New Poem – What is this life?
Posted on Sep 10, 2018 in Blog feature, Recent Writing | 102 comments
What is this life?
If it is not
As if to walk
Weightless
In this thin bright air
Openly and lightly
Like children
You know…
Simple joys,
Easily found,
That resonate
Beyond all measure.
Thus are we ushered
Gently into this world
And then challenged
To find
Our way home again
With our hearts open,
To where heaven knows
There are pearls awaiting.
Along with the chance,
Day by gleaming day,
To come to realise
The more generously
We shine,
The more we will
Blossom and prosper
Along a path
Where how stunning
It is to still be alive
When, just once in a while,
Those who could never sing
Suddenly can!
And as you pause
To marvel at that,
Best to know
All those
Who similarly bless you
In faith
Helped make it so.
See how boundless love
Brings time to its knees.
A gift beyond compare.
The timing of this poem is perfect. You amaze me with your insight. Another beautiful piece.
Your use of words are perfect. I like the flowing way that use of love and image. Makes you feel like you’re somewhere else while you’re reading it. Cheers, Brian
“What is this life?” Well expressed. Life is a mixture of laughter and sadness. At times smooth as cotton, at times hot as fire, at times fast as wind, and at times cold as ice. It is unpredictable which way it would travel. As all are tenures to this earth, all be submissive to Him and ask for Daily Bread.
A great write.
Scott, what a joyful ode to life… I really love how it brings time to its knees, a great way to express it.
Hello dear Scott I translate your poem in Greek language Congratulations LIFE IS VALUE
Τι είναι αυτή η ζωή;
αν δεν είναι
σαν να περπατάς
άβίαστα
σε αυτό το λεπτό φωτεινό αέρα
Ανοιχτά και ελαφρά
Όπως τα παιδιά
Ξέρεις…
Απλές χαρές,
που εύκολα βρισκεις
Αυτό αντηχεί
Πέρα από όλα
Έτσι έχουμε αρχίσει
Ήπια σε αυτόν τον κόσμο
Και τότε αμφισβητήθηκε
Να βρούμε
τον δρόμο μας στο σπίτι ξανά
Με τις καρδιές μας ανοιχτές,
Εκεί όπου ο ουρανός ξέρει
Υπάρχουν μαργαριτάρια που περιμένουν.
Με την ευκαιρία,
μια αστραφτερή ημέρα,
Για να συνειδητοποιήσουμε
πόσο γενναιόδωρα
εμεις λάμπουμε,
Όσο περισσότερο θέλουμε
να ανθήσουμε και να ευημερήσουμε
Κατά μήκος ενός μονοπατιού
που πόσο εκπληκτικό ειναι
να είσαι ακόμα ζωντανός
Όταν, μόνο μία φορά σε μια στιγμή,
Όσοι δεν μπορούσαν ποτέ να τραγουδήσουν
Ξαφνικά μπορεί!
Και καθώς σταματάτε
Για να θαυμασετε
και να μαθετε καλύτερα
ολα αυτα
Ποιος επίσης σας ευλογεί
Με την πίστη
Βοήθησε να γινει αυτο
Δείτε πόσο απεριόριστη αγάπη
φέρνει ο χρόνος στην ζωή σου
Ένα δώρο που δεν συγκρίνεται
Scott says: Thank you so much dear Kapardeli – I am honoured by both the time and care you have invested in your immediate response of translation into the language of a nation that has as its heritage arguably the greatest civilisation the world has ever known.
I love this. I did a little of Greek while I was in School. What a civilization: the culture and philosophy got best part of me. Thank you Scott for you inspiring this breathtaking translation.
#TeamYowamca
Your poetry, it’s beautiful and honest.
Love this, especially the last verse:
“Best to know
All those
Who similarly bless you
In faith
Helped make it so.
See how boundless love
Brings time to its knees.
A gift beyond compare.”
Simple and elegant at the same time. Bravo!
Once again, the consciousness of Life’s rewards are bestowed on you. The last stanza includes how Time can bent by a boundless love. it’s very true. All of these details lead into a higher sense of wisdom. It’s these gentle reflections which open more than hearts and minds. The readers follow you on a different type of soul journey. My only regret is that I wish there were more words to express this rekindled beauty. I realise that brevity is a gift. I learn from you as my mentor and friend about the economy of wordage. You don’t have to fill an entire page with overcrowded metaphors.
Anyhow, thanks Scott. we push ourselves into the threshold of our human connection. Thank goodness for that too.
