Namaste and Greetings

Welcome to another poetic sharing post. There have been a few lately haven’t there? I had thought that once I had the new page Poems of Devotion up and running that I would only feature one every now and again in its own post.

However the one I feel inclined to share with you today is slightly different. Well, not really: it’s still a devotional piece, but for some reason feels a little other than that.

For a start, it’s set in a café and features the thoughts of a hermit monk (me), and is about what’s going on in that space at that moment. As well as what’s in his mind and heart. Oh yes, almost forgot: the action takes place on Election Day.

So, what is it that makes me feel this poem is ‘still devotional but slightly other’? Well, aside from the setting, timing, and so on I just described, I sense that, in its words, in its composition, the hermit has sought to record (through the poem) that moment in the café as the reaching out to all those fellow beings sharing the space, to recognise, and to celebrate the divine in them all.

May that intention shine through to you too, dear reader

THE HERMITS HAVE COFFEE ON ELECTION DAY

I feel like I’m sitting
in a Hopper painting.
Just off the village green
at a coffee shop, in the Toukley Mall.

There are people; aren’t there always?
Coming and going.
This one catching gossip; that one seeking connection;
One or two heads down, backs bent
over newspapers assimilating myriad tales of woe.
It’s election day.

Of little interest to the hermits,
out of the hermitage for coffee.
A treat that comes at a cost.

Voices – of people and of headlines –
speak, some even shout,
of worldly things. To us not real.

Leaves me hollow.
That’s the vibe,
the feeling inside
– And that’s not real either.