ann Al-din, Wheeling, W.V.