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.
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.
I sit in pleasantness,
My eyes closed
And my ears open to the hubbub
Of a cafe crowd.
I’m not sure
If there are wandering thoughts:
If there are
I’m mildly disinterested,
Easy in the company
Of passers by,
Content in their presence.
–
Reality is a warm space
Pierced by light.
–
Where is my place
In the unbounded sphere of being,
For I am apparently turned inside out
And existence seems defiant
Of flesh’s hard-skin boundary,
The whole world as if remade
As one limitless happening.
–
I open my eyes
And feel my heart’s pleasant touch
In all I would typical dissect
From my person and call by other names.
I look at the people, the trees,
The plastic chairs
But feel only the warmth
Containing their forms,
A warmth
Reaching ever out and always.
–
Reclining in this luxurious bliss
Is the only possibility,
For love is truly uncontained
And truth is far broader
Than the personality’s curtailment.
–
Perhaps some live,
In and as
This sweet openness,
Pleasant wherever they find themselves,
Love always unveiled.
So let this be my wish, now,
To remain in sweetness
And naked to the world,
Free
And beautiful
And alive,
And in constant touch
With the divine
That dissolves all that seemed
So defined
And resolutely insoluble.
I sip the sweet elixir of possibility,
Taste the unbound
And find there
Nothing but the self unshackled.
What can we be
When we step from the tight
Groove of routine,
The preprogrammed and forethought track.
I do not conceive the answer
But sense that which is not yet born,
That free form,
Unfettered and dreamy.
I drink of this possibility
Becoming drunk on love,
Bathing in the fluid of possibility alone;
A not knowing
As broad as a river,
Deepening and widening
And carrying me happily along.
I sit quiet
On a stone structure
Jutting out above the pool.
In the foreground
Wading birds traverse
The lily pond,
Taking leafy, buoyant step
After leafy, buoyant step,
Picking between the protruding buds,
Ever called sunward.
On the far bank,
Peacocks own the roof of the cattle shed.
They strut, then stop,
Heads upturned and necks quivering
And release a warble of throaty calls.
When the moment is right
They extend their plumage,
Turn a full circle on the spot,
Shaking sporadically
As if to summon the gaze of the whole world,
Draw feminine kind to the chalice
Of one hundred iridescent and fine seeing eyes.
–
Beyond the groves of coconuts
And when the mountains rise,
A dense forests climbs steeply
All the way to the clouds,
Disappearing in the mist-shrouded peaks
To collect the silver life of dew drops
From those airy passers by.
And on return
The forest conveys first dampness,
Then sheds trickles and rivulets,
Then further down at the foot of the hills
Streams spill out on to the flat plain
To quench the thirsty farmland,
Where all life bends
Upon their knees
To sip
From cupped and thankful hands.
distilledvoice 