Poem: For My Kilt-Wearing Lover (Fragment)

By Janelle Combelic

photo by Renee Burgard

It is the first day of October

in a golden year.

Under Colorado sunshine

the abbot Thay Tinh Man –

your basketball-playing monk –

told us to practice love

as we walked together

among the pine trees.

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By Janelle Combelic

photo by Renee Burgard

It is the first day of October

in a golden year.

Under Colorado sunshine

the abbot Thay Tinh Man –

your basketball-playing monk –

told us to practice love

as we walked together

among the pine trees.

Send the Four Immeasurables he said

loving friendliness

compassion

joy

equanimity

to the earth.

She needs your love.

We amble in procession behind him

at Compassionate Dharma Cloud

Monastery, all forty of us.

Love flows through the soles of my feet

down deep into the earth and miraculously flows back from

our original mother.

I step surrounded by sangha.

I see the green and golden aspen.

I smell the end of summer.

I breathe.

I try not to think of you.

I sink into this body

made of dust and ashes and miracles.

I am nothing.

But the mind will have its way.

In the brief bliss of emptiness

grief crashes in

like one of the trucks roaring up

Highway 285

like waves crashing on the beach.

How can I leave my loved ones behind –

family friends church sangha?

How can I leave house and home?

A silent cry wells into tears

and I gaze at the impossibly blue

mountain sky, the foam of clouds,

the green lace of oak leaves.

What can I do but turn to God?

Beauty grief gratitude joy

wrench my heart open wider wider

and I know there is room for all.

Just as I hold you here inside me

I shall as I cross the ocean

hold all my loves

inside me.

I am big enough.

My pain and my happiness

dance together,

weave a tartan on my heart,

a perfect pattern of wholeness.

I take a friend’s hand.

We walk under the ponderosas

where not an hour ago

while we sang songs in a circle

two mule deer bucks

grazed

watching

not watching

then scampered off

into the sun-drenched woods.

Janelle Combelic, True Lotus Meditation, practiced with Lotus Blossom Sangha in Longmont, Colorado and at Compassionate Dharma Cloud Monastery in Evergreen. She recently moved to Scotland to play with the Northern Lights Sangha at Findhorn.

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What is Mindfulness

Thich Nhat Hanh January 15, 2020

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