"No one knows the day or hour." ~Mat 24:36
The long prophecied
Apocalypse, a fiery
flood of silence
inundating the mind,
sweeping away the city
of thoughts, drowning
the past and future:
only then may there be
a new earth,
a new creation.
This could happen
so gently, right now,
in this breath.
Listen!
Swallows, tree frogs, unborn children,
all singing, "Thank you!"
The rainbow weeping,
running its colors into one
pure light around your precious body,
and even this light whispering,
"Thank you, thank you"
as you fall asleep tonight,
remembering flecks of gold
on a broken tea cup,
the ancient glow in her eyes
over a candle,
discarded roses, fallen feathers
in a drain pipe, slivers
of crystal from a mossy stone
glanced in the woods,
the bones of a rabbit that crows
left in your sunlit birdbath,
all mingled somehow
in a single inward kiss
on your darkening brow.
What are they murmuring
when you close your eyes and
simply listen,
as only you can listen
with the silence you've been given
just for this?
"We are what is listening.
We are what is looking.
Thank you
for breathing us all."
Hubble photo of clustered stars
Loafing among the blossoms in my back yard, I discover that when I enter the silence, I can understand the language of bees.
I listen earnestly to their conversation, and hear the Queen Bee give instructions to the young honey-gatherers before they leave the hive. "Don't come back until you're good and drunk," she said. "I'll only let you in when you're reeking of sweetness."
I hear them buzzing among the flowers, each nestled deep in his chosen blossom, murmuring, "Mmmm, this is the only true flower!"
I hear another bee buzzing from rose to laburnum, crying, "Not this, not this!" Yet he never stays in one bloom long enough to find the pollen.
I hear a remarkably nervous bee buzzing through the air above, never condescending to touch a single petal. He seems to be a kind of philosopher. This is what he says.
"My way is the way of pure pollen without the petals. You are all too attached to fragrances. Don't be seduced by color and taste. Blossoms are but illusory forms. They are all appearances of one sap."
Indeed, he is a bony dried-up little fellow, with a buzz that becomes a desperate rattle, until he falls to the dust, dying of thirst. Perhaps he will fertilize other flowers.
The rest of the bees pay no attention to him, for each is busy humming, drinking the sweetness of its chosen bloom. Soon they're all drunk. Drenched and sticky, they stagger home, if bees full of wine can be said to stagger.
Gathering in the hive, they gaze at one other in astonishment, each agreeing, "After all, there must be more than one true flower!" Then they offer their gleanings of golden pollen to the Mother, whose silent blessing turns it all into honey.
The Divine has sent us a Comforter in the form of our own breath. Press out her healing nectar. What flows so naturally can only be good.Nothing is gained by listening to the voices of fear that others have placed in your mind. Listen instead to the music of So'ham pouring through your flesh.
Inhalation is wine. Exhalation is surrender. Beauty does not stream down from above. It murmurs from the well of Silence in your heart. Silence is the Mother. You are her song.
Painting by Picasso, 'Maternity,' 1905
Life is not full of trauma. The past is full of trauma. The past is not Life. Life is the present moment, the only place where living happens. Now is wonder, not trauma. Trauma is a deposit of energy, blocked and stuck. Wonder is a current of energy, transforming and dissolving. The most important choice we ever make, for our own health and the health of those around us, is simply not to dwell in the past.
There are so many voices inside me. The voice of the visionary anarchist, the voice of the fiscal conservative, the Christian mystic, the non-dualist, the lover, the warrior, the fallen monk, the narcissistic nine year old throwing his dish of spinach out the window. Which one is me? How do they ever reach a consensus? They don't. They just buzz around the wild flowers, drunk on nectar. I am the meadow.
How the prime mover entangles the void.
Who the source of stillness is.
Where we learn the etiquette of listening.
Why only the sun can say,
"Roses open themselves."
These koans confused Shakyamuni
until he sat quietly and watched
the knot of everything untie itself.
A dandelion for instance.
The spinal cord of a snail
in the alchemy of moonbeams and dew.
The flower of your own emptiness
on its anorexic stem, a green systole
of pulverized bone.
What seeds are, the detritus
of nourishing corpses.
A hurricane of stars
in the spin of a quark.
Waltz of embryos, wasp flight,
your ear a hollow conch-full of oceans.
All that spirals causes silence.
You are the heart of the whirled.
Photo: Dante's muse, Beatrice, the divine feminine power of his intuition, shows the poet a vision of the Prime Mover.
One breath of you
is better than the gaze
of a thousand masters,
O presence too near
to be named.
Just for now you are
the Water Avens,
Geum Rivale,
also known as
Cure All,
a flowering weed.
Be the drop a sliver of moon
lathes rainbows through.
Your task is transparency,
your vocation effortless
as a jagged prism.
Let what pierces you
splinter its bright desire
in your crystal stillness,
pouring out mountains, forests,
clouds, unfolding roots
into mosaic skies, rolling golden
carpets of quivering wheat
for restless hooves and raptor eyes
to glint and thunder on.
Let owl and panther hunt
in your wild starless silences.
Become the dark energy that gods
don't even know they use
to propagate waves of what Is
from the sea of what is Not.
Photo by Aile Shebar
Before I met the Giver
I was only pretending
to breathe,
wavering in my doorway,
a homesick pilgrim
who could not even begin
the journey.
Then, in the night
of Unknowing,
I heard a darker whisper
that illuminated all things
with the light of one Self.
Your Name was not a prayer
but a holocaust of stars.
Now is the morning
of the Blessed.
Someone has departed,
never to return.
Was it I?
The desert traveler,
my exhalation,
has been ravished in a distant land
by the Lord of Sighs
who stole that very 'I,'
leaving nothing
but the open wound
of love.
Photo by vglima1975, Atacama desert, Chile