Always,
Jt
A beautiful piece.
So happy am I to wander around in your wonderful world !
Thank you Scottie for sharing the happiness !
“See how boundless love
Brings time to its knees.
A gift beyond compare.”
What a splendid ending to such masterful poetry.
You have delivered a masterpiece! I savored every line.
Lovely poem, thanks for sharing.
What a gift it is: To live just to share love with those whose presence makes us happy.Blessings forever, dear Scott!
A very gentle prose about love, life and time. I felt like a bubbling brook, tip toe-ing happily along life’s wonderful journey…
Love this poem!
This is indeed a very good poem about life. Do keep writing as it motivates and illuminates me and others too.
I found this poem very touching. Thank you for sharing it.
Calming beautiful words that relaxes the reader, making them content that all will be well. Beautiful.
It runs with the bright flow of a lyrical song, half spoken sung, add a simply 3 strung cigar box (guitar) and one can imagine a beautiful sunset, a stream and sitting on a rock in a soft meadow… As opposed to the harsh world where we are often between a rock and a hard place.
Inspirational! such gentle words. 🙂
Lovely, Scott, and just what I was thinking about this very day.
…Boundless love brings time to its knees…
Graphic your phrase, rich your imagination, a peal of joy to the reader ear…
Good! So good!
There is an indelible charm in your photographic moments savoring a life of exploration and discovery, Scott. This passion transcends through your poetry which seems to live and breathe a life all its own. Wondrous your mind is!
“What is Life” Challenging question. Who would exactly knows the answer? A poet has numerated some, still that does not answer all. Regardless, I enjoyed it, and good flow.
As a pastor let me say, this poem blossoms with biblical insight.
Beautiful, touching, a place we all long to inhabit.
Thank, Scott, another touching and well fashioned work.
Loved it reading this, Sir. Much to enjoy here too.
How deeply you inspire my friend! This is wonderfully uplifting, healing; truly a celebration of life. When I read you, dear Scott, my heart softens, its tremulous beat less erratic, my mind awakened to all those things that truly matter in life. The world desperately needs this right now; the world does indeed need you! We need to love life again for what it was, as it is now, and truly what it could be again for all days to come. Please never tire of spreading the light for it shines a glorious ray of contentment upon our heart and soul.
So insightful So profound…Congrats Scottie sir on your new Marvel! Yes indeed, Life is amazing, if we have a daily Tete a Tete with the higher self and feel light by transferring our day today burdens or problems, loads of work, on to the almighty and suddenly like a gush of wind, you feel flying high above your mountain like problems, just like an Angel flying high, Light in mind and body , radiating Light and Might to the Globe down. And in your own words as you put it…
It is an amazing feeling, out of the world; So ethereal empyreal!
Along with the chance,
Day by gleaming day,
To come to realise
The more generously
We shine,
The more we will
Blossom and prosper
Along a path
Where how stunning
It is to still be alive
When, just once in a while,
Those who could never sing
Suddenly can
…
Thanks a lot for including me in this…
Much Regard
With all my Divine Love
Neena
Excellent work as ever dear Scott. In today’s world filled with suffocated reality people need to inhale fresh air of amazing poetry like this. You are a real inspirational blessing to us all. Thank you so very much for presenting us this grand poem!
The title/rhetorical question of the first line and the direct address draw me into your poem and then you take me on a philosophical walk. The phrases ‘Weightless / In this thin bright air’ and ‘Openly and lightly / Like children’ give it an airy feeling while, at the same time, I’m grounded by those simple joys and the thoughts of home.
Beautiful writing and thoughts
Yes, love brings time to its knees. There is nothing like the simple joys, the open heart, the love of family and friends. Your poem leaves me feeling good, Scott.
Pausing to marvel along the way is my greatest delight. Glad to see that marveling appears in your poem!
Ah, this lovely verse, brimming with positivity and joy that is so difficult to find elsewhere, is heartwarming. I loved this bit: “The more generously/We shine, /The more we will/Blossom and prosper”.
Sounds like the way of the teacher–it awakens in us something we didn’t know we had … So glad you brought this to view.
Scott your poetry is soothing to the soul. You words are a balm to heal and restore. Thank you for being light.
How I love your poems, Word Artist. This one truly soothed me in this crazy chapter of my Life. Thank you.
“What is this life?”
The right question may be what is needed in our understanding of existence and worth, Scott
much love…
The love of life is felt here. We have one to live and yet so many do take it for granted.
May we all experience (and give) the boundless love that brings time to its knees.
