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Book Review
The Fires of Spring
by Rayn Roberts
Rayn Roberts presents some of the profound truths
of Buddhism, in a charming and engaging collection of poems entitled
The Fires of Spring. Taking his title from the practice
of Korean farmers, who cleanse their fields with fire in the spring,
before the new planting, Rayn offers these Buddhist poems to his
readers "to help rid the mind of harmful notions and ideas
and strengthen the ground of reality."
He reminds us that all species and individual beings are unique,
and they should be honored in their processes of rise and fall,
or becoming. For instance, he describes "a wall whose stones
break into laughter when we say that they are still -- yet still
they stay." ("Hitting the Wall") On the facing
page, in the poem, "Toward Greater Peace" the poet restates
this theme: "...all things, star or moon, stone or lake,
plant or human being, simply want to be." Human beings, especially
in this technological age, that is built around corporate profit,
tend to ignore the fact that even inanimate objects have their
being and cannot be casually bulldozed away. This reviewer visited
an abandoned strip mine in Colorado, some years ago. It was a
huge crevice, caused not by a celestial comet, but a human one.
It seemed that the earth itself, as a living being, was violated,
along with the other beings that inhabited the original area.
Other Buddhist themes are discernable in these poems. To the
dualisms of self-other, life-death, pleasure-pain, animate-inanimate,
Rayn offers the monism of affirmation, with its inherent insecurity—
timelessness revealed in a succession of life moments within nature.
The poet, with a camera-like eye, can sometimes capture this for
us in their verse. "Between spring and summer, afternoon
and evening, a white -heron flew under the ivory half-moon ("First
Day of June")." And "If I let go what I hold, I
will still have it" (From "Where I Stand, I See").
The subjects of compassion and love, begin and end, The Fires
of Spring. Our desires to perfect our character, and be helpful
to our fellow humans and non-humans on the planet, brings us back
here to incarnate, again and again, till we get it right. Rayn
writes: "If another form must be, this life built on that
before, faith then, is rightly set on returning here to perfect
love, the hope of all, the grand step in human evolution."
("As A Man Has No Center, This Poem Has No Title").
Read The Fires of Spring. It will bring smiles of insight
and recognition, to your face, as it did to mine. The Golden Lantern
is pleased to reprint several complete poems from the book. They
convey a sense of the scope and depth of Rayn Roberts' poetry.
Click here to read selections
from The Fires of Spring.
Reviewed by Paul Dolinsky
editor@thegoldenlantern.com
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