Word Songs

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             I wander in the wonderland of words
             where sounds can rhapsodize an inner flight
             and seek to sing like skylark midst the birds.

             To feel a lyric line is ringing right
             that rose unknowingly from secret source
             can send my senses soaring with delight.

             What guides the reasoned rhyme’s creative course?
             the urging of an enigmatic muse?
             or might it be a fundamental force?

             The words may dance or promenade in twos,
             at times leap forth as in a lightning flash,
             or shower phrases in prismatic hues…

             When glimmers come but embers turn to ash,
             there are no syllables with tongues of flame
             nor tones that thunder like a cymbals’ clash.

             Then I despair and falter in my aim
             of catching rainbows in a verse’s net
             and cry I should forsake the poet’s game.

             Still oft before the dying sun has set
             arises hint of inspiration’s spark
             albeit faintest flickering, and yet

             from out of what had seemed a moonless dark
             in blackness cloaked, bereft of starry glow,
             is heard the distant music of a lark.—

             For always shall my deepest being flow
             with wonders of Nam Myoho Renge Kyo…



             ~ Harley White



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The form of the poem is Terza Rima.

The literal translation of terza rima from Italian is ‘third rhyme’'. Terza rima is a three-line stanza using chain rhyme in the pattern ABA BCB CDC DED. There is no limit to the number of lines, but poems or sections of poems written in terza rima end with either a single line or couplet repeating the rhyme of the middle line of the final tercet. The two possible endings for the example above are DED E, or DED EE. There is no set rhythm for terza rima, but in English, iambic pentameter is generally preferred.

Some inspiration derived from the teachings and writings of Nichiren Daishōnin…

Nam Myōhō Renge Kyō means to devote our lives to and found them on (Nam[u]) the Utterness of the Dharma (Myōhō) [entirety of existence, enlightenment and unenlightenment] permeated by the underlying white lotus flower-like mechanism of the interdependence of cause, concomitancy and effect (Renge) in its whereabouts of the ten [psychological] realms of dharmas [which is every possible psychological wavelength] (Kyō).

The reason that we continually recite Nam Myōhō Renge Kyō

Image ~ Golden Buddha fractal images ~ generated by Gerhard Lenz