“See how boundless love brings time to its knees” I like this thought immensely. time stops, drags its feet, flies, stands still…but I like this much better. An optimistic and hopeful poem.
Beautifully wise and profound write
This is the secret to a happy life – walking lightly, in wonder at being alive. Beautiful, Scott.
Well argued!
To find that weightless way of being again that was so natural to us when we were children – yes, there is so much joy in that.
Well said. I absolutely agree.
Uplifting … life affirming. In such times as these, it is important to express ‘good truths’ – and you have done this so wonderfully well, here.
Beautiful poem, Scott.
Scott, I am so grateful that I waited til this moment to read your poem. After a block I have been back at my art and joyous. I was truly able to read your words. Wow Scottie! As I read I saw huge blossoms slowly open before me — and then to be touched by pearls — the vision lingered. Toss in the sense of unsung singers followed by a love that draws one to their knees. Such sensory perception — elegant job. Bravo!!!!
Always great to read your new poem and once again you have hit a spot that recasts an old question of What is life into a new light, as you say lightness. It is a theme that I like and try to wear and hope that it works out that way. But lightness these days is hard, with an old body that is pretty damn stiff most of the time. My grandchildren have that lightness for sure, and I try to syphon some energy from them.
Lovely poem on life.
Simple joys
Easily found
That resonate
Beyond all measure
They do indeed.
A chant to life and living during a time when is truly needed… by all. Lovely.
I read your new poem with delight and sense of wonderment and awe. The poem is written with such ingenious perception. The words that really touched the strings of my heart are
Thus are we ushered
Gently into this world
And then challenged
To find
Our way home again
With our hearts open,
To where heaven knows
There are pearls awaiting
I feel so reassured and uplifted. I just went to a wedding and it occurs to me that this would be lovely read at a wedding.
Dear Scott,
May I quote Laura (Bailey): “So happy am I to wander around in your wonderful world !” I a have a daydream: you and all of us “children”, i.e. your followers and friends, meeting up on a glorious day such as this! Thank you for making me dream!
nice….esp. the part with finding the way home with open hearts resonated with me… also the close – boundless love bringing time to its knees.
nice to see you again – and hey – my hair are already getting longer again. smiles
Superb, brother, your gentle loving stroll rife with metaphysics and white light, peering beyond the veil. I take exception to the notion that birth is a gentle passage; pretty traumatic actually. Being disabled these days I am buoyed up by my poetry and photography. I love your point that we should acknowledge that /it is stunning to be alive/.
This is stunning. Light, bright, filled with hope.
Nice ending with love bringing time to its knees and these lines: “When, just once in a while,
Those who could never sing
Suddenly can!”
Even better the second time around!
Your words flow with the suggestion of simplicity, and yet I am caught at the line: “ushered gently into this world” for having given birth to three, and witnessed two other birthings, I cannot find the gentleness. “Challenged to find our way home again, with open hearts” – yes, there is challenge here. There is a serenity in the poem that brushes up against something in me despite it’s inherent beauty.
This is a gem I will want to return to time after time. Beautifully encapsulating a life well lived! Bravo
Nice poem expressing joy and love and anticipation
Thought-provoking as usual, Scott. This is what struck me hard…”Openly and lightly/ Like children” I believe we need to look at life through children’s eyes to appreciate it again and to welcome the next phase. Loved your poem.
I especially like the first stanza of your poem. To walk weightless sounds like freedom. Life is indeed precious. Thank you for sharing this.
I love the calming touch every word has on the reader. So insightful and profound.
Ah, life at its best when one is loved. You last lines say it all!
Thank you. I liked the ending.
This is the ideal, but not an easy challenge for many. You speak eloquently of the simple things in life, how to reverse our more somber moods, lovely.
Most of what you you write could be contradicted by the weight and pull of long and dreadful days, but it is the love that makes it all true. Time doesn’t give a flip whether it is brought to its knees or not, but love does care, and you are right to center there. I think this may be what Alyosha Karamazov might have written if his circumstances did not require the kindness of silence. Well done.
Journey through life wonderfully described Scott! There are all the permutations in all directions of what life can be expected and experienced!
Hank
…Boundless love brings time to its knees…
Graphic your phrase, rich your imagination, a peal of joy to the reader’s ear…
Good! So good!
Writing is my passion. Nice poem.
Your poem was very good
Simple and powerful… that’s the real road…
Like your line breaks and that you don’t end rhyme. Not into spiritual poetry as this is, but some like it.
