POETRY
The Mountain Lake
A poem about just being water

Dear friend, Do you want to know how to live your life as you were meant to do?
Sorry, I am not going to tell you. However, I will give you some advice. Go to a mountain lake, listen and learn.
And do as the lake does.
Be still. Reflect the infinite sky and the ascending trees in your waters.
Feel your depths where not even reflections come.
And welcome the streams from the surrounding peaks that have been sent as an invitation from the distant ocean, delivered by fleets of clouds.
Feel those merging waters and hear their, Ahh. Let them flow into your depths with all the streams’ sentiments.
Then neither holding nor sending, just allowing the water to return to its messenger, hear the roar of the streams rushing downward, shouting their return.
Which is greater you might ask: the ocean the lake the incoming streams or the outgoing rush?
Who am I to say?
I am only water.
Thank you for reading this excerpt from my book, Beyond the Beyond: Poems to My Beloved Self. Follow this link to purchase my book from Amazon.
Reflections
I wrote this poem and a series of others during a family retreat many years ago. For a few years in a row my only son and I would join a couple of other families and we would spend a week in the Cascade Mountains in Oregon, at Squaw Lake. We hauled our food in, and besides a few other campers dotted here and there, we had the lake to our selves. I would become very intimate with that lake.
Every morning before the sun arose, I would walk to an isolated stump to meditate. It was on the walks or after the meditations that the poems would come. And into my journal they went. It was only when returning back to civilization did any editing occur.
Here are some other poems for your reading pleasure.
The following are two articles of mine.
Check out my website, mindfulness-meditation-techniques.com for learning about various meditation practices and reading more articles and other writings. I have authored nine books, including The Teachings of Yama: A Conversation with Death. Visit my Author Page to know more. And if you liked this artwork of mine in this article you can see more on Pinterest. You can follow me on Facebook.
