Anteroom (formerly The Winged Moon)

@anteroompoetry.bsky.social

Poetry through the cracks; we publish in print and online with amazing art and a vibrant weekly newsletter.
Poetry competition with a cash prize opens on 14 Sept '26
EIC @jaimichellepoet.bsky.social
Website: www.anteroompoetry.com

@asls.org.ukReposted by @anteroompoetry.bsky.social

My grandfather didn’t know he was a Taoist.
He had fished the river Awe for sixty years.
Life is sensed as a flowing movement,
a power like wind or water. When he cast,
it was the bank that moved, not the river…

—Lorn Macintyre, “Satori”
from The Bridport Prize Anthology 2013
#poem #GrandparentsDay

Satori Lorn Macintyre My grandfather didn’t know he was a Taoist. He had fished the river Awe for sixty years. Life is sensed as a flowing movement, a power like wind or water. When he cast, it was the bank that moved, not the river. The osprey with the salmon in its talons needed no metaphor to describe its beauty. He saw the suchness of the landscape, the great whole, perfect, sky, mountain, as in a painting by the Zen K’un-t’an. There is no Gaelic for the term satori, the solution lying beyond the intellect, that flash of delighted intuition, sensing that a salmon is lying in the current, while not seeing a ripple with the eye. If I had told him: ‘you read the river like a book, noting between the lines what other fishermen fail to spy,’ he would have clouted me on the head, the way Zen Masters took the big stick to pupils who insisted on comparison. The river needs no language, no homage. It goes its own way, like the osprey which will never run out of sky.
@yourdigitalbrain.bsky.socialReposted by @anteroompoetry.bsky.social

This cloud looks frozen in place for hours, but air is rushing through it the whole time. Lenticular clouds form over mountains and often get mistaken for UFOs.

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