Uradiance: 4/1/21

Flower Haiku

Their lives are

so short,

the flowers in

my garden.

But they don't

complain.

There Is No Meaning

No meaning, no purpose,

no plan, no center

or circumference,

neither justice nor injustice.

Only a swirling stillness,

energy dance of

forms arising

just where they are,

and where they need

to be.

What if a cruel hand

is about to strike

the child?

Friend, even as

that hand is lifted,

your hand is already there,

sweeping the little one

out of the shadow.

Act instantly,

without a concept

of "right" or "wrong,"

because no mind

gets in the way.

God is happening,

and happening is God.

You too are where

you need to be.

No plan, no center

or circumference.

Only a swirling stillness,

the energy dance,

the anarchy of love.

Unsought

I craved the savor of non-duality,
but kept finding two,
the seeker and the sought.

Then I quit the search
to relish the hidden nectar
in every perception.

Chimes of wine on my tongue,
melody of vanishing clouds,
taste of evening star and amber glow
of owl song at midnight,

healing moon-kiss on my
fontanel, the lovelorn blackness
of the loins, the yearning curves
of emptiness around a galaxy,
which are the very
proportions of this body.

Each dissolving
multitudinous touch,
a quiver in the continuum,
a tremor of the one
invisible tincture of my own
awareness, and yours.

Gravestone

On her gravestone,

in the first letter

of my mother’s name,

a drop of dew.

Or is it a tear?

Uncertainty is the womb

of 10,000 things.

At midnight a scent of jasmine,

at dawn a fragrance of

sunbeams in lavender.

The vow of my wound

is not to heal,

but to stay open

like an ancient eye.

Even grief is a breath

of the Beloved.

If you don't know how

to be hollow,

how will you be

filled with music?

No Floor

I love kneeling to the tiny spark

that ignited this fire in my chest.

The flame was not eternal until that

burning kiss. Now the whole palace

has crumbled to ashes like the dream

it never was, and I'm falling

through light years of darkness.

There is no floor where I can lay

my forehead. But there are other ways

to bow. I can offer my heartbeat

to turn the troubled silence

of your gray cocoon into a song

of plum blossoms. Or distill

all my desires into the dewy smell

of hay grass after Summer rain.

I could become that spark,

drifting into your home,

consuming your world in an instant

like smokeless camphor.

After the inferno, what's left

but dust and joy? Eons ago

I knelt down while you were sleeping.

The cream of your breath rose.

I tasted some with my tongue.

Now I'm waking you up

To show you how to dissolve.

There was never any chrysalis,

never any waiting time to be

a postulant. Take my hand.

Don't leap. You have already fallen.

Just gaze down and discover

your naked body of rainbows

dancing for no reason in the golden void.

Artist: Matt Collishaw

Foot Washing

You worship him

as if he wasn't just like you.

But why did he come?

Only to reveal that your body

and the Lord of Love

were born of one mother.

His blood and yours is beaten

to a froth by her heart.

His sole is covered with the same dust.

Both say, I Am.

The I's are different, but the Am is one.

You bend and wash his feet with weeping,

dry them with your fallen hair.

He can barely tolerate such behavior.

Soon he pulls you toward his lips

and whispers your true name.

He fills you like a reed with breath.

Then he bows to You.

Which must be why you feel a secret yearning

to prostrate your flesh before the wildest flower,

the pulsating stone, the un-created sky.

You might well genuflect your life away

were it not for the pure white veil

of learning: tear it off!

The tears of a fool are jewels.

Shatter your crown on a forget-me-not,

a worm-encrypted clump of loam

at the ragged edge of the pasture, the gaze

of a lost Honduran boy across the wall.

Haven’t we come here to wash

each other from head to toe

as we might bathe a newborn child,

a grandfather's corpse?

Friend, what pours from these eyes

is the ocean of forgiveness.

Art: Mary Madgalene washing the feet of Jesus
from the website of Clairmont School of Theology.

Please

I don't need you to change me.

Just help me become

who I am.

It is good
and very good for me
to feel precisely what I feel,

this cloud of grief,

this downpour of despair,

without any names or notes

to self.

Only let me dissolve

in a healing rain

that penetrates all my shadows.

A liquid sliver of sun may arise
on the jagged edge of mourning.

Or not.

Now I can feel everything

because I have tasted

the night.

How a bud bursts, spilling
beauty from its wound.

How the chrysalis shatters,

frees the golden

moth from her season

of uncertainty.

How a single tear

becomes the sky.

Photo by Laurent Berthier

Nama Rupa

In the beginning, the Word,

names blossoming first, bursting

from the luster of silence,

then the texture of the echo

called into softness

through pastel incantations

of Columbine, Dianthus,

Pulsatilla the Pasque Flower

also known as Mouse On A Stick,

Japanese Anemone, Grass Widow,

Pearly Everlasting invoked

as Anaphalis Margaritacea,

Fritillaria the Chocolate Lily,

Trillium and Golden Bush,

Dodecatheon the Shooting Star,

Lysitichon the secret lovely

Western Skunk Cabbage,

a shout of April flowers,

cacophony of wave and trough,

ghosts of beauty, shadow-bright,

erupting from a frolic of quarks

into fragrant clustered photons,

the nectar of your flesh.

Photo: Skunk Cabbage by Don Elliot

April 12, Beginning of the Fast

Tonight the darkness

barely opens her eye,

a sliver of moon.

Yet this is enough

to fill the Prophet's chest

with splendor,

his belly with the feast

of emptiness,

and turn his breath into a caravan

laden with gold,

moving Westward

through desert silence.

Tonight is the beginning

and the end of time,

because we compare this moment

to no other.

And the dawn sparrow's bell
of awakening

will be like no music.

Ramadan Mubarak!

Don't Forget

Don't forget

how we got here.

Yearning to kiss

the dark sweet soil,

we bowed too deeply.

What shall we do?

Some say,

arise, ascend!

I say, there's an even

deeper bow

inside this one

that carries us home.

As A Warrior

I yearned for you,

but you were the fountain

of yearning.

As a warrior does not flee

yet moves toward

the assassin,

so a lover moves

toward the pain
in the heart.

Both wield a saber

whetted by death

and compassion,

that one

made of steel,

this one made

of breath.

Arabic calligraphy for 'Huw,' the name of God and

the sound breath makes moving through the heart.

Shakti

How does the Serpent
dance without feet?
By standing on the tip of her tail,
rooted in the loam beneath
your belly.
How does she hug you
without arms, without hands,
stroking your hair,
placing two fingers
like white petals on your crown,
running them down the nape
of your neck, your spine?
She whirls inside her stillness,
and you feel everything.
How does she carry you off
and bear you up without wings?
By sending the golden boat
of your own breath,
laden with 10,000 suns.
O take that voyage,
throw away the oar,
become a sail.
And how does she
speak to you in silence,
imparting your secret name
without a word?
She listens, She listens
to your cries of longing.