Day: April 28, 2025

Until I began researching dragons
of different cultures
days ago, I never knew Native
Americans had dragons in their
culture.

And that some of the symbolism
relates to Protection, Power,
Transformation, and Traversing
Realms.

This is why I have a Native
American woman with a multi colored
dragon at the top of this blog now.

I’m kind of hoping it’s my final
banner or maybe I’ll have a rotating
banner with two or three other
rotating banners.

But I’m kind of hooked on this
Native American banner; I like
Native American things, and I
really like how that banner looks.

Been to powwows, listened to
a Native American storyteller
long ago in faraway Vermont,
visited a Native American museum,
and did a presentation on
resources for the aging at a
Native American seniors group
here in Greensboro years ago.

And I feel it’s critical to keep
the Native American culture alive,
to never let it die.

Bob Boyd

Peace isn’t luck.
For six years stand facing a silent wall,
Until the ‘you’ of your face,
Melts like a candle.

Ikkyu

The “you” of my face has never melted like a candle.
I’ve never become ONE with the universe.
But my heart has melted a number of times
when I fell in love with the one, a new love.

That said, I know what Ikkyu is meaning.
Your little self melts into the bigger Self
and your mind is blown beyond the
dualities into the eternal ONENESS.

And the way he is describing is the Zen
Zazen where you Zen meditate earnestly
with the goal of melting into the cosmos.

And the melting reminds me of a song where
a singer sings elatedly that he’s going
to melt with a woman.

Now that may sound sexual, but I like
thinking about it romantically like the “you”
of your heart melting with the “you” of
her heart – heart to heart romantically
united in the euphoria, the incomparable
ecstasy of high-flying, airborne true love.

Bob Boyd

In her twenties
out out on weekends
partying at the clubs
beautiful and popular
enjoying life

But serious, studious about
her education
graduated from college
magna cum laude

In middle age a great career
selling prime real estate
to wealthy buyers
and still beautiful
and popular with
her social set

But she didn’t let her
success, her money,
her beauty or her popularity
make her feel she was
superior to those who
had less advantages
and little money

She donated fortunes
to causes that helped
the poor, the sick,
the elderly and
the disabled

When she retired
she devoted her
life to the sick and the dying
volunteering at hospice
five days a week

A life well lived
gifted, successful, humble,
kind and caring

Bob Boyd

When he died, he didn’t know he had lived.
Just liked when he lived he didn’t know he
had come from the afterlife before he lived.
Why this sort of intended amnesia is a
mystery known only by the self realized sage,
who has found the keys to unlock the door
to liberation, escaping the revolving doors of
death and life, knower of the hidden mysteries.

Bob Boyd

When they fell in love,
he promised here
he’d never leave her

The hugs, the kisses,
the caresses, the hands
held, a romance like heaven

Three years past, a love
that would last until she
contracted a chronic

disease that rendered her
unable to walk and the man
who vowed to never leave her

who promised he’d love her
forever, exited her life just
when she needed him most

Bob Boyd

He ran 45 minutes every other night
and felt the runner’s highs
in all of the nightly runs.

He liked the coolness of the night,
the fewer cars on the roads he
ran on.

But then during one of his hundreds
of runs in his thirties, he heard a
snapping in his right knee

and he limped all the way home,
and saw a doctor the next day
who said his knee would be okay

after an arthroscopy a few days
later, and he’d be able to run again
just like he had for years.

The operation done, the rest, and
the rehab over, he started a new run
with his healed knee.

But after only a few minutes, pain
in his knee and his running
ended forever

with no guarantees another operation
would fix the knee completely
and could make it worse.

Bob Boyd

Life is bursting in the trees outside my apartment
with a chorus of birds singing merrily in them
who were silent during the colder months.

It’s as if the end of the month of April has brought
them all to life with a symphony of separate songs,
as if each bird is playing a different instrument.

And for the first time in the eleven years I’ve lived here,
I’m really hearing the birds and their many melodies.

Bob Boyd