Ten Thousand Ways To Pray

 

Smiling we know
is a form of meditation.
Weeping is also a prayer.
Worry is beseeching
the Whirler of All
for the things you don't want.
When you are angry or bitter,
the purest devotion is to feel
the sensation in your belly
without naming it.
Let the fire of outrage
burn a hole through your forehead.
This is profound samadhi.
Be the hole.
Yes, there are ten thousand
ways to pray.
Today is sacred
because the planets are ajar.
Your horoscope looks like
the web of a spider
who fell into a plastic
Starbuck's cup
and imbibed caffeine.
The little dipper spills
mad lukewarm light,
making your plans collapse.
Your mind says, "everything
is going wrong,"
but your gut just savors
the bitter, the salt, the sweet,
the flavor of a rainy sidewalk,
thrown-out alter flowers
on Monday morning,
the compost of your mother's
many lonely faces
in the blossom of your own
daydream gaze.
Be patient with indigestion, friend.
It is the sum of all prime numbers
dissolving in the taste
of silence.
Angels of dust sprinkle themselves
over your cauldron of moon-blood.
Your mind gives up its pasquinade,
the falsetto soliloquy of reason
which is only the echo
of a voice that stopped speaking
before you were born.
Finally you can fall
into this breath,
the breath of grieving,
sighing, murmuring "yes"
to the dark.


Painting by Susan Sedon Boulet