Temple of Warm Harmony. Frank LaRue Owen

of the book explore themes of vital remembrance and healing through connecting to dreams, mountains, forests, rivers, and life-affirming powers greater than ourselves.

      In these troubled and dusty times of strife, may some of the poems from this unfurling map bolster you and aid you in finding your way to your own temple of warm harmony.

–Frank LaRue Owen, near The Natchez Trace

4

I

      1

      Before Entering: Supplication

       The heart-mind is boundless.

       Once you’ve become true allies,

       there is no distinction between

       arrival and departure.

       – Dao-Sentiment River –

      The Mizong mystics down in town talk about Great Surrender.

      Fools in the tavern overhear this and think this means: “Go mindless.”

      Those vagabonds cook up all sorts of ways to justify

      “tying their boat” to any ol’ shimmering thing passing by.

      The real wayfarers have sampled it all and handed it back.

      They can tell you to your face without blinking:

       It’s all empty. Taste every morsel to your heart’s content.

       Just know: It still leads you right back to where you started.

      I’m not telling you not to enjoy yourself

      as you move through this House of Smoke and Mirrors.

      Even Crazy Cloud used to say: Have a drink, get laid, you’re only human.

      But two-legged dragons from the mountains

      and peacocks down in the jungle

      are masters because they’re free from impulsive supping.

      If they enter at all, they enter fully, like Jesus’ Last Supper.

      They’ve taken-in all pleasures,

      imbibed all the poisons of forgetfulness,

      and transmuted them from solids into vapors

      through the luminous mesh of the Rainbow Body.

      You’ll know such a one because they don’t enter anything lightly.

      No matter the sweetness of the honey dripping from the hook,

      they bypass ‘the dangling’

      and go straight for the heart of things.

      Having drunk from the Deep Draught of Memory,

      and seen back to the time when you and I

      were known by names like

      Autumn Traveling Coat

      and Bright-Integrity Radiance Mountain,

      there’s no turning back for me, you see.

      I’m just a Zen cowboy

      whose horse

      was shot out

      from under him.

      But I can tell you this.

      If you have the chance

      in this life

      to cross paths

      with a maestro

      of the Bright-Knowledge,

      even if you’re left

      wandering by the roadside,

      it will have been worth it.

      Sit knee-to-knee with them,

      and brace yourself for the questions

      that will change your whole life,

      like:

       Are you really ‘in’ your life?

       What are you inhabiting?

       Are your days about new vistas of understanding

       or are you being vanquished

       by illusions you’ve taken to be reality?