Rich Moment

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.

When The Universe Speaks

When the universe speaks

There is a flow of happiness

For in its voice is wisdom

Saying: please join the great river of joy

Ever flowing outward,

Like mildest breath of fresh air

Come to lighten us.

In this, all mens’ hearts are one,

All womens’ hearts are one,

All hearts inconceivably connected.

And even the fractious mind

Busy conceptualising everything separate

Is not shunned or shamed,

But invited.

And even this is untruth

For busy mind is but love conscripted,

Love’s energy veiled.

For what could exist

Outside everything?

Who in God is beyond

The infinite?

Where is this outside,

This place cut off

And separated from the wholeness?

What wholeness could wholeness be

If there was another in the realm?

And where else would we look for wholeness,

But in wholeness,

There being nothing but

Its infinity in which to be?

Walk With Me

Walk we me a while;

The night is sweet with honeysuckle

And fragrant shrubs breathing out

Their gifts for nightjars

And moths intent on the moon.

We’ve walked this path

In times past,

Many times;

We are kin

Though perhaps you’ve forgotten.

Never mind,

For arm in arm

We remember our love,

The warmth of our hearts,

The friendship

Of warm human bodies

Strolling side by side.

See, with each step upon this magic

We are closer.

To what? You ask,

Still forgetting.

To the Now perhaps

Or the tangible moment

Filled full with the moon

And dark-eyed moths

Feeding on the celestial beams

And heavenly night-shrubs.

See, up ahead, the Seeker’s gate:

It has a powerful magnetism.

But do you not feel the lushness of the

Creeping vines around us?

Do you not feel the cool

Of night shadows

Seeping between the trees

Holding earthen scents,

Sappy grasses bleeding

Into the cradling gloom?

You wish to go through the gate, I see.

I understand.

Do you wonder at what marvel lies beyond,

What treat you could be

If only we could muster the key

To enter?

No, beautiful friend, no!

Go that way

And find only endless dissatisfaction

In search of the elusive end

That never ever comes,

Always a horizon distant.

No, we are here already

For we walk arm in arm

In moonlight,

Our bare feet touching the cool stones

Of a pathway wending between trees

With waxy leaves,

Fluttering in ever so soft breezes.

See, there is enough in friendship.

Do not seek to open the gate

But look into my eyes instead,

Savour the scent of the moon

And the flavour of a wood

Enshrined in shadows,

Ever calling the nightjar and the moth.

Be here with me

In this savouring

Of the life in which our hearts beat,

A savouring of the space

In which we inhabit,

And the love

That gathers and glows

Between us

In the lush garden of ourselves.

On A Balcony

On a balcony

Breakfast set on a small table:

Strong, bitter coffee in paper cups,

A croissant, a white roll, milk

And jam in plastic packets.

The near world:

Weathered stone buildings

With Terracotta rooves

And balconies from which

An array of washing dries,

Narrow alleys webbed together

By cables and telephone wires,

And covered terraces

Festooned in succulents

And semi tropical flowers.

Ratcheting Cicadas

Unseen in the trees

Haul the just so-ness,

Drawing it with percussive song

Until it miraculously oozes

From the pores of all things,

No one

More or less steeped

In equality’s being,

Reality broad and encompassing,

Presence vibrating as a unified field,

Every tangible element

Totally equanimous.

A Loving Moment

For a moment,

I am in love

With the world

Dancing before eyes,

The whole and beautiful spectrum.

My heart

Has broken the bounds of my body

Escaped the cage of my chest

And gone free

In the sphere

In the space

In the being.

Oh, how there is warmth in this,

Warmth in it all,

Myself mellow in my finger tips

As it it is mellow in the trees

And distant fields.

How broad is gratitude?

Broader than the flawless sky,

And deeper than seeing,

The yolk of my heart tumbling out

Until there is nothing untouched,

Nothing unglazed by light,

Nothing that isn’t dripping

With love,

As if form

Were some bizarre

And delicious flower,

Pungent and exuberantly expressing

Such divine fecundity.

Sometimes The Storm

Sometimes the storm

Is turbulent

But when the gusts calm,

When the fearful thoughts

Settle down,

The love we find is serene,

Bright-eyed and beautiful.

All that was tumultuous

And all that raged

Was but a movement

In love’s dream,

A squall playing on the surface,

A temporary disturbance

On the facade of our lives,

Fleeting and momentary

But unable to touch the depth of us.

The Artist’s Way

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.

Equality Of Being

We fret

For the things in the world:

How many,

Which ones we should get,

Their value,

How they make us look and feel

As if

Our arbitrary

Systems and scales

Were in fact

Real

And not at all made up.

What we forget

Is the equality of seeing,

How each

Has an equal

Eye upon the world,

An equal stake in being.

The vagrant on the street

Is no less

Than the champagne oligarch:

The poor man Is

As the rich man Is;

They are one

In the space of seeing

Where being rises

Fresh to the crisp now.

And so,

Out our minds go

To squabble for resources,

Ever waring

Over the importance

Of tiny little pretty things,

While the fact of our being

And our seeing

And the one who sees

Is sunk under mounds of stuff

That once attained

Lose their sheen and their gleam,

Dulling in the ignorance

Of our self

To our self.