ALAN  W  WATTS  (Vallejo)
( With Gratitude )

 

The ' moment now ' was his and yet
the clock still gobbled up his time,
near three-score years and more like miles
that flickered past a speeding train,
where he, somehow applied the breaks
that passengers might see again,
but at the buffers end the sadness -
each tipple tripped him down to zero ;
I have my vision in the sun
under the brim of his sombrero.

 

          .....

SAGE PHILOSOPHER  ( Alan Watts )

Is that your blackbird note
with nothing right or wrong,
save only simple joy
that gestures with a song ?

Is this your summer space
to flutter  by and close
in butterfly of lace
on buddleia and rose ?

This questioning of life -
the winnowing from chaff,
in the twilight arbour
the echoes of your laugh ?

Are those your mottled shades
where passiflora run -
your foil of crowns, that bleed
into your dying sun ?

          .....

LILA  ( In memory of  Alan Watts )

We are timeless, yet time embodies us
for death, but deathlessness is never far,
nor life possess, for life is what we are.
We love, my friend, for love is what we are.

There is no absolute to justify the dream -
the very poles light up at the extreme !
We have no joy for joy is what we are
though we are sad, so sad for what we are
and yet, so glad, so glad for what we are.

We are prodigal as all things are of light
and being ultimate, as boundless as the night,
so come, lets play, forget that we agree
that I am you and your true self is me.

          .....

MAN    (For Alan W Watts)

 

I am tongue-tied to relate
how thoughts are the children of silence,
for man's essential nature is void -
his capacity from emptiness,
striking that first flint,
lighting that first fire for the dark -
constructing this imaginary world !

 

All enacted by man and all that ensued
was built by thought
but with no thinker thereof ;
nothing defines man as wrought
save emptiness, silence and thought
and if this be his eternal essence
is something like nothing, more like a God ?

 

          .....