Myself

Dearest and closest

Most intimate friend,

You are made of nothing

But being.

When I acknowledge you,

When I fall back into you,

I return molten with love

As if you had dissolved

All but the essence of me,

Dissolved all

But that which you are,

Dissolved all

To which I was bound

In mind, body and thought.

And for a moment

And maybe moments after

Or even when moments stretch to hours

And perhaps really

In the truth of timeless always now,

I am free,

Free in being

And free in love,

Free to be myself.

Dial In

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.

Fishing

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.

There Is Only Love

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.

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.

Stripped

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.

Boys In The Cascade

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.

Touched By Grace

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.

Energy

With eyes closed

And the subtle reach of my fingertips

I sense the quivering air

Alive with energy.

I hover there

In the organ of my heart

Tasting the unseen frequency,

Intimately knowing

My brother the dragonfly

Aloft those same ethereal strands

And darting above the pool.

The pure white egret

Still on the strand,

Eying the bubbling surge

For silver

Is no less my brethren,

Nor the prey fish

Cool in the brine

And quick in the throng,

Nor too the ants scurrying indusrious.

I could make a fine list of kind:

Beast, vegetative form

And stone

And all would be kin to me,

Sensing alike

The charge-thrilling space

In vibration invisible,

A force to which we are all yoked,

Bodily bound,

Energetically impelled.

We Are One

I wish to share the truth

That we’re not separate,

And that the feeling of separation

Is purely hoax,

A myth upon the mind

Played by the mind:

The mind swallowing its own lie.

What it means

Is that this warm heart inside my chest

Is your warm heart,

And that the being we are

Is one beautiful being

Holding us in its arms,

Cradling us

Feeding us the gift of life.

The love I feel

Is the same love

Blossoming inside yourself,

The exact same taste

Of infinite being.

We are one in this,

And knowing that the root

Of our life

Is the same root

From which all draw sustenance,

Means we can go free inside our personalities,

Move easy in our bodies,

Express our individuality to its fullest,

And be wholly ourselves.