No one can obscure
The ever present sun
Or its infinite
Lovingness.
Only we can shroud ourselves
From ourselves,
In storms of ideas
And emotion’s maelstrom.
When the turbulence clears
Our hearts
Are the love
We were never parted from.
poem
The Path
In the ever present now
We find ourselves
Expanding
In knowing –
That we are infinite being
At the crisp edge
Of happening:
Becoming ourselves
In the unfolding of the universe.
And sometimes we forget,
Dawdle lazy
On the road
Of our making:
Obstacles scattered
By our own hand
That make the journey
Seem tiresome and long
And effortful.
And sometimes we remember
The ever present now,
And step inside ourselves
And the universe,
And the being
That we always were,
And see
We too are always infinite,
And the road
And its obstacles
Are but illusions
On an illusionary path.
Only Our Thoughts
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.
Photographer
In the moistened autumn air
Morning time is late,
Shuffling from the lengthening night
Through swathes of disintegrating leaves
Let loose the life that gripped
So urgent and productive
To branches now revealed.
Rooks craw in skeletal beech
Where only a smattering of bronze
Tenacious leaf, still reluctant
In the wind, cling jewel-like
And fluttering. And other birds
Pick at the glut of berries
With the needle of their song.
Somewhere in this,
Where the sky morphs
And reveals and holds
The whole landscape,
Walks the photographer,
Drinking in the all that he perceives,
Almost convulsing
With each perspective seen,
Almost pained by the utter beauty
Unfolding in fleeting perfections,
That even if time were his to own,
He could never hope to capture.
The Wealth
Not one of us
Upon the earth
Is anything less
Than the whole sun
Shining in being,
Illuminated in the endless wealth
Emerging from the formless realm,
The nothing and the nameless,
Our infinite self
Ever at our finger tips,
Infinitely Infinite and infinitely free.
–
It is only our crowded thoughts,
Straight-jacketing us rigid.
Gripping us to an idea
Of a drought-ridden self,
Stiff within our skin
And so hopelessly lonely,
That thinks us
Thought-severed from the Source,
And made bleak as a separate entity.
–
And yet, those thoughts separating
Are but tenacious thoughts,
Combined, conjoined, layered,
Believed, stiffened, judged
And felt solid enough to be real,
Each one hiding us from the truth:
–
That universal love
Is the absolute fundament of our nature:
The life force propelling,
Filling us up,
Upholding the fleeting entities
We call our selves,
Buoying us
Even when we deny we out buoyed.
–
Not one of us
Is anything less
Than the soul
That is all,
The one,
The only one,
The love emanating from Source
Becoming something,
Ever unfolding as the form-ful manifest.
Dripping Auburn Golds
The world is dripping
Browns and auburn golds
As russet leaves, untethered
From life’s lunge and thrust
– Summer’s widened light –
Let loose the season’s
Fall, in energy unclasping
The matter made,
As all shrinks away
And narrows toward formlessness.
Autumn Flies Basking
Autumn flies basking
In the last, late light,
Absorbing the nutrient
Of the sun’s capacity,
Accepting a photons’ score
Of energy,
Recharging in the beneficence
Of a warming and wondrous gift.
Idea number one hundred and fifty-two: Hold Firm
The limited one
Who’s listened and learned
And thought
In all manner of spiralling pathways,
Listing reason, rejection, and facts
And one hundred and fifty failures,
Leading to failure
Number one hundred and fifty-one,
Says: you’re just not good enough.
And chatters, chatters, chatters on.
–
Yet, the one unlimited,
Says: speak
For your voice
Is a voice to be heard.
Go on always forward.
Write with the wind behind your pen,
Unleashing genius upon the page.
Let your life flow in ink
For the joy
Of ideas metamorphosed,
Ideas grasped from realms ethereal,
Buzzing alive in your head
And conducted
Into the matter of the book
That will be read
If you but put your whole mind behind
The creation of it,
Knowing the limited one
To be a friend enlisted,
His chatter a misused tool
Not a hindrance,
His ideas, gold,
If only directed,
His creative urge
Your own wand
Through which the magic unfolds,
Emboldening your life
And the script you must be
To be wholly yourself,
Holding firm to the pen that you love.
Rest Awhile
Come thought,
Dogged and persistent,
Rest awhile,
For you have laboured
And toiled and tried
Yourself weary.
Rest awhile
For there is nothing
You can do,
Nothing you can improve
Or fix or even make right.
The world is as it is
And you are small,
A child in all of this.
Rest awhile
For the thoughts you think
Only momentarily eclipse
The love
That holds you in the world.
Rest awhile
And you will see,
You will feel,
All is well,
All is as it should be.
Love Connects Us
Though the days
Are heavy with loss
And the winter of grief
Holds us too close,
Love is yet
The deeper principle,
For all are borne
On love’s unknowable meandering,
All are borne upon life’s lifting back,
And though we are all
At some time recalled
Beyond our mind’s reach
And beyond the veil
Of substance and reality,
Love accompanies our passing,
Holding our hands
And whispering
That we are loved
And that those parted
Are not truly torn away
But still connected,
Still with us
In the union
That does not faulted
Or ever end.
distilledvoice 