Meru

This is Mount Meru. She is in my back yard.

Actually this is Mount Rainier, taken from a hill near my house where I love to walk. But every mountain is Mount Meru if you are awake.

I do not try to conquer her or climb on top. I just circumambulate her body, hike among her streams, wander in her mists, and when she reveals herself, I bow down, touch my forehead to her groundlessness.

I dream that she is made of chocolate, and powdered with sugar, not earthly sugar, but the sweetness that snows down from soma vines on Shiva Loka.

After days of rain, when she reveals herself again, I follow the commandment of the robin: “Take seven inspirations of light; then see how you feel.”

I stand nowhere special, because everywhere is sacred, bare feet on wet grass, leaning back to drink long body-breaths of sunshine:

In through the forehead, down the perineum, out through the soles of my feet. I am the hollow path to a star. This is not a poem but a practice.

Because her fire is rippling through my skin, sprouts luminous and virescent tremble with nectar. Every cell in my loam is an ocean of gold. I am the fifth element.

Infinitesimal benevolent bacteria wriggle in the belly of the earth, moving me to meditation. They glisten, therefor I Am.

Beneath deathless stones, larvae uncurl, awakening my prayer, as my prayer awakens them. Transcendence is causation.

Once, forsythia were yellow waves of yearning in the zeal of a seed, sewn in the furrow between my thoughts.

The chasm of a peony proves that God is nothing less than ultra-violet pollen, charged with the fragrance of human desire.

My heart has two chambers, chalices of wanting, flowers of blood, full and empty. The wordless prayer of my body cries, “I am the garden, You are the Spring!”

I worship Goddess Shakti, the primeval dancer, in the form of soil, flesh, and the good worm.

Embedded in this rambling madness is a poem from my book, 'Savor Eternity One Moment At A Time.'