To connect. To converse. To respond. To listen. To silence.

Through poetry.

Some notes of music you can taste in your tears.

There are some notes of music that you can taste in your tears.

Like today - I was listening to a piece called "Farewell to Peter" in the kitchen and from the moment the bow first stroked the strings, the tears welled in my eyes and my tongue pressed the roof of my mouth a little more.

Unusually, no particular thing came to mind. No person, no scene. Instead my eyes alighted a little more on the beech hedging out the back. There was no-one else in the kitchen with me, the back door was open, the sun bathed us more than it has for months, and there was a slight chill to the air as it wafted through the window.

I doubt if nature either knows or cares that we mess with time twice a year. It was tempting to think that the bright aura of that moment was seductively linked with a sense of nature echoing the longer time for light that results from the change in our clocks.

I think there is a reason that this phenomenon is referred to as a pathetic fallacy!

So in that moment, as the sliding bow on strings spoke in strange words that I somehow understood, or at least felt, I observed language of another kind again. A language hidden in plain sight, a language that I could barely read, yet a language that somehow found a shortcut to my heart.

The language of sparrows darting furtively from tile to tile, roof to roof, branch to branch - all the while feeding, bathing, playing.
The language of an air pump keeping the bouncy castle upright.
The language of our children resting for a while in the shade of our living room, drinking water.
The language of two saplings that I first noticed last year - one either side of the back yard - oozing excitement through their new budding shoots of green.
The language of the bay leaf tree that our eldest daughter and I planted about 15 years ago, when it literally had fewer leaves than the fingers on my hands - and which now keeps pushing to grow a full hedge all on its own.
The language of ether connecting the notes to my tears to my tongue to the leaf through the glass through the fibre to the words you are reading now.

Yes, now.

When else would this language deign to declare?

No-when else - if you don't think about it.

But since you are reading these words, then it is fair for me to assume now - as I write these words - that you are thinking about it.

About the no-thing at heart of every thing. Every being, every created spark - be that spark of thought, spark of flame - or both.

Because of this freedom of sensing no-thing, part of me could have stayed rooted to that spot all day long, trying not to grasp at every thing, every thought; seeking that which does not need to be sought - but waits for us to pause in awe so that it has a chance of embracing us, however briefly.

But that would not be - that was not how it was. I knew that I would move from that spot soon. As the piece of music drew to a temporal pause, it was as if the Beauty of Nothing kindly released my heart with a veiling sense of gratitude. Gratitude for the connection I had given to it in the few forms that I had noticed. A gratitude all the more poignant for the knowledge that my mind, my feet were going to move on at some stage.

For the knowledge that when the mind moves and the feet do not, that is a whole other World of which we have no direct knowledge at all.

But plenty of direct feeling.

It is a strange world because when the feet keep moving, but the mind does not, then that other world comes poking into ours in a way that maddens us all. Except the one at the heart of it all.

In those moments we might remember those notes that we taste with our tears. And offer them all to those who live between worlds.

Tomás Ó Ruairc 27 March 2022

I don't speak because I know that something is true. I speak because I hope and know that authentic conversation between us will unveil the sense of Truth a little more. Tomás (Inspired by the writings of Mark Nepo)

I don't speak because I know that something is true. I speak because I hope and know that authentic conversation between us will unveil the sense of Truth a little more. Tomás (Inspired by the writings of Mark Nepo)

"Our greatest experiences are our quietest moments." Friedrich Nietzsche