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End of the Line

Take me out in darkness

Where the only light is black

Like a railway platform leading

To the forms that end the track

⦿

Let endless trains of thinking

Pass, ghostly, through the night

And cease their whistling thunder

In a silence turning bright

⦿

Let what I am-not die there

On the empty, singing rails

As sleepers are run over

As tickets blown in gales

⦿

Within St Stephen’s radiance

Let me feel the tingling dawn

And pay my all to face it

At the station of St John

⦿

©Stephen Tanham 2020

Stephen Tanham is a Director of the Silent Eye School of Consciousness, a not-for-profit teaching school of modern mysticism that helps people find a personal path to a deeper place within their internal and external lives.

The Silent Eye provides home-based, practical courses which are low-cost and personally supervised. The course materials and corresponding supervision are provided month by month without further commitment.

Steve’s personal blog, Sun in Gemini, is at stevetanham.wordpress.com.

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Heartfire 4 am

I sometimes wonder if the fire is kin to what I am within

Is skin to what I am within – when darkness lures

A hiss of icy night and eyes too tired to find delight

The swishing of the white tail, paws on icy grass

⦿

The tiny crunch – dark whisper, pulls me there

The velvet black surrounds – foolish!

My skin protests the frozen kiss

With breathing centred in the crackling heartfire’s hiss

⦿

I cling, my life this warmth… I, Eye – against

The icy tip of calling blade that taunts from glittering sky

Its hand so far away, yet present like a god; not yet!

His thin-lipped smile, my heart a stream of icy, chanted breath

⦿

The distant eyes so bright in deepest black

Perhaps… not yet? they feint with deeper cold

I parry – breathing in, retreating – and blood-red heat renews me

The icy point withdraws to star. She-dog finds the closing door

⦿

Frozen out-there glitters on…

Behind us, warm and crackling, the embers of the last log linger

Within reflecting glass we salute implacable fire

And, turning, copy both their smiles.

I sometimes wonder if the fire is kin to what I am within

©Stephen Tanham 2020

Stephen Tanham is a Director of the Silent Eye School of Consciousness, a not-for-profit teaching school of modern mysticism that helps people find a personal path to a deeper place within their internal and external lives.

The Silent Eye provides home-based, practical courses which are low-cost and personally supervised. The course materials and corresponding supervision are provided month by month without further commitment.

Steve’s personal blog, Sun in Gemini, is at stevetanham.wordpress.com.

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The Opening

I know the words

The long-learned words

With which this view is framed

These slats of wood I crafted round

The Opening…

➰

Yet there it lies, unshut before me

The rawness of the world

Behind my words I kneel, now

Afraid to stop their flow’s intent

In widening my wood

➰

One day the words will be unspeakable

The splinters brushed aside

By the eye beyond the Opening

And we – the world and it’s child

Will speak in unbroken silence

➰

©Stephen Tanham 2020

Stephen Tanham is a Director of the Silent Eye School of Consciousness, a not-for-profit teaching school of modern mysticism that helps people find a personal path to a deeper place within their internal and external lives.

The Silent Eye provides home-based, practical courses which are low-cost and personally supervised. The course materials and corresponding supervision are provided month by month without further commitment.

Steve’s personal blog, Sun in Gemini, is at stevetanham.wordpress.com.

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Big Bubbles

Once there was an ocean

A bright blue ocean

That shone shimmering gold

As its waves crested and fell

And the bubbles danced with joy

➰

Then a bubble grew bigger

And gathered other big bubbles

We’re not bubbles they cried

We’re a cluster of bubbles

And they rose to the top of the waves

And flew off into the bright sky

➰

Higher thy flew

Towards the burning sun

Which turned them to steam

Which cooled

And they fell and fell

Landing on the single bubbles

Who were dancing below

Together

➰

It’s good to be a part

Of something

It’s better still

To belong

To something

Real

➰

©Stephen Tanham

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Somber not Sad

A second on an icy breeze

A chill that fears no coat

A fading colour unafraid

Of its own transition floats

➰

From the order of formed green

To the falling of bronze

The collecting whisper

Is the voice of the colder wind

➰

North of the east and south of the west

Nothing turns bad

Culling life-magic, living no death

Is somber not sad

➰

©Stephen Tanham

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Half day, half night, half nothing

Along the edge of darkness lives delight

A silver, shining, running stream

A place of soul’s respite

Where questions rise unbidden

And answers tease and tide from hidden

A flow so all-embracing that the third:

Not day, not night, is briefly seen.

➰

©Stephen Tanham

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The Blissed Hand

Like a flower the truth is swiftly hurt

Perfection is the gentlest thing

Touched only by inside seeing

Fingers’ secret is caress

Engaging deeper self

A sacrifice to one alone

Blissed hand holds essence of rose

Its fading leaving room for another

Its silence an invitation to a third

➰

©Stephen Tanham

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Harlequin Solstice

Harlequin solstice

St John Kin

A picture in the fading sun

A race of fingers, digits

Of solstice long earned

Short departed

➰

How little

How sadly

You are understood

Your music the struggle

Of madness

Made harmony

➰

Until this moment

When kings detach your strings

When single song

Descends

Towards the dark arms

But brighter eyes

Of St Stephen

➰

©Stephen Tanham

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Long Meg

 

Lady of the northern light

Your stone too old to reach

Offset with spirals on your flanks

With children circled round your banks

Give us the grace to see you teach

And under stars approach your sight

➰

© Stephen Tanham

Stephen Tanham is a director of the Silent Eye School of Consciousness, a not-for-profit organisation that helps people find a personal path to a deeper place within their internal and external lives.

The Silent Eye provides home-based, practical courses which are low-cost and personally supervised. The course materials and corresponding supervision are provided month by month without further commitment.

Steve’s personal blog, Sun in Gemini, is at stevetanham.wordpress.com.

You’ll find friends, poetry, literature and photography there…and some great guest posts on related topics.

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Azure Black Tango

It’s a slow, slow tango

An explosion of deepest bright

A passion written in held-back movement

A surrender to the night

That follows…

➰

As, soft within the darkness

The folds of black reverse

And singing not heard in daylight

Is loosed upon the universe

In perfect union.

➰

© Stephen Tanham

Stephen Tanham is a director of the Silent Eye School of Consciousness, a not-for-profit organisation that helps people find a personal path to a deeper place within their internal and external lives.

The Silent Eye provides home-based, practical courses which are low-cost and personally supervised. The course materials and corresponding supervision are provided month by month without further commitment.

Steve’s personal blog, Sun in Gemini, is at stevetanham.wordpress.com.

You’ll find friends, poetry, literature and photography there…and some great guest posts on related topics.