Beautiful.
This poem is beautiful!
I think that the enjambment in this piece is perfect, and mirrors the constant flow of travelling through life. A tremendous ode to life.
I like this , but I’d change the breaks at the top so you don’t sound so breathless.
We all have thoughts about life and time passing but somehow Scott you always manage to slip inside the seed of thought….bringing time to it’s knees.
Simply Divine! Love in action creates joy.
I love all the divine images of this poem especially “In this thin bright air”, “see how boundless love/brings time to its knees/a gift beyond compare.” Thank you for the poignant rhythm in this poem which I really enjoyed, the imagery and bold metaphors. This poem is deserving of quite a few reads. I went back to it a few times. I love how the poem is driven not just by thought, and speech but also nature, and divinity.
Loved the poem!
I really enjoyed this piece! What a beautiful articulation of our existence.
Hi Scott,
This is a very beautiful poem that captures the essence of life.
Unconditional love is the flow of energy that binds us all and elevates us when we tap into it and makes us understand the purpose of our existence.
Amen Filza!
Scottie dear,
If this were prose, it would be comparable to a Jamesian paragraph of one sentence. I love the ride! And, as always, your impeccable verbal-musicality. Sorry to be soooo late: healing takes sooo much perseverance and cultivates patience (with most people; others need a wrathfully compassionate lesson, and they just seem to pop out of me at brilliantly effective times (hilarious). That’s the up side of hanging on by one’s fingernails for a few years. Guess the Universe figured I needed a boot camp before passing on naturally.
You certainly do, from my perspective, live in your words in an impossible world . . . No, that’s too negative. Rather, a gleaming world of fantastic appearances. As if your life were one to hop from cloud to the next…
Such moving and exquisite words to articulate the deepest part of ourselves. Thank you, Scott!
I love your voice and the profundity.
This is an amazing poem. Right choice of words. Congrats buddy.
Hi Scott,
This is a very beautiful poem that captures the essence of life.
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Bseautiful words. I love your poem Scott.
Beautiful writing and very uplifting message Scott. I’m sorry it took so long for me to comment, it slipped through my radar. You are quite gifted my friend, keep up the great work!
Very nice with great flow. Always nice to catch a piece by you…
Love this one!
I did a review for you… Who I am if anybody? Several months back. The one you had me review I can’t find it anymore. You have a soul and a gift for life and compassion. You obviously know what you’re doing… There’s something special and healing in the way you move your words. I think you and I have a lot in common… If anything I learned in life it’s that all of us are unique and pretty much the same. Peace be with you Scott…
Review of Scott Hastie’s poem ‘What is this life?’:
‘What is this life’ isn’t overlong, a short read that fits comfortably into the average blog post. It keeps your interest, conveys its emotive message (appreciation and contentment of love), and then you’ve read it. Short and sweet. A ‘message’, if there is one, is simply to convey the sense of passive love, from the perspective of an appreciative human being pausing to indulge in the experience.
The title is the question, the topic and you’re thinking of an answer even as the poet’s writing their own. A technique I’ve personally enjoyed, and seen pretty often. Short but sweet, a scene setter.
I find ‘What is this life’ quite typical of Scott’s poems. They share the same general literary form; with more given to simple, easily conveyed sentiments each line rather than being progressions of five word lines or full sentences. Scott is comfortable enough in his emotions and depth of thought creating the nuance and complexity of his art for the audience to digest, rather than adding overly complex vernacular that dissuades from a clear message.
I’ve noticed so far that all of Scott’s poems favor a flow that isn’t restricted by rigidity, a forced consistency of structure. Each poem seems to lend itself to the idea of travelling. Either material travel (reinforced by his accompanying photo gallery), or an intellectual exploration as he asks about life, or reflects in shifting places and wrestles with rumination. Carefree.
At its heart, this poem is a reflection about life and love, how love and realization is at the forefront. There’s an upbeat, joyful tone that synergies well with the fast pace of the writing. shorter stanzas fall into the longer declaration that life is discovery that we can ‘sing’, he shares this sense of wonder and revelation, to break into his last few individual lines of admiration for our existence, just as it is.
As someone new to Scott’s work, I wasn’t sure what to expect. These observations are just my subjective opinion I’m not certain of being correct, and there might be different interpretations. But I decided to give at least one of Scott’s poems a review, because I’ve enjoyed reading a lot of his site and felt like a little attention for art never hurt anybody.
Joseph Hobbs, MA Postgraduate University of Canterbury Christchurch University