Mission (A Detailed Map)

 

You have a deep green mission on a thirsty planet:
to invoke the robin by listening in the dark.
At 3 A.M., let your inhalation be the fragrance
of honeysuckle on a ragged breeze. Ransack

the meadow, then surrender to unscented night.

 

Breathe through your forehead. Smell the stars.

You have another eye, like a gash in your lung,

that sees our shadows as golden beams.

You have an ear in your belly that hears our weeping

as oceanic moonlight.

 

You’ve been a marmot lacerated by the hunter’s trap,
curled in deep snow, warmed by crimson seepage

of your essence through fur.

You’ve been the chafe of sand-grains in a shell
grown lovely through silence, solidified into black pearl.

 

There was blood on the sheaf, and then on the floor.

Why let your trauma turn to stone?
Healing comes from the energy of the wound itself,

not from the story of how it happened.

Don't waste time being anyone but a Lover.

 

Permeate the loneliness of voiceless creatures.

Give hope to strangers that this moment is enough
by showing them the gold in their shadows.

Teach old men and small children how to survive

in the kingdom of impermanence.

Be the wound made whole by staying open.

Do beauty with your hands, but remember,

peace is not made, it is breathed.

 

Now fall into the cavern of your ancient brain.

Enter the empty ballroom where the part

of you that never sleeps is always whirling.

Don't linger. Descend to the wine cellar.

Taste the blood that Jesus ages into brandy,

oaked in the cask of your amygdala.

You've been braiding your dreams

into a rope for safety. Let it go.

Plummet toward awakening.

 

The descent is not groundless. You land.

You wake again, the waking within waking.

You find your heart, beating

in a musty pump-house, where you've

been before, many many times.

 

You are kneeling by the spring where

all through lightless days and luminous nights,

newts, salamanders, bullfrogs ponder and repose

in the wild reptilian splendor that your body

wants more than a soul.

Pass through the portal of the ordinary.

There is no other way to get through this miracle.

Part the almond-scented serpent skin and enter gently,

muttering this spell: "Ameen, Ameen,

all things dissolve into themselves."

 

Who you strive to become is not nearly

so lovely as who you are.

These are simple words, my friend,

but they were born of many tears.

 

 

Photo by Neil Dickie