You can dial into love
As simply as smelling a rose,
As simply as taking a breath.
Dial into love
And feel the love that you feel:
It doesn’t matter if it’s for a pet,
A person alive or dead,
It doesn’t matter:
The warmth of love is the same.
Dial in to love:
Love that love:
Love and be loved
And step into the expanding realm
Swelling in your heart’s domain.
Taste the love that loves,
The love you have always been.
The Indian ocean,
In which the setting sun
Falls golden
To the wetted lips
Of waves infinite,
Speaks in white-water rumbles,
And the wind pulses warmly on my skin
And tussles at my hair.
–
These and much else
Call the mind to their sensational happening
And I feel my body in the world,
Sights and sounds
All around me.
–
But what is this me
In which the world appears?
What perceives
The golden mirror to the absolute west,
Laid upon the sea
Like an avenue,
The last light before dusk?
–
If, for a moment
I withdraw from my sun-warmed skin,
The buffeting wind
And my hair rustling like leaves,
What can I say
About being?
–
What can I say about the one
Who perceives these beautiful things,
The one who sees
The fishing boats heading out
To catch the night fish?
–
I try again,
Withdrawing from the worldly things,
Saying aloud “I am”;
Finding its resonance,
That to which the portal refers,
And fall from the sensational skin
And the light fading
And the wind’s playfulness.
–
I fall away into I,
Into dimensionless I,
Into love and well-being
And that which is indescribable,
That which defies the poet
And renders him
To nothing but inescapable warmth.
–
And then I open my eyes
To the perfect globe of the sun,
A ball of orange
Muted by the horizon’s haze,
And find being hauled with me
Like the fishermen’s silver clad nets
That come to the surface so bountiful.
–
Now, being seems wholly in the world,
In everything within earshot and gaze.
The waves are speaking
As if each drop were lubricated,
Each molecule part of the soft fluid whole.
And the wind too is a song
Of whispers gathered by the clouds,
Lovingly caressing
Those who’d be gladly touched.
–
Who is infusing
And who is infused?
It does not matter much
In beingness,
For no one but the One exists,
No one but the One
Is flushed by love,
No one but the One
Is as open as the universe is.
Whatever it be
Love conquers,
Not by show of force
But by soft movement,
Gentle allowing
And acceptance,
The truth unveiled
That there never was a thing apart
From love’s flow unbounded.
For a moment the thing:
Form, thought or emotion
Seems separate and real,
But what are borders
To the whole of God
But traces of nothing
Like ripples rippling
Upon the water’s edge,
Occurring but memoryless,
Fading at the very moment they arise.
The sea beeeze is thick
With the moment
As if time
Were the grains of sand
On the beach,
Granular beneath our feet
And somehow transmitting silence.
–
This moment feels pregnant
With the ocean,
Speaking through the surf,
And the traders
Shutting down their stalls,
Heeding the encroaching night.
–
The tea, served in paper cups
Is as warm as the moon,
And tastes as good
As if it wasn’t just the tongue
But the skin and the tide
And wild dogs on the beach
Which tasted it.
–
What exactly is this rich moment
In which the body feels
As if the sea had invaded.
Perhaps it’s the heart
Or the sun
Still invigorating the skin,
Or the mind’s relinquishment.
Perhaps it’s the echo
Of the argument
And truths spoken
That leaves us empty
And tinglingly receptive.
What is the waves’ opinion
Of the couple’s fight?
For before, during and after
The sea slid landward
Then slid back,
And white noise rolled
From left to right
Along the long shore drift.
–
And what is the breeze’s opinion
Of the argument,
High in the rustle-top palms
And blowing from the horizon’s depth
Where the sunset,
Kaleidoscopic in the clouds,
Breaks apart in hues of molten orange.
–
And what is the sand’s point of view,
Shifting and flat
With each sluice
And slap of the waves,
The sunset oranging
The mirrory film
Exposed at the ocean’s call back
And salty in-breath.
We are all stripped
Of our accumulations:
The stuff we call ourselves;
Hang ups, difficulties, resistances,
All that dogged memory,
And then we are washed in so many ways
Until the gleam of pure life
Shines in our eyes
And we come to each other,
Humbled and with love in our hearts,
A gleaming energy
Lightening our steps
And eroding further
The weight we thought was ours,
The weight we thought was ourselves,
The weight we carried and called
The inescapable gravity of our lives.
In the falling freshness
We are at once
Energised and washed clean,
For in the frothing
We are nameless
And without language.
We know each as children
Playing in the stream,
Wet by the flowing moment
And doused
By ever-giving.
There are smiles
And gestures of friendship;
Locked arms to help traverse
The white water,
And brotherliness
In our shared refreshment.
All that we know of our selves
Is battered from our skin
By innumerable pelting droplets
And carried away downstream.
What is left
Is a thoughtless happening
Wetting us to oneness
And joining us
To the waterfall’s
Cool and cascading being.
Who is touched by grace?
For that one,
Separate an isolated,
Is washed away
As every cell bursts forth exuberant,
Every cell
A sun in its own right,
Burning in conjunction
With infinity.
Who burns in cosmic nuclear fusion
But the cosmos itself,
Alive with life’s infinite potentiality.
–
Who have I been?
I have walked as a dead man,
Dragging the corpse
Of dull seeing,
Sluggish and blind to the truth
Of unknowable life
Electric in the creation of the
Mind/body/world.
I have walked without wonder
In the wonderful,
Walked barefoot
Dismissing the cool grass,
Breathing the divine essence
And calling it ordinary.
I have looked
But missed my astonishment,
Daubing reality
With the dank dross of ignorance,
Overlooking the immense power
Contained even within a simple seed.
Of course,
The quick and clever mind Conceptualised
The quantum physics of germination,
And I did not taste
The end of the world
Exploding in bud, shoot and inevitable tree.
Oh, life,
I glimpse
But do not know you,
I taste
but do not know you,
I feel
Only the minutest drop of grace,
But drop to my knees dumbfounded,
Zeroed in the face of it all,
Pulverised and purified,
Awed
And silenced utterly.
I am caught
In a wave of well-being,
Picked up
By the surge,
Borne upon its energy
Until I glow
As fierce
As if sunshine
Were burning
In the heart of every cell,
Inundating body and mind,
And holding me
Up and afloat,
Buoyant and light.
I sit in pleasantness,
My eyes closed
And my ears open to the hubbub
Of a cafe crowd.
I’m not sure
If there are wandering thoughts:
If there are
I’m mildly disinterested,
Easy in the company
Of passers by,
Content in their presence.
–
Reality is a warm space
Pierced by light.
–
Where is my place
In the unbounded sphere of being,
For I am apparently turned inside out
And existence seems defiant
Of flesh’s hard-skin boundary,
The whole world as if remade
As one limitless happening.
–
I open my eyes
And feel my heart’s pleasant touch
In all I would typical dissect
From my person and call by other names.
I look at the people, the trees,
The plastic chairs
But feel only the warmth
Containing their forms,
A warmth
Reaching ever out and always.
–
Reclining in this luxurious bliss
Is the only possibility,
For love is truly uncontained
And truth is far broader
Than the personality’s curtailment.
–
Perhaps some live,
In and as
This sweet openness,
Pleasant wherever they find themselves,
Love always unveiled.
So let this be my wish, now,
To remain in sweetness
And naked to the world,
Free
And beautiful
And alive,
And in constant touch
With the divine
That dissolves all that seemed
So defined
And resolutely insoluble.
distilledvoice 