Shanta Acharya – Weathering

Acharya LE P&W 2 Nov-Dec 2024

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Live Encounters Poetry & Writing Volume Two November-December 2024

Weathering, poems by Shanta Acharya.


Weathering

Forgotten in the backwater of time,
once entrusted to shine a light on darkness,

steering sailors and pilots away from danger,
from treacherous coasts to safe havens,

the lighthouse now stands abandoned, alone,
possessing a haunting beauty all its own.

Once home to gods, now a relic of the past,
the island offers sanctuary to seals, shelters

sea lions; lets earth’s gorgeous creatures
breathe new life and purpose. Even the dead

sparkle for those who can see their splendour.
Those who can hear their songs, listen.

Wild, weird, wonderful – their music holds
us in thrall, dancing auroras.

Spinning in love’s magnetic field, they light
up the sky with their incandescence.

Life and love are full of sighs, full of ecstasy.
Weathering is what we are here for –

to acquire that patina shine of self-realisation
before returning to the universe where we belong.


If You Let Yourself Believe

in the mystery of harmony, there being
no measure for such things. A need undefinable,

acquiring shape and meaning – not to fill
an emptiness, but a deepening of the spirit,

astonishing as a soul dwelling in two bodies,
representing a world. Trusted, generous, kind,

willing to listen – present in ways you can’t imagine.
Life affirming as mid-winter sunshine.

A blessing, unfolding like the birth of spring.
A wonder of creation, sustaining as nothing else can –

letting us see the best of what we can be,
a higher power if you let yourself believe.

Friends are precious, not just heirlooms –
they exist so we may see ourselves through their eyes.

Masterpieces of nature, disguised as weeds,
friends are not for display in look-at-me vases.

A garden sown with love’s delight, friendship is
reaped over a lifetime of thanksgiving.

Conversations resume from where they were left off,
sometimes in silence more sympathetic than words –

not a net cast forth with any design or purpose.
When the giving grows, the taking goes –

not following, nor leading, not judging, nor patronizing –
there being no better love than love, unquestioning.


Secrets

To live in one’s coppiced wilderness of secrets
takes a child’s faith in the harness of secrets.

We are what we hide even from ourselves.
Who are we to judge the sinisterness of secrets?

Life may be an open book, yet gossip grows, turns
into strange creatures in the furnace of secrets.

When drumbeaters and axe-grinders take over,
they drown the world in the bitterness of secrets.

Know there are secrets – sacred and precious –
to be treasured in the foreverness of secrets.

There are things we don’t know we know, unknown to us
their worth preserved in the ambergris of secrets.

A time comes when you can no longer remember
days disappearing in the tenderness of secrets.

To know and live with the secret of secrets is
peace, close as one gets to the innerness of secrets.


© Shanta Acharya

Shanta Acharya’s recent poetry collections are What Survives Is the Singing (2020), Imagine: New and Selected Poems (2017) and Dreams That Spell The Light (2010). Her doctoral study, The Influence of Indian Thought on Ralph Waldo Emerson, was published in 2001 and her novel, A World Elsewhere, in 2015. Her poems, reviews, and articles have featured in journals and anthologies, internationally. The author of seven poetry collections, her poems have been translated into several languages. www.shanta-acharya.com

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