Don’t Delve

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Don’t delve around in the mud,

Searching for the lost parts of yourself

In a quagmire of regret and loss.

The lost parts of yourself aren’t there,

And nor are they lost,

For the self watches you over your shoulder

Aware of the mud on your face

And the oily stink between your fingers

As you dredge up your shameful

And sordid past,

Offering yet another ugly

Memory for memory to feed upon.

Instead, climb up upon the bank,

Sit in the sun, allowing your mind

To drift free from the sludge

Of past chronicles.

Your lost self was never lost,

And sits, enjoying the sunshine

Smiling kindly upon your tribulations.

It was you who was lost, not yourself,

Who’s love for you

Was never in question.

Spring Prayer

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Newly minted air

Made new by the night

Holds spring

In its spaciousness.

The world is awake

And tender

As the first-born greens

Of beginnings

Brought forth

Again, and yet again

In timelessness.

Being dances

To the steadiness

Of the sun,

Lives as a prayer

To the becoming of the one

Who holds

The delicate flower

And weight of the earth

And else innumerable,

All secure

In boundless,

Infinite nothingness.

Wonderful Space

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The garden is ripe with being

For sunlight

Diffuse through haze

Illuminates

And encourages

All green things

To be

Ever more themselves.

And like the plants

I expose my skin

And open my pores

And breath in

That light,

Absorb

The sweetness offered

Unconditionally,

And drink in life

Knowing, as it is mine

So it belongs to all

Whose hearts beat

And in whose veins sap rises,

And in even the static selves

Of soil and stones

And things thought inanimate,

Nevertheless

A pulse of being still thrills.

Being Beautiful Earth

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I walk barefoot

Upon your back

Breathing the fresh, clean air

Cleansed by the trees,

Their breath in mine

As mine is in theirs.

And my eyes gaze upon all your wonder,

My eyes which are yours,

My seeing which is your sight.

To think I once walked separate,

High in thought

And fear

And confusion,

Yet still my bare feet

Touched the ground,

And what the soil bore

I ate, digested, made into myself,

Unyieldingly gripping

The fiction of separation,

Believing illusion

Despite the proof of my body.

The wind is in me

And I am the wind.

I am the earth

Momentarily raised into flesh,

Borrowed from eternity.

I am the being and the seeing.

How could I have maintained

The belief that in all the universe,

Only we, as humans,

Dwell outside all that is?

Identity Struggle

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We wear our race like a heavy cloak

Painting our skins with uncomfortable ideas.

We wear our gender like lead boots,

Stumbling in discomfort proclaimed as ease.

We wear our sexuality like a brightly

Coloured mask.

Our religion and politics

We wear as indomitable rightness.

Our point of view

Is an impenetrable stone castle

Fortified until the last soldier is killed.

Our countries are emblems

For which many will die.

So many are the dividing lines,

The fractious ideas,

For we are tribes

Of a broken mind,

Switching allegiances

Like a fickle tide forgetting the moon,

Changing our image to suit,

Gritting our teeth

In gripped identity

Held as a fist

Shaken at the world.

Are you for or against?

⁃ the what does not matter

In this politics of imagery.

Is it possible we are mistaken

In our hell-bent

Desperation to be somebody?

Could we be

Loose in all the periphery

Of our difference?

Could we see that we one in our being

And the rest is but a jumble of ideas

To wear, not for the war of it

But for the fun of it.

Where is even rightness in this?

Perhaps nowhere

But within the expanse of our boundless self

Containing nothing but the infinite.

The Measure Of Happiness

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In the wind chime caressed

By a breath,

And in that very same breeze

On which birds chirp and caw

And flute about the day,

And in the corrugated iron roof

Tink-tinking with a lungful

Of sunshine,

Expanding its sun-trap back

And stretching like a luxuriant cat,

And in the lofty Scots pine

Whose needling fronds

Reach like sensing fingertips

Deep into the infinite:

These all

Are the measure of happiness.

Spring’s Self

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Under soft February light

Where warming ethers

Carry earthy scents,

I remember my spring self

Among crocuses.

And yet again my heart is lifted

By the tide turn

Of day-length stretched,

Being motivated

To peep as a myriad

First shoots.

And yet again

The soft spell

Light upon my heart

Shimmers hazy

As sunbeams diffuse

In the mellow heavens,

And I can’t quite tell

If this space myself

Is me or the world

Or just spring’s fluid

Billowing out from itself.

From Soil

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February mizzle wets

The lights

Of snowdrop, crocus

And eager daffodil,

Soothes and lubricates

Their birth

Through soil

Mulched humus rich

And frangranced sweet

With spore’s mycelium.

To think,

Some slander this complexity,

Call it dirt and mud

Overlooking the quantum truth

Of gardeners’ gold,

Both foundation

And sustenance

For all.

The Two Lookings Of Me

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Always, and first-off, I reach for mind,

Spewing story forward

Or back in time.

Invariably Imaginative,

I dwell in the colourful imagery

Of that dull and flat land,

Wishing for more,

Ever, ever more.

Later, I speak the words: “I am”

And feel the colourful future

Withdraw from absent lands,

While the past retreats into me,

Coalesces where I be,

Ever and always myself.

And here, the colour is love

Where fictions are impotent

And the warm smile of being

Dissolves all but itself.