Reflections on Life

Colin E Knowles

Description

Colin Knowles in his Reflections on Life has created a diverse collection of poems exploring the themes of thought, images, fun and love.

In The Search, Knowles looks at Dante’s Divine Comedy and provides a modern update. How does a football grand final compare with the Roman emperor’s birthday, see Parallels. Want help in understanding reality: try What is real? Looking to understand love: see My love is like an ocean or I want to hold you and for fun, learn how to make a sandwich in Lunch.

Explore many more images and ideas in this very readable collection.

Sujets

• Poetry

Informations

• Publié par: Tablo Pty Ltd
• Date de parution: 14 juillet 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781922309013
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 3 Mo

Extrait

About the poet
Colin Knowles was born in Sydney in 1944 and grew up in suburban Melbourne. He started his working life as a civil engineer in Australia before spending 3 years in Canada as a project manager. On his return to Australia, Colin continued to work in the property and building industries as a management consultant on large, complex projects in many locations including Australia, New Zealand, South East Asia and China.
 
Knowles has been writing poems from his life experiences since the early 1960’s; short poems, longer poems, love poems and deeper poems. He finds expressing himself in poetry as the easiest way to discuss an idea, thought, concept or personal understanding. He uses many styles writing in a spare, understandable way.
 
Reflections on Life is his first published poetry collection.
 
Thought
The Search
      Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy, Hell

      In the midway of this our mortal life,
      I found me in a gloomy wood, astray
      Gone from the path direct: and eén to tell
      It were no easy task, how savage wild
      That forest, how robust and rough its growth,
      Which to remember only, my dismay
      Renews, in bitterness not far from death. ……

We all search
In our many ways
For reason and meaning in our lives
And
For you, life has been like wandering
Lost in a gloomy wood
Unable to find the path direct.

So turning your back
On this earlier life
You leave your home
Behind you and
Begin your search.

You have found a car park
And you walk with the crowds of shoppers through the department store
Packed with things you don’t really need
To the mall.
Past the sharp, tight, painted ladies grimacing with charm
Selling the latest personal self-decoration fads
At ridiculous prices.

In the mall, you pause,
Where do you look in this place for meaning?

The cinema complex (or dream factory)?
The food court?
The fashion clothing shops?
The key cutter, the phone case vendor, the person sweeping the floors?
The supermarket, the bookshop (a possibility), the handbag shop?

Surrounded by the noisy, bustling, intent throng
In the muzaked space
You see that the whole place is about creating expectations
And offering the dream of satisfaction.

The only meaning here is unrestrained desire
For the next and the new.

You turn
Walk through the department store
Past the painted ladies
To the crowded, desperate car park
And away.

In the church,
Under the high arched ceiling,
The coloured light
Streaming through the stained glass
Of saints images
Lights up in chiaroscuro 
The man nailed to the timber cross.
The practicing organ music fills the space.
Subtle impressions of your youth
Surround you
With rote dogma and the possibility of hope.

Space shivers and blurs.
The nailed man is looking at you.
So you ask him

I am on a quest to know, so
Who are you?
 
      I am a Jewish man from a Jewish world
      Who lived a long time ago
      Adopting an inner attitude of surrender and openness
      To address the chaos of man and his world
      Teaching respect and compassion
      Killed by men
      And then made God by man
      And, mysteriously,
      God’s son also

You then ask

If we made you God,
What or who is God?

      God is one of man’s greatest creations.
      God is the ultimate being.
      God is all powerful and all knowing.
      God created all things
      Visible and invisible.
      God is active.
      God is love.
      God is whatever you don’t know or don’t understand.

You pause,
Contemplating your next question.

How do we come to know this God and his love?

And the nailed man replies

      There are many paths to God
      And the best path is through me.

Why is that so when there are many paths?

      Well, I am instructed to say,
      With our path we promise the good man
      Eternal life, with life after death in heaven
      A wonderful place of goodness and light
      And whatever you enjoy most
      Along with all the other good, believing people.
      Whereas unbelieving, bad people face eternal       damnation and pain
      In hell
      Along with all the other bad people
      Suffering in the worst way they can possibly imagine.

