Fire and the Moon: Poems for my Daughter

”Take my hand now. We have so much to see. Time is a tricky, playful thing, and I think it means to show us something beautiful.”

The relationship between a daughter and her daddy is really something special. There’s no other experience quite like it. Brandon Thompson, the author of this book, is a relatively-new dad who’s had a whole lot to learn. Using the tools of ecstatic poetry, Brandon has chronicled the first two years of his daughter’s life in verse, hoping to capture the messiness, the uncertainty, the moments of awe, the vulnerable joy of embarking upon one of the grandest adventures in human living. There seems to be some greater purpose hidden deep within the union of parent and child. This book seeks to express that profoundly-mystical connection and attempts to unravel some of the mysteries that all parents encounter as they watch their children grow.

This book is intended as a gift. It’s for daddies and daughters, parents and lovers, and anyone who has some elusive sense of deeper meaning, either for themselves, for their children, or both. Most of all, though, it’s for one special little girl, who came here intentionally, with purpose, and by choice. Just as we all do.

Brandon Thompson is a poet, a scholar, a musician and a lover of music, and a Buddhist practitioner and teacher. He is a faculty member in Sofia University's Global Master's Program, and spends his days joyfully guiding students from all over the world. Brandon has been a student of Mahayana Buddhism since 1999, and has taught in this tradition since taking his bodhisattva vow in the summer of 2007. He finds his home practices in lojong (mind training) and tonglen (sending and taking) meditation, first prescribed by the Buddhist sage Shantideva in the 8th century. Brandon has published four books of ecstatic poetry, “The Long Road Home: A Collection of Poems from an Open Heart,” "From the Back of a Thirsty Camel: Ecstatic Longings," "The Medicine is in the Poison: Poems from the Path of Lojong," and "Fire and the Moon: Poems for my Daughter." He is a co-author of "Ecstatic Encounters," a collaborative synthesis of ecstatic poetry and visual art. He regularly facilitates ecstatic poetry workshops across the United States.

Brandon's current work involves bringing ecstatic poetry more fully into his life and into the world. Through his publications, scholarly writing, teaching, and workshops, Brandon is seeking to engage with ecstatic poetry as a visionary art: an art form with transformative potential and mystical underpinnings. Entering into this visionary art dialogue is at the forefront of Brandon's work at present.