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.