You are sure you are a good man so you ask
But how can I be certain?

      You will need faith
      Blind faith and trust
      In this, our message.

The music stops
The light streams down
You are stunned.
You see
The stark, archaic unreality
Of this doctrine
In the world around you
You turn to go
The voice whispers behind you

      Remember
      Blind faith and trust.

You walk into the marble foyer of the office tower
To the lifts and up forty floors
To the observation level.
Perhaps there will be meaning when you can see
The city all around you
Like a god?

The doors open and you move to the glass wall.
You see the city spread before you
Huge and complex
Patterns of humanity
Energy and movement
Cars creeping like ants
Through the box buildings.
You know there is order in this apparent chaos,
Somehow it works.

Man is restless and boundlessly creative
But do the blue sky, the distant green rolling hills
And the still sea of the bay beyond
Beckon you to a greater reality?

The cold, black, starry night sky
Spreads from horizon to horizon.
You look up.
You know that there are billions of people
Feeling, touching, living
On this airy, wet, rocky speck
In this one galaxy
In time and space
In infinity
So you ask this universe where is meaning?

The dark void whispers to you

      You live in
      An expanding cosmology
      Of fields and forces
      Matter and energy
      Everywhere
      Popping in and out of existence
      Uncertainty and probability
      Everywhere.

      The classical absolute
      Clockwork universe
      Of touch and feel
      Common sense
      And blind religious faith
      In an all powerful God.

      Gone.

      You live in
      A universe of
      Rubbery space/time
      Mass energy equivalence
      Light speed constancy
      And a hoped for unity of all
      But still one arrow of time
      Flying into the future.

      A universe created from a point of nothing.
      A big bang.

      Space expanding
      Relentlessly
      Curved
      In and out
      Cooling

      But all hanging on to glorious
      Symmetry

The stars probe your consciousness
And in the stillness
You are overawed by the immensity and potential simplicity,
The huge energies
Of it all.

Gradually,
Drifting away,
As the eastern horizon lightens.
The black sky and stars
Fade and vanish
And the sun rises.
Leaving the quarter celestial moon
Hanging in the sky.

You are on top of a steep wooded hill
Contemplating all before you,
The bush, the sky, the distant ocean.

The dark wood opens
And you step off the hill
Through the thick bush and scrub
Down to the river bank
Cluttered with broken trees.

Air vibrating with the sound
Of cicadas in the shimmering heat.

The river sluggish
Searching its way
Through the giant red gums.

You clamber and climb
Through the river edge chaos
Hints of the sea on the fitful breeze.

Opening and easier
You see the blue sky ahead
Through ti tree scrub.

Break out to the sea wind
Down the sandy bar
To the noise of waves and water.
You run to the sea and in.

The mass of boulders on the shore
Speaks to you
Touched by the waves
Of storms and still seas
Like the faintest murmur
A distant echo
In its time of eons

      I was born from the magma below.
      Cascading down
      Until still and cool.

      Worn away
      Changed to sand
      Scattered
      Moved, buried and squeezed
      Folded and lifted.

      Transformed.
      A new state
      Reborn.

      I age, wear
      And change again and again
      In a constantly repeating
      Cycle of being.

The darkness rolls back
And light flows in
Assaulting you with meaning
Flooding over you
Warming you
Steadying you
And making you grow.

As the sky, the sea and the earth tell you

      All things live in constantly repeating
      Cycles of being,
      Birth, existence and decay, death, transformation
      Rebirth.
      Forever
      And within these repeating cycles
      All thoughts and things belong
      To the unity of existence
      Through simply being.

      Good and evil
      Night and day
      Yes and no
      All opposite aspects
      Within this unity
      Creating the pure theoretical
      Thought bounds of the duality
      With which you think.

      These things and thoughts are all connected,
      Some obviously,
      But mainly with delicate, hidden threads
      Hiding under your senses

      So the reality of your life
      Is that you are an evolved, conscious b