Dream Of The Golden Monkey

Dream Of The Golden Monkey

It was the time

of the Golden Monkey, dancing

down a stairway of petals and coins;

a flourescent idyl of creamery light

sinking sweetly into the indigo cup

of black coffee night.

We reached up to
the little gold god as He dropped
a basket of yellow-eyed anemones;

He was more real than the Golden Calf

(of which you'd politely taken half,

when I'd refused to eat.)

A voice in
my monkey mind

laughed and told the rose

to fold me in her clothes;

when I picked the lily's child, she gave
no more fragrance than your smile

while the Monkey blinked His

peonie-pink eyes, quite pleased 

to caper despite His fall,

lightly balanced on a gracile haunch

just one opposable thumb away

from the Golden Branch.

So we sat for
an age between day

and past,
beneath the swinging sign at last

of the Golden Monkey,
flowers in our pockets, pollen on our lips

watching the moon reflect His shine,

gilding the curled petals floating 

on our summer-flowering wine.

~June 2015

posted for    real toads





Challenge: Floral Explosion
Susie Clevenger (Confessions of a Laundry Goddess) showed us some images of an amazing rainfall of flower petals flooding an area near the Irazú Volcano in Costa Rica as a promotion. Stunning.
 I'm not exactly sure how this poem appeared out of that, except to say it was originally a dream, and therefore hopefully doesn't require a logical explanation.

Process notes: The Golden Branch is a French fairytale about the sometimes illusory but transformative powers of desire, and also a play on the title of Sir James Frazer's comparative study of myth and religion, The Golden Bough. Zen often refers to the distractions of our senses and superficial thoughts and desires as the monkey mind.


Images: Palazzo dei Priori-Assisi--Grotesque, by Wolfgang Sauber
Shared under a Creative Commons License, via wikimedia commons
Detail of Annah the Javanese, by Paul Gauguin, Public Domain