The Taste

"The refreshing moon of the Buddha travels in the sky of utmost emptiness. When you arrange flowers, each flower needs some space around it to radiate beauty and freshness. Human beings are like flowers. Our meditation practice brings more space inside us and around us, so that we can radiate beauty and freshness." ~Thich Nhat Hanh
The Beloved said, 'Drink my cup.'
'What does it contain?'
'The ferment of namelessness.'
So I sipped the liquid
effervescent silence,
tasting like the hour before dawn,
full of thrush and sparrow
and the ruins of the moon
with a finish of starless night.
I tasted again, the black goddess
leaping with fins of fire
to spawn in the springs of my spine.
A third taste, and I became nobody.
'Now you know who I Am,' She said,
her eyes spiral caverns of the labyrinth
leading from temple to forest,
freeing the captive heart
from maps and signs.
I gazed, beheld
the illusion of all distances,
and fell into pavonine
rainbow-feathered emptiness.
Now I dwell in her secret kunj,
a chuppah with no canopy,
not even the sky,
just the desolation of roses
where flames go
when you snuff them out.

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