Hafiz, again

This

Sky

Where we live

Is no place to lose your wings

So love, love

Love.

Watch this, too. So, so beautiful.

Holding Form

There are seams in the drywall
and dimpled, popped-out nails
resentful of holding things together,
straining against their purpose.

And then there is me -
succumbing with every stuttered beat,
every line of light.

Everything holds form around me
in divine recognition.

It is the most joyous work
I have ever done.

An Abiding Yes

It is a deep sinking into the earth
it is energy, raw and primal
you cannot dip your toes, only dive

so you must be ready
as ready as you can be.

There are hands to hold
and ways to find
but this bottomless grasp,
this symbiotic link

it cannot be forged.

It is an abiding yes,
pure intent.

More Than Either Or

the truth is
there are more than these two choices
more than either/or

branches upon branches,
thousands of doors
leading back to the one way.
every word I write takes me there

and you -
you bring me there, too.
every meeting a new lesson
in the ways of myself.

thank you, my teachers.

The Great Pulse of the World

I think maybe the path
and the trees and the leaves
know me better than man.

They have no business to worry
no advertising save pollen
set free in spring's breeze.

I do not compete here
in this cacophony of woods.
The brook and stone
and moss covered floor
let me take of their green
and ivy'd shores
even as I bleed for them
and share my warmth.

There is no contract writ
between our beating hearts,
only the great pulse
of the world
to rule our breath.

Everything Shines

I spend days
trying to dig out
some semblance of a beautiful thought
excavate it like an emerald
smuggled thoroughly
hidden safely
in a dark pocket.

I'm seeing it all wrong.
all wrong.
I only have to look at it
to make it shine.

attention.
This must be the key.

everything shines
when it is truly seen.

There Is a Sleep That Rests In Our Bones

There is a sleep that rests in our bones,
independent of time,
waking only when the fullness of life
has brightened our door.

It is the demon we learn to love,
the spectre and weight of the price for this flesh,
the patient of grief who claims us all in our turn,
the knowledge that sorrow can't stay.

Anchor Stone

I can already feel myself
tethered down to you,
this strong anchor stone
in my shifting sands.

How do you navigate me,
as solid as you are,
when I am changing thus:
everyday new?

Maybe you are the blade
that catches my tempest,
transforming movement
into the stored energy of us.

I do not have to name it
only claim you as mine,
this weighted
solid
anchor of love.

Walt

What do you think has become of the young and old men?
And what do you think has become of the women and children?

They are alive and well somewhere;
The smallest sprout shows there is really no death,
And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it,
And ceased the moment life appeared.

All goes onward and outward . . . and nothing collapses

***

I swear I see now that every thing has an eternal soul!
The trees have, rooted in the ground. . .the weeds of the sea have. . .the animals.

I swear I think there is nothing but immortality!

-Walt Whitman, excerpts from Leaves of Grass

The Great North Road

Where did I begin?
From some Great North Road,
through the womb?
That is the place from which I come.

And here.
Here.
Here there is light in every direction
an undulating river of light that plots my course.
There are stone walls to guide the sun and
the Great Arrow
that leads me home.

But who am I?
I am a builder of clay
some boulder of time
who erodes so slowly,
so carefully.
Every intent gets woven
into this vitreous stone
which,
upon breaking,
has made the proper sacrifice
so that I may begin again.

The Ledge

We all rest
on this ledge
believing a lie
of brokenness

How long until
we do not forget
that we are whole
we are one
we are free

Hafiz

Just sit there right now
Don't do a thing
Just rest.

For your separation from God,
From love,

Is the hardest work
In this World.

(excerpt from "A Cushion for Your Head", The Gift by Hafiz)

Fulgerite

In this haze, this
morning of loss,
what would you have me surrender?
When faced with
this road
and that
do I choose this lightning struck trail,
so seemingly ruined?

Do I place
one
searing
footstep
into the burning house
and let it consume me,
rid me of all passion,
all suffering?

I say,
if sorrow is the price I must pay
to see flames of stone
built into this heated land,
I will walk plainly
through fog bank and rain
and let only my knowing
bring me to this House of Fire.

Consumption is a god's task.
I surrender the burden easily.

This Body of Time

This body of time
that moves outside of me,
a great flowing ocean
of adamant possibility -
tighter I clasp
white-knuckled and grasping
like holding on to air
without wing or lung.

It is all beautiful
immortal
precious.
Nothing will escape,
least of all
me.

Light at Last

This cairn that buried me
these thousand years
is cracking,
freedom, inescapable
and fearsome,
bites at my heels.
An angel archaeologist
chips silently away at
petrified bits,
flesh and bone made
stone
and precious gem -
a shining prism
turned to light at last.

A Stronger Heart

There are waves
that touch me in this emptiness,
great forms of light
and meaning.
I struggle to sort ill intention
from blindness
and to accept that consequence
disregards them both.

I fight to learn how
to take joy as it comes,
to travel that lemon yellow
stream of light
to a source I know as myself.

I would not
that I had less Sight
but stronger feet,
a stronger Heart
to witness the blindness of men.

"Go out into your heart. . . "

Summer was like your house: you knew
where each thing stood.
Now you must go out into your heart
as onto a vast plain. Now
the immense loneliness begins.

The days go numb, the wind
sucks the world from your senses like withered leaves.
Through the empty branches the sky remains.
It is what you have.
Be earth now, and evensong.
Be the ground lying under that sky.
Be modest now, like a thing
ripened until it is real,
so that he who began it all
can feel you when he reaches for you.

-Rainer Maria Rilke
Rilke's Book of Hours
(Translated by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy)

Parent Arms

Comfort comes in such strange languages -
the arch of a pendulum's swing,
the faces of forgotten gods,
the gentle sway of smoke in this stranger home.

But,
it comes because I ask,
my reach short as a child's -
the Universe unable to do nothing less
than respond with parent arms,
gather me close
and whisper love in my ear.

Dryline Boundary

In the woods of my heart
I wait for you.
It's some promise I made
many lives past
echoing through valleys
and broken streams
over cracked crags
crossing my dryline boundary.

You are the squall line of tempest
that hems me in,
the strong hand that shutters other storms
who might swallow me whole.

Together we are the earth and sky
the wind and the scrying rain.
All you are settles into me,
even from this distance.

You are the coming love,
my gravity wave.

An Unexpected Grace

I am far out to sea,
newly wrought from when I had you last.
I have been reborn, reshaped
and set to sail into new currents
yet
I mourn you still.

My phantom pains are sneaker waves,
the past colliding with the matter I have now become.

1600 days since you were taken and torn
but in your place
(that emptiness where you once lived)
filaments of the sun have been strung,
mapping out a blueprint of sorts,
a new topography that lights the core of me.

It is an unexpected grace.

What could not grow in your waters,
what I could not birth then
now escapes through my skin in finely stranded echoes of light,
an indirect labor
in the harbors of these new lands.