AMBIKA TALWAR

 

 

Sublimations –

Observing Our Various Unities

 

1. 

Is our evolution a movement from

one technology to another? Do we recreate

the same forms in narratives we think are new?

 

2.

Flirtation with immortality reveals gods

dying to be rebirthed – the rising and falling

the swell of civilization's hopes and dramas.

 

It’s all the same, Beji, my great-grandmother

used to say, nodding wisely, her head covered

with a white shawl, mole peering on her nose.

She would always smile, even when serious.

 

Encircled by Time, we share skies, stories, simulations.

We stub our toes, take pictures, wonder at wisdom

of stillness like of rocks, pristine story tellers.

 

When wind caresses rock, nature's songs arise

fire crackling, water flowing, steam rising

flutter of a thousand birds lifting into the azure.

 

3.      

Do we dance fearlessly to a different name?

Does a new name free us? 

Is knowing oneself an unknowing?

Is liberation illumination? Look me in my eyes.

 

I walk in and out of doors meeting my buried

selves like parts of Greece crumbling. We each is

a crumb, a pebble awaiting a new rainfall.

 

4.

Suffering is noble, some say. It strengthens us.

Don't we ignite cords of joyful wisdom when

we reveal our innermost self?

 

To realize our creative inner-power, we experience

dissolution – long for the precious to be borned.

 

Liquid fire kissing air becomes earth and song.

May we be guardians of all this!

 

Ancients envisioned we’d all savor moments

that arise in us as love, sweetness of fresh breath.

 

To breathe life into every heart, to live in simplicity,

so lessons of suffering we transmute into joy. 

 

5.

Joy can never be in excess – it shines Soul's

golden mean for a life of virtue – an aesthetic.

 

Buddha's midde path, Jewish Adonai hails immanence,

Christ calls for simple living, Allah for inner light.

Sanatan Dharma, eternal law, is unity and cosmic bliss,

mid-line of dance whirling as does Gaia.

 

Breath of my breath – single syllable – Silence

May our Self be subsumed in Beauty, Truth, Courage.

Harmony – Apollonian blues, sonata, raaga, river melodies.

Pleasures of an aesthetic life – subversive, supernal.

 

O Muses! Become in us so we recognize the new

continually in this dance of recovery and recreation.

Come to me, I implore – I see with your eyes,

 

I wear your jewels in my ear lobes –

You and I and Time roll in and out of civilization's

rapacious ways – ready for a new awakening.

  

Let us follow Artemis, the Vedic Aranyani

through forests we must now embrace.

 

6.

But Wait! I confess I have burned in summer's

fiery pot, cooled in blue roving waters of many

world seas, breathed life from pure air –

listened to song of winds over fertile lands drying.

walked in wet mud fragrant with new life.

 

In the in-between spaces, I have held hands

with words, whose sounds have taken me

to a foraging of Ur tongues.  How much I love trees.

 

They have blessed us before we were ever born –

you and I.  I hear their hum in your heart and mine.

 

Something new is stirring. Listen.

How delicate are drops of fresh rain.

Can anything be the same ever again?

 

7.

My Bharat-India stirs forever in me syllables that

stir nadis into purification – we each is a cosmic being!

 

Parashakti – May all our lands awaken in longing:

flutes, cellos, black soil, prayers of solace, drums.

Many antiquities in my bones call wildly, tenderly

to remember elements and sentiments that

make us whole – such are gifts for the renewing.

 

I dreamed Greece would free me. But only I can.

My Soul suffuses my desire for new paths.

In sacred imagination, I arrive where home is.

 

AMBIKA TALWAR

 

AMBIKA TALWAR India-born educator-author, healer-artist, she bridges worlds with ecstatic poetry and short stories. As a Bharat Awards for Literature awardee, she is published in World Wide Writer's Web. As a poet, Ambika is winner of Rabindranath Tagore Int'l, Great India Poetry contest, and a Pushcart nominee; she's published in Grateful Conversations, Crystal Fire, Beyond-Words, Kyoto Journal, On Divine Names, Roseate-Anthology, Glo-Mag, Enchanting Verses and various other anthologies print/online. She made a short film for which she won the Best Original Story Award at a festival in Belgium in 2000. Current California Quarterly/California State Poetry Society board member, she lives in USA/Bharat.