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The author reads from her chapbook. 8-minutes

Arya F. Jenkins is a peace activist, poet and writer whose poetry has appeared in various literary journals and magazines such as Bookpress, The Café Review, The Connecticut River Review, and online, in The Golden Lantern and The Write Room. Her work also appeared in NO WAR NO MORE, a collection of poems and essays for peace and against war that she also edited, published by Greenwood/Blue Lotus Press in 2007. She is a longtime practitioner of Tibetan Buddhism, and studied at Namgyal Institute of Buddhist Studies in Ithaca, New York.
&
Her collection of excellent short stories Blue Songs in an Open Key
 

EMPTINESS

You can claim that
It’s all about you
Or all about me

Or about us

But it’s really about neither

Or them either

But the energy in-between
The quality of energy
The love.
 

LOVE

You do not know what love is, my
Guru said to us all
These words
Did not sit well
I thought I had given up
Everything
What do I know? —
Desire for a woman
A child
A man
Desire for silence
For calm
Always desire
Always the waves come
Always the taste
The fire that life is —
I thought this was love.

WORDS

Words are obstreperous --
Don't you think?

They slip out
Unattended
Fly from the tongue
Wreaking havoc
But they can create peace and love
This magic too

In order to be a Buddhist
You must cultivate your heart

Not just the mind --
It's wisdom and love
Not one or the other

But a marriage
Hand in hand

In the garden of the heart
Words grow
Inspired by wisdom and love.

© 2022-2023 by Ary F. Jenkins.