Poems
I look into your eyes
And find my joy brimming,
For I could fall inside
The clarity of your seeing
And swim free
In nothing,
Buoyant in the being we share.
You told me of a Tuscan life
Picking olives,
A world where obstacles
Had dissolved
And all that evolved
Was the beautifully self
Looking at the same time
Both inward and out.
I tasted the olive of happiness
And lived your life
As my life
Dwelling in kinship
With you,
Where you were nothing but myself
Looking kindly from another perspective.
Do not attend
To the negative mind
With its litany of faults
And endless tribulations,
For there is only calculation there
And the ceaseless multiplication
Of a seemingly separate
And beleaguered self.
–
Instead,
Acknowledge the life-giving principle,
For there is life in life,
Rich abundance
And love’s infinity
In the looking to it,
The looking in it,
The abiding in the self
That knows.
–
Acknowledge its presence
And like magic,
Be in presence
For the acknowledging
And being
Are the very same thing.
The one looking at truth
Is the truth looking;
And in this
The ‘so called’ negative mind
Is offered the most exquisite kindness,
A forever home inside the self
And the gift
That it need not be other than it is.
Last night
Brought a frost,
A coating of crystalline white
Drying the air, stiffening every leaf,
Crisping every damp thing,
Stilling all life
But for the sparrows.
Into this
Plooms my breath,
Brought momentarily
From the invisible;
I feel wonder at the breadth
And reach
Of the ether if my being.
I select a log,
Choosing one with flawless grain,
Straight lines, unknotted,
Placing it upright.
I lift the axe, aim
Half heft and half let it fall.
If it is true
My kindling spilts with a snap
Akin to the most beautiful synchronicity,
The grain parting
As if only a thought’s worth
Cleaved it separate
And clean.
I cut more,
And while I swing my axe
And watch my basket fill
With rough cut pieces,
I listen to the sparrows
And the stillness,
Enjoying my breath
Realising wintery all about me.
No matter how the world evolves,
Whether true to life
Or spiralling in madness,
The life principle
Remains pure and untouched.
–
Invest your life
In its sweetness
And disregard the rest,
However seductive and convincing,
For only in love
–
Is sweetness manifest.
And if the world descends
Wholly into madness,
Still, life’s truth
Holds fast.
–
And if all obey the call to anger,
But your mind left last
And abiding in love,
It will not matter
And will surely be enough.
The moment is fresh
As dew-lubricated leaves
New from the womb of the world.
Oh, this sweet, empty moment,
Virgin as the first born thing,
How can I describe your unresistance
With but the clumsy word?
For you are nothing:
An endless, friendly nothing
Holding me in your arms,
Tender as the loving heart
Welcoming all that is.
You, who is no you,
You, who is everything
Seen and unseen,
Everything unformed or dwelling unchanging
In that which is not yet made.
–
The moment is fresh
And alive with infinite spirit,
And while the dogged mists and moods
Of false thoughts,
So seemingly bonded and glued,
Drift upon me from time to time,
Obscuring your brilliance,
They too, are born in you,
They too, arise in the light
Of awareness’s presence,
Taking their life
From the very light that you are.
Leaves drawn of their vigour
Yellow in the chill light
And flutter down
With each stroke of the breeze.
–
Dying is a beautiful thing
When life’s sap is safe,
Eternal
In the trunk and the root,
–
Withdrawn from the world
Like an in-breath
Or tide, or season’s
Planetary oscillation.
–
Who grieves the leaf
Its turning or its loosening
On the branch,
Or its earthward mulch
–
Settling into new form?
No one grieves,
For the life in the leaf
Is not gone
–
But hides behind bark,
Gathers against the darkness
Of the shrinking wintery days,
And awaits the pull of the sun
–
And the soil’s warming
And the osmotic urge
To express itself again,
And again, and yet again.
One man
Is an individual,
He walks in the world
As a separate entity – of course,
Carrying his loneliness
Like an ever heavy weight.
There are things in the world,
Things that might draw
Attention from that dark void
In which he must not look.
And so he desires those things
For the momentary peace
He receives in their procurement.
–
Another man
Is joined to the world,
All the things he sees
Arrive to him
And in him,
Endlessly passing
And dying away:
Yet he alone
Never dies away,
For his watching
Is container for the world
And all within.
And if there is loneliness
It is brief as the seasons,
And if there is a void
He does not fear it,
Accepting all within the bounds of himself.
We walked through the night,
The blazing sunshine
Of our hearts
Lighting the way.
–
Where is lack
In this?
Where are dark thoughts
And angst?
–
Exactly where they always were,
But untouched and allowed to be;
For the sunshine of open hearts
Allows, shines on everything equally.
You are the sun
Lighting the whole universe.
Through your eyes
And in your seeing
Is the illumination of it all.
You stand at its centre
Looking out:
The very self you seek.
Immersed in the landscape
Or fixated on an object,
This artist does not paint
What his eyes see,
Rather, he absorbs the sight,
Places it
In the cauldron of his being
Where life seeps
As the language of the soul.
It is this he paints,
This aliveness
Mirroring landscape or thing:
His spirit
And God’s spirit
Dancing as one
Infinite being,
And reaching out
To his poised fingers,
To transform the inanimate
And deliver magic on the canvas,
Every stroke of his brush imbued
With the inward spirit he feels.
distilledvoice 