Uradiance

In the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas, Jesus says, "Be a wanderer." Jesus has an affinity for wanderers, especially those who are lost. I prefer to be lost. It is precisely when I am lost that I pay attention, with an utterly quiet mind. The mind is quiet when I am lost because I do not know the name of the place. So I notice each twig and cilium and fallen feather of detail, without any labels. This is where I meet the Friend. Not because the Friend comes to find me, but because the Friend is already here, off-trail, waiting patiently for me in the wayless, the nameless, the flowering of absences. The Friend is also deeply, irretrievably lost, greeting me in the cry of a Raven, the eye of a Coyote, the stillness of a Hummingbird in mid-flight, a distant star that somehow pulses in my fontanel, the formless caress of Grandmother Wind at dawn. If I am truly lost, I don't even need to go out into the wilderness. The wilderness is my heart.

     "I'm lazy," she said, "I just can't bring myself to meditate." "Maybe diving deep into Being Lazy is your meditation," I said. She sipped her green tea but not so quietly as to avoid a slurp of thanksgiving. I said, "I'm just a poetry bum. I can't bring myself to do anything useful." She said, "Maybe diving deep into Uselessness is where poems come from.” Her tea was brewed so subtle and clear. I didn’t know how  to make that wabi slurp of gratitude. But there was a tear of perfect silence in my eye, and one in hers. Without trying, we savored the scent of emptiness, which gave us the energy to turn the planet green and polish the moon and guide the stars home. But all we did was dance.

At 78 I have almost succeeded in erasing my "education." But I am still grateful to Miss Buckles for teaching me how to diagram sentences, which I loved as a kind of esoteric tantra for poets. And thank you, Mr. Heath, for telling us to read Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, not because we had to but because it was beautiful. Whoever the professor was who made me memorize the prelude to Canterbury Tales in Middle English but never tested me on it, I can't remember your name, yet I remember Chaucer and reckon those lines every April by heart. Thank you. I only recall the things I wasn't graded on. No one assigned e.e. cummings. How could you be graded on the mud-luscious goat-footed balloonMan? His poems just fell off the shelf into my hand in a dusty used book store. It wasn't the "curriculum" that changed my life  when I was thirteen, but the cherry blossom  haiku masters, Basho and Issa. Mr. Payne the art ...