To share
The sunshine of the heart
Is to find
The sun upon your face
And bliss
In basking
In its beauty.
For around each corner
Is a smiling face
Reflecting joy,
Both playful and loving,
And each new corner
Yields still more of the same
Infinite quality.
Can you imagine
A world
In which the heart
Is worn naked
And transparent
In the body,
And everywhere
There are flowers
Glowing
In adoration of the sun?
Well, this IS the world
In which the heart
Finds its place in plenty
And where the mind
Has settled down.
This IS the world
Into which we are born
Through the tool of the body,
Knowing the grit and dank
Of the soil
And yet also
The ineffable reality
From whence we all come.
How could we not share
This truth
Made of light and love,
Beyond the bounds of space
And time
And all we deem heavy?
How could we not share
This warm and tender truth
Of happiness
God-given to us all
As life
Found effortless
Just like the sun
And the flowers -
And really
All forms under
The light loved down.
How could we not share
The sharing
That brought us to ourselves
And to the boundless
And to the truth
That we are love
First
Love first
Before all else.
poems
Rose
Some are green buds
Barely begun
But pushed
By the weight of the universe
To become
First the pursed lips
Of an imminent kiss,
Then the ripe indulgence
Of a beauteous flower
Generous scent
Wished to all,
Then loose
With joy
As petals relax and fall
Scattered like confetti
Abandoned
As the church bells toll
Marking the ever-passing moment
Of celebration.
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.
Old Lives
Sometime the old lives rise
From where they lie,
Undisturbed
But fully functional:
Scripts we once called ourself
And followed unconsciously,
Ideas we believed
But forgot we believed,
Whose presence
Steers us
On courses
Now obsolete and irrelevant,
The machine trundling on
In a groove set
Years ago,
Thoughts we ceased to see
Guiding us
In the robotic program
Of our walking sleep.
Sanctity Beyond Arithmetic
The past is littered with casualties:
And mind
Will go back
And count the lost,
And perhaps dwell there
As an unhappy accountant
To that which should have been.
–
But love is never lost:
The wise
Cast away the past
With all its woe and misery,
And hold only
To principle love,
The heart warmth
That tells of eternity
Beneath the messy arithmetic,
An inward wealth
To right all wrongs,
Solve hurts
And salve wounds,
A truth that swells
As it is acknowledged,
A truth that wholes
And reveals
That beyond and behind
The persistent ills,
Love holds all
In sanctity pristine
And being,
Ever perfect.
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.
distilledvoice 