For all the gifts
The world would offer,
None is more than passing,
None less transient
Than the clouds
Ever changing face and form.
–
Who and what
Finds immunity
From THIS law?
What in all that slips
And falls apart
And wears out
And degrades
Offers immutability’s
Stable ground?
–
None but formlessness
–
None but nothing’s something
–
None but silence’s empty space.
–
Only here in nowhere
–
Where there is none but one
–
Is peace unnamed,
–
Unmade and unhappening.
Looking deep
Inside myself,
I find things
In all degree of
Colourful multitude.
But who sees those things,
And from which vantage
Are they lit
And wholly perceived?
And so I turn around
And face the formless face of myself,
The placeless place
Lacking evidence
Of all but being’s
Un-identity.
Am I really nothing
But the looking,
But the seeing,
But the loving
Which loves itself
And loves
As a star illuminates?
For with each glance
The scent of something comes
Which fills my heart,
And when I see the love pass
I look again into nothing
And yet again
I am fulfilled.
And then, not dwelling,
I lift my eyes from the love
Which became alive,
Glance once more
To that which I cannot perceive
And look…….
Wonder lust
In the ever opening eye,
Wider with each glimpse
Of the infinite,
Broader
With its ephemeral taste.
Oh, how I am caught
By allure,
Drawn ever deeper
And called ever on,
Wiling to give my all,
My wholeness
My life
My love,
Hold back
Not a single drop,
Give it up,
Until I have none
Until I am undone
Until I am one.
In love
I am unmeasured by the world
And so I am free
As nothing
But the empty space,
Wide as the universe
Is unknowable,
Deep as starlight
From light years unfathomable,
Unexisting in peace
And effortlessly happy.
What am I?
What am I?
What am I?
Only the taste of falling
Inside myself,
Eternity’s sweetness
Loose on the windless wind,
Unbound and unstuck,
Devoid in the void,
Annihilated formless.
Chittering wrens
Pick from the larder of cones
Clutched in the pine-brush
And absorb the awakening light.
Beneath, I sit and ponder
On the nature of being.
Some would speak of mankind
Separate from reality,
Somehow living above it all.
Yet, I am moved
Upon the turning of the world
In season’s gentle shift
Of early beginnings
And day pushed into night.
Surely this body,
As all walking free,
Feels the thrust of life
In the burst of the bud,
Unopened but profoundly expectant.
Surely all are moved
By the first warm breeze
Tickling the pine needles above.
Who is really alone
When life thrums
Through the body’s instrument,
When the very moon
Sways the water of our moods
And the constitution of our minds,
And new light shines,
Drawing us out
To sit absorbing
Like the first insect
Roused from hibernation’s
Torpid sleep?
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.
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.
On the first crisp autumn day
Dazzling light from the low sun
Guilds the forest,
Burnishing every leaf.
In hollows
There is the shadow of frost,
Grasses jacketed stiff,
But in the open
The sky is clean
And the distant rolling hills
Seem magnified.
After coffee sipped
With the sun’s hand on my back,
I amble through the farm shop
Selecting delicious items,
And while paying for my goods
A conversation spontaneously happens.
Like two old friends
Exchanging intimacies,
The shop assistant speaks
And I listen.
We share our truth
And as I look into their eyes
I see wisdom
Deep in their seeing,
As if the autumn light
Came from understanding
As much as from the sun outside,
And I am warmed
And touched by the moment
And brought wholly into the now,
An openness without resistance.
Only our thoughts
Deny the lifting spirit
Holding us buoyant
In the being alive.
Only our thoughts
Cage our minds,
Eclipsing
The wealth
Filling us
Until brimming,
Until our hearts
Are overflowed.
Only our thoughts
Obscure the love
Streaming out
Through ever cell,
Streaming out
Irrepressible:
Infinitely giving,
Infinitely wise.
Only our thoughts,
Our harmless thoughts,
Our transient
Substance-less thoughts
Believed to be strong,
Believed to hold
Power over us,
Believed for so long.
Only our thoughts
Are burnt
Under love’s internal sun,
And brought to nothing,
Our bonds loosened
As thoughts are seen
In freedom,
Seen for what they are:
Just fleeting thoughts,
Not owned,
But passing through
Unhindered, unclaimed, unchained
From who we are.
Float
On the upwelling,
The ever pushing pulse
Of love,
For it is yours
As it is you.
Oh, how that intellect
And riddled belief
Tells you
It isn’t so,
Oh, how cold and alone
And desperate
The separate minds feels,
How loathsome life feels.
Yet, still you float
Alive in reality,
The unacknowledged truth
A wedge between you and you,
The truth displaced
By fearful thinking.
Oh, but the truth is love,
The all encompassing feeling
Filling you whole,
A mother to your woe
Holding you close
As the child comforted.
The truth is love:
It will fill you if you but ask.
distilledvoice 