John Doyle writes

Coins

My caravan starts in the hostel on Francouzská, 

coins knitted on ringent window-cill
3 stories up - one slip and the street owns my soft-fiscal music;

I continue this tale,
San Francisco, Chancellor Hotel, 
nickels stacked like hunchbacks in the wardrobes tautened cubby;

When it's finders keepers, and the coins' narrative stops, 
Crusaders, Bedouins 
somewhere, place coins on their sacred mount, the narrative's zinc 

orated through
the sprints of sunlight, in Francouzská, 
San Francisco, fingerprints touching, hearing the tales of left-behind change

A still life of coins, letters, a silver tazza, gilt vessels, jewelry and a silver beaker upon a table, a miser haunted by demons beyond -- Hieronymus Francken the Younger

Irene Mercedes Aguirre writes

The Slope

A shared human lineage brings us together

and similar dreams connect us.

You suffer, you love, you despise, and your brow

reflects the thought that unites us.

On Gaia we walk through our days,

of the centuries, lightning flashing,

with their perennial dramas and joys,

with blind, mendacious passions.

But we still have a long way to go! A long way for us!

This slope so slow, the climb so hard

as it rises, goes higher and exalts us!

So high and sublime! So upward!

It leads to the highest place, right to the centre,

the very being. No more lives without meaning!

So deep into abstractions does it enter,

towards hasty understanding.

And still so far to go! Isn't it, Companions?

How far away peace is! So many miseries!

What if we were to go in union?

New blood would surge through the arteries!

 The Raft number two -- Sabina Sekoh

D. C. Chambial writes

THE ELIXIR OF BLISS

Manifest life on this earth is

short, yet one plans to wrap up 

the entire cosmos in one’s bag

knowing full well that nothing is

eternal but for the One who creates.

That which is created

though in different manifestations

is ever changing, ever transmuting

to shrug off its old and worn out apparent self,

ever ready to put on the new and fresh one.

Meditate upon the One

who creates and who annihilates.

All beings and things emerge out of Him,

at the end of their span enter into Him.

He is the center and all move around Him by His energy.

Come and go without any attachment

keep the equipoise at all times.

Pride, greed and desires - the enemies - lead to hell.

Concentrate on Him; conscious, unconscious

To taste the elixir of bliss here and above.

Into Eternity --  Paul Schad-Rossa