Wesak (Full Moon of the Buddha)

  

Don't worry, restless cricket.

Don't worry, dragonfly who can't quite

get still on your sunlit cattail.

Don't worry, implacable circling hawk,

skittish rabbit, obsessed politician.

Nor you, sleepless seed, smoldering

all Winter with desire.

I have surrendered on your behalf.

I have immersed you

in the beauty of this breath.


A bud cannot imagine what a petal is.

The apple was the pain inside a flower.

Neither stamen nor pistil, leaf nor pollen

have any I who says, "I am a rose."

Therefore, enjoy your voice, O you

who have been selved!

Your ego is delightful.

It speaks for those who don’t know how.


Be the song of a wanderer heard in a dream.

Let there be no outrage in the valley

between your thoughts,

only a well of compassion to heal

ten thousand light-years of darkness.


Listen to the stream of nectar

oozing up your root.

Witness the dance of the royally adorned  

scarlet poppy in the meadow of your spine.

Be a troubadour whose lips are parted,

yet whose name is never quite spoken. 

There is an eye beyond night, awareness-sky

unfathomed by mind.

This is seen through That alone.

 
A time will come when gazing is fire

consuming the seen in the seer,

singeing the most intimate veil

of the gossamer difference 

between inside and out.

When the moon is only the moon,

the cricket delights in rubbing his wings,

and your silence outshines singing.

 

When the rabbit ascends, surrendered 

to the hawk, the time of the fallen apple, 

sweet juices bubbling in the sun.

Then the worm appears.

All that remains is a hole.

Yet we need holes to fill with music.

 

Dear friend, in all that vanishes, still,

you can taste the one clear sap.

Call it sorrow. Call it joy.
______________________

Listen to this poem here: LINK

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