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.
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.
Under winter sun
And mist
We leaned close
And kissed,
Remembering each other’s lips
And the fit
Of our embracing bodies.
And for a moment
We shared
The soft movement
Of our hearts combining
As all but our love dissolved.
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.
No one can obscure
The ever present sun
Or its infinite
Lovingness.
Only we can shroud ourselves
From ourselves,
In storms of ideas
And emotion’s maelstrom.
When the turbulence clears
Our hearts
Are the love
We were never parted from.
In the ever present now
We find ourselves
Expanding
In knowing –
That we are infinite being
At the crisp edge
Of happening:
Becoming ourselves
In the unfolding of the universe.
And sometimes we forget,
Dawdle lazy
On the road
Of our making:
Obstacles scattered
By our own hand
That make the journey
Seem tiresome and long
And effortful.
And sometimes we remember
The ever present now,
And step inside ourselves
And the universe,
And the being
That we always were,
And see
We too are always infinite,
And the road
And its obstacles
Are but illusions
On an illusionary path.
Only our thoughts
Deny the lifting spirit
Holding us buoyant
In the being alive.
Only our thoughts
Cage our minds,
Eclipsing
The wealth
Filling us
Until brimming,
Until our hearts
Are overflowed.
Only our thoughts
Obscure the love
Streaming out
Through ever cell,
Streaming out
Irrepressible:
Infinitely giving,
Infinitely wise.
Only our thoughts,
Our harmless thoughts,
Our transient
Substance-less thoughts
Believed to be strong,
Believed to hold
Power over us,
Believed for so long.
Only our thoughts
Are burnt
Under love’s internal sun,
And brought to nothing,
Our bonds loosened
As thoughts are seen
In freedom,
Seen for what they are:
Just fleeting thoughts,
Not owned,
But passing through
Unhindered, unclaimed, unchained
From who we are.
In the moistened autumn air
Morning time is late,
Shuffling from the lengthening night
Through swathes of disintegrating leaves
Let loose the life that gripped
So urgent and productive
To branches now revealed.
Rooks craw in skeletal beech
Where only a smattering of bronze
Tenacious leaf, still reluctant
In the wind, cling jewel-like
And fluttering. And other birds
Pick at the glut of berries
With the needle of their song.
Somewhere in this,
Where the sky morphs
And reveals and holds
The whole landscape,
Walks the photographer,
Drinking in the all that he perceives,
Almost convulsing
With each perspective seen,
Almost pained by the utter beauty
Unfolding in fleeting perfections,
That even if time were his to own,
He could never hope to capture.
Not one of us
Upon the earth
Is anything less
Than the whole sun
Shining in being,
Illuminated in the endless wealth
Emerging from the formless realm,
The nothing and the nameless,
Our infinite self
Ever at our finger tips,
Infinitely Infinite and infinitely free.
–
It is only our crowded thoughts,
Straight-jacketing us rigid.
Gripping us to an idea
Of a drought-ridden self,
Stiff within our skin
And so hopelessly lonely,
That thinks us
Thought-severed from the Source,
And made bleak as a separate entity.
–
And yet, those thoughts separating
Are but tenacious thoughts,
Combined, conjoined, layered,
Believed, stiffened, judged
And felt solid enough to be real,
Each one hiding us from the truth:
–
That universal love
Is the absolute fundament of our nature:
The life force propelling,
Filling us up,
Upholding the fleeting entities
We call our selves,
Buoying us
Even when we deny we out buoyed.
–
Not one of us
Is anything less
Than the soul
That is all,
The one,
The only one,
The love emanating from Source
Becoming something,
Ever unfolding as the form-ful manifest.
The world is dripping
Browns and auburn golds
As russet leaves, untethered
From life’s lunge and thrust
– Summer’s widened light –
Let loose the season’s
Fall, in energy unclasping
The matter made,
As all shrinks away
And narrows toward formlessness.
