Introducing Echoes of Oms
Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra I.1
atha yoganusasanam
“Now this is yoga as I have observed it in the natural world.”
There are nine short poems in the Echoes of Oms chapbook.
These, and the monochromatic photographs that accompany them, come from experience in the natural world, from what I call trail yoga.
That is: breathing, chanting, seeing, feeling, and connecting with myself and the greater sense of life, its timelessness.
Om [ॐ], the original sound, the vibration that courses through and connects all beings, all matter of the universe, is there in nature.
Om: a-u-m ( ) … the four energetic sounds: creation, preservation, transformation and the unstruck (silence).
Each of those energetic elements is present in the mountains, where I live in Colorado. The forests, boulders, creeks, wildlife, air and soil … Where isn’t it?
In practicing trail yoga, I especially connect with the creative aspects of ॐ. I carry a camera and something with which to make notes.
Creating is part of how I process the world and myself, and, seemingly as important to me, it’s how I share it with others.
The photographs in this chapbook come from my joy of noticing the often unnoticed in the natural world.
Abstracts. Textures. Simplicity. The flow of existence … wabi-sabi, the Japanese aesthetic that regards the imperfect, impermanent and incomplete as a higher form of wholeness and beauty. Perfection in all its brokenness.
The poems in this chapbook are of presence, meditation, sthira and sukham, harmony, connection, Self, karma, and the three gunas (energetic qualities) of yoga philosophy: rajas, tamas and sattva.
The photographs and poems in Echoes also are an expression of the meditative chant so ham (I am). I am … whole, enough, creation … in all my brokenness. So are you.
Truth of the Creek
A cutthroat
shimmies in the shadows
of rocks submerged in spring,
energized by fear and
earthly vibrations.
A bottle rigid, brown and head
down bobs in the clear
cold and shallow, snagged
by a tree branch
laid wet.
Between
the two, the calm
truth of the
creek.
Echoes of Oms is available in print through Amazon and other retailers (ISBN 1732321809).
