A tear is never just a tear,
a pollen bindhu never just a dust mote.
Every sub-atomic pulse of blackness
spans galactic wombs.
How will you discover other worlds
in the fissures of this one
if you cannot pluck the ancient
forest
from a hollow white seed?
Would earth not be dead and done
if a dandelion were merely a weed
and not a scripture of entangled chants,
a helix of golden poems?
They say the Lord’s most sacred work
is Tirobhava, concealing truth
beneath appearances.
Is this planet not a rapture of veils,
a mirage swamp, every lucid
hiddenness revealing
some deeper transparency,
the odorous delightful chaos
of skunk cabbage and cattails
seen through the wing of a dragonfly?
Think of shells and their pearls,
the husk and milk of coconut,
the fingers that broke
a pomegranate open
stained with the wonder
of ten thousand wounds,
or her that first gazed into a
still
green pond and fell among the petals
of her own retina.
This is a sea of thanksgiving.
You dive in with
your whole body,
then come up gasping
with a soul.
Painting by Jan Van Der Kooi