Two Chairs Poem by Keith Shorrocks Johnson

Take a seat, let it take your weight
And let us sit together quietly
Setting aside stories and end-points
For presence and being.
Look - the space between us is open:
An altar if it suits your purpose
Or a surface for the prayer mat.

…

God's very own the West
God's very own the East;
As also the North and South
Gathered in love and truth.

…

Set aside racing the run of day
For the time the seconds chase
Will never show a fairer face;
Come close and let the stillness show
Where we must put the world away
To draw it closer as the silence grows:
Let's tell unheard our secret sorrows
To the shadows that the sundial throws,
For what goes forward and what is past
Will never alter time or stay its haste:
Then let what's left unsaid in quietness strengthen
The amity that calmly sharing space will lengthen.

…

God's very own the West
God's very own the East;
As also the North and South
Gathered in love and truth.

…

So let us study distinction and its absence:
That there is no separation
Of what is apart and what is in contact;
That there is no form or formlessness
As edges and envelopes are unsealed;
That there is no resting or resolution
As emptiness and decay are inevitable;
That thusness is fleeting and yet perceptible
With reality and illusion in mutual shadow;
That life and its converse co-arise
The sentient born of and returning to the insentient;
That we may distinguish the qualities of people
All special - but then there is nothing special;
That when we get up from the chair,
And return to the world from the mountain,
Or from the wilderness, it is in the natural order
That we should recognise compassion.

…

God's very own the West
God's very own the East;
As also the North and South
Gathered in love and truth.

…


The place between has now been won
Our streams of thought together run
And in the catchment likeness grows
Perfect in the peace that confluence knows.
Set down the books that mention blame
And hear our hearts make thinking tame:
Catch the breath and count its pulse
Still the drives that thoughts convulse
Quicken so the quietened revelation
That kindness alone is ample adoration
And togetherness itself a heavenly dedication.

...

God's very own the West
God's very own the East;
As also the North and South
Gathered in love and truth.