Seeing Things

By Mary Catherine O'Brien

Trafford Publishing

Copyright © 2012 Mary Catherine O'Brien
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4669-6035-0

Contents

Sandwalking.................................................1Reflections on the Waters...................................3Release.....................................................5Fog.........................................................6Ravi Shankar-Experienced....................................8Love on the Subway..........................................10The Caretaker...............................................12Cairo.......................................................13Guilt.......................................................14Is Prayer?..................................................15Winds of Autumn.............................................16Travel Companions...........................................17A Running Melting World.....................................18Now Where Did I Leave My Tea?...............................19Sunday is Visiting Day......................................21Still Life With Trees.......................................22Change the World?...........................................23I Remember Egypt............................................24Evensong....................................................26Pisces Enchanted............................................27Apart.......................................................29The Apparition..............................................30Autumn Lament...............................................31Birth of a Painting.........................................32Cut Me Free.................................................33Seen in Kashmir.............................................34Daily Prayer................................................35Escape......................................................37Flying......................................................38Freedom's Prison............................................39Future Gothic...............................................41Frozen Memories.............................................42Funeral of a Container Ship.................................43Four Way Stop...............................................44Mother Speaks...............................................45Houseboat in Kashmir........................................46The Individual..............................................47Sri Lanka Images in Passing.................................49March Wind..................................................50No Room for Change..........................................51One More Time...............................................52Sensory Deprivation.........................................53Some Thoughts on Halos......................................55Spring Tune Up..............................................57The Seeds of the Last Supper................................58Spring......................................................59Sweet Bondage...............................................60Tension.....................................................61The Message.................................................62Vain Hope...................................................63Waiting-Hospital 1989.......................................64Who Are You Really Lord?....................................65Ways of Seeing..............................................67Kids........................................................68Painkiller..................................................70A Catholic Childhood in Toronto.............................71A Painting Poured and Pored.................................75A Painting Complete.........................................77The Way.....................................................78City Experience.............................................79El Salvador 2...............................................80My Father...................................................81Guilt.......................................................82In Memory of Rev. Gerald J. Cochran.........................83The Turning Wheel...........................................84The Seeker..................................................86Sonnet......................................................87Exam Time...................................................88Invigilation................................................89Found Poem from Gone Away by Dom Morals.....................90A Burdened Soul.............................................91Scruples....................................................92Worry.......................................................93A Running Melting World.....................................94Thank God for Brakes........................................95On Centering................................................96

Chapter One

Sandwalking


Alone I walk beside the sea.
I count my steps.
My eyes rest on the silent sand.
The patterns of the past lie there.
I wonder at their beauty.
A horse's hooves bespeak a ride at dawn
Before the world awakes.
I follow in a dog's paws dance of play.
They dig the sand in doggy joy.
Athletic shoes of walkers leave a patterned tread
Rigid and man-made.
A father and a child passed here.
There a group of boys at play
Their footsteps cross and blur in the race to catch the ball.
Here I pause to view a castle and a moat,
And there a river and a lake.
And everywhere young people write of love,
Hopes and wishes that the tide will wash away.
Tomorrow, they, new loves will declare
So fickle are we when we're young
And full of longing.

A hundred sea birds perched to rest.
Their fan shaped three toed feet
Mark the sand in patterns delicate.
They paint in light and dark a mass of Chinese fans,
A magic fragile carpet of design.
Beside the beach I find a growing plant
With tiny flowers of creamy white.
I pluck a blossom and with surprise find some berries blue
And leaves of yellow, green and red.
Five thousand footsteps have I walked alone
On this Atlantic beach.
As evening comes the sea is pink and green and silver
And gentle waves softly wash the shore.
My mind and soul are cleansed of thought
And I return in deep tranquility.


Reflections on the Waters


I dip my finger in the Ganges
As the luminescent sky of dawn
Glows golden
And I ask a blessing.

Water droplets on my finger tips
As on the fingers of the Hindus bathing
Who face the waking day
In fervent prayer.

I dip my finger in the Holy Water font
In the quiet dimness of a great cathedral
And like the multitude for centuries past
Whose fingers dipped in that same font
I ask a blessing.

I raise my finger tips to the moist sea wind
Upon that high Acropolis of Athens
Where Aristotle prayed, I reach
To ask a blessing.

I dip my fingers in the sea of Galilee
In the long low light of evening
I think of Jesus walking by this shore
Praying here alone as I come now
To ask a blessing.

In Bali, lovely flower barques
Each morn, each eve, float out to sea
Each laden with a fervent prayer
By water borne.
My prayer of flowers joins that lovely drift
As I too ask a blessing.

Water flowing, ebbing, giving, taking,
Changing ever, changing never,
Nor more, nor less, a secrecy of seeming.

From all these waters sacrosanct I draw a small baptism
A peace, wherein my soul, in great...