God came
In the form of a breeze
And played with dry leaves
For a curling moment.
Then He came
As my brother
Wearing a frown,
Dragging his ego
Like a regal gown
Yet muddied
With the whole of history.
Next, He came as emotion
Stirred in my chest
And triggering
All sorts of reaction.
He came
And He went
In form’s motion
Yet all the while
He stayed
Smiling
At everything various
And stretched between
Poles
Far and near
But remaining here
Ever-present
While all else
Played
Like the breeze
Among the crisp leaves
In the curling moment.
wellbeing
Path
Brother,
Stand unashamed
In the truth
Of your enquiring self.
You are he
Who must ask questions
To quench his thirst.
You cannot fight
Your birthright
Or the way
You are in the world.
Rest in this knowledge
That the path is right,
And your place on it
Is where you must be.
There is a deep truth
In acceptance
Of all
That you are
And all you have taken on.
Only this
Will see you transformed
And untransformed.
How you are
Is the truth
As it stands
In the moment.
There is sweetness here
Even while bitterness
Is tasted.
There is great freedom
To be powerless
Before God
To be as He is
To be as He is.
Before All Else
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.
How Sweet
How sweet
The sweetness within,
That effulgent broadening
Like a unbelievable dawning,
A bright remembering
Of how it is
To be me.
–
But how subtle
The return to darkness
As if the night drew in
Without my noticing.
Here,
That found sweetness is a dream
And I am lost in gloomy woods
Seemingly without my bearings.
–
Oh but,
How sweet the sweetness within
When I remember the key to my life
Rests in my hand always,
When I come upon the truth
That though I appear lost,
I am never lost,
That though it seems dark,
It is never dark:
Oh, how sweet is the truth
To know I am here,
Bathed in love and bliss
Throughout my life
Despite the appearance
Of my troubles.
–
Copyright Distilled Voice 2025
The Thoughts Of Us
When the heart swells
And thoughts are glossed in wonder,
Coming to the world
Wet with love
As if they had drunk deep
Upon the source
And imbibed
A draft’s worth
Of that subtle, unformed substance,
It matters not
What these thoughts are
For all are equal
Under love’s law,
All are painted in love’s sheen,
All are born of love’s significance,
And none are higher or lower,
Weighted bigger or smaller,
Nor judged to be greater
Or deemed to be less than any another.
Like us,
They are materialised
And glossed in wonder,
Coming to the world
Wet with love
As if they had drunk deep
Upon the source
And imbibed
A draft’s worth
Of that subtle, unformed substance.
Like us
They come to life
Imbued with light,
To dance
For the fleeting moment
Of their being.
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.
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.
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.
A Wave Of Well-Being
I am caught
In a wave of well-being,
Picked up
By the surge,
Borne upon its energy
Until I glow
As fierce
As if sunshine
Were burning
In the heart of every cell,
Inundating body and mind,
And holding me
Up and afloat,
Buoyant and light.
distilledvoice 