Poems
We walk in heaven
Barefoot on the grass
Drinking dew-cool breaths
Or we dance on the burning pavement,
Our thoughts like shards of glass
Cutting us deeply.
Yet still we are heavenly set
Upon the earth,
Our gentle or angry mother,
Goddess or foe,
Living our lives in grace
And the freedom to choose
To make this world
A heaven or a hell.
In our thoughts
There are borders,
Endless frictions
And contrary points of view
Fermenting grievances
And ideological wars:
All sides stubbornly gripping
Their high-minded-rightness,
Where ideals are more important
Than the tender heart’s
Love-laced and conciliatory say.
–
While in the heart’s being
There is only oneness.
Your heart is love,
Both the loved
And the one who loves,
Both transmitter
And receiver too,
A whole organ
Resonating
At the frequency
Of the universe
In whose word
It speaks
And hears
At the same time,
It is the great
And the small I am
Beating as one.
If friendship is more than merely
The sharing of ideas,
More than agreement,
More than a likeness of thought,
Then,
Am I,
Like you,
In our being
Friend to all upon the earth?
You sit there
In your skin of ideas:
What you’ve learnt,
What you’ve imbibed,
Parroting out
Your culture
–
Just as I am spewing mine.
–
And in all this soup of thoughts,
A million-hand reused,
We take our arbitrary stand
Against each other’s placards,
Clinging upon the cliff edge of identity,
Fingers bloodless
In the fear of where we might fall.
–
But if we were loose in our thoughts,
Seeing them as harmless
Products of an endlessly spitting machine,
And not really ours at all,
Might we see
That the apparent void
Into which we might fall
Is no void to be feared
But an endless source of spaciousness.
It’s a feeling,
Warm as a scent-laden breeze,
The succulent breath
Of a fertile night
Rich with possibility.
It speaks, and says,
“the universe is infinite,
And you,
One with it,
Part of it,
Every molecule bathed,
Are infinite too.
Drink of me,
Be drunk in me,
Wealth is love
Bubbling as creation’s
Spring;
Only through you
What is seen
Is seen.
Join the feeling
As the bee joins
Summers fecundity,
As beings all
Rise aloft
Life’s indomitable spirit.
Wealth is yours,
Your essence,
Your birthright,
And the deeper truth
Of your reality.”
I lie back
In the great river,
Its warm waters
Lapping at my cheek,
My chin and my forehead.
The great liquid of the world
Holds me with a tenuous grip,
Perhaps only a nudge
Upon a gently idling whirlpool.
My chest holds my heart to the sun
And I am open as a child
Yet to learn.
There is sunshine on my thoughts
And eyes, closed
For the meandering of the heart
And wisdom’s language,
Subtle as the currents
Baring me.
I am alive in trust,
Surrendered to the water’s movement,
Guided by it,
Content to be borne
Where its great waters will.
I lean back
And fall into nothing,
Released from the world
So various
And swallowed
So the tight knot of ideas,
Beliefs and concrete thoughts
That I called myself,
Melts away
Until I am naked
But for my essential self,
Zeroed in formlessness.
–
When I return,
Pick up my thoughts,
They are loose upon my back,
Less important
Than the warmth of love
Irrigating my being,
And somehow charged
By the seeing.
I am reborn in myself
As myself,
Free in my body
And free in my mind.
–
Where else but nowhere,
Being nothing but being,
Can you be free
Of the entanglements
Of the physical world?
Is it really
As simple
As remembering love,
Acknowledging
The love in being
And that being is love?
–
Is it as simple
As turning one’s head,
Looking inward
To the source
And seeing
That source is love?
–
Is it that simple
To notice the beautiful
Hidden before your eyes,
Hidden in plain sight,
Love at your centre
Brimming where it has always dwelt,
–
Love waiting with open arms
For you to see
And be one
With your heart,
Finally coming home
To the home you already are?
A dove coos
In the the bell tower,
Soft and throaty
And warm
For the chicks
Loved in to the nest.
–
The Scots pine,
Lofty in the graveyard,
Stands still and magnificent
Exuding presence,
Shining with silence
And oblivious of time.
–
The woodland,
Dotted with ewes
And skewed graves stones
Chatters
In warble and whistle.
In the canopy
Birds flap and flutter unseen.
distilledvoice 