Before You Sleep

     Go to your chest

and become the softest sound.

           Your inhalation? No,

the murmuring that was here

      before anyone breathed

                a Word of light,
bioluminescence of emptiness,
          undulating in the fertile sea

                of not yet, not yet.

Uncreated love

           ceaselessly expanding

      into this world of dust

                because there is no

           resistance in the void.

And you?

                A gentle rippling

of distant stars in night water,

           risen now in tidal waves

                     of silence, ravaging

      the fragile effort of the mind

                     to know.

           Just drown

in the grace of not seeking

                and come home.

This utter failure to

                     touch bottom

           is called "the heart."
Your Beloved is so intimate

                there is no other,

      ever waiting, ever longing

for you to plunge into yourself

           like a dagger of absence,

     a diamond blade that

                hones what is

      with the brilliance

                     of what is not.

For You, I cease.

      For Me, you are whetted

                by fire into nothing.

Yet we are both possessed

           by hosts of the blessed

      and the lost

                like pollen

           in a bursting flower.

See, hear, taste, touch.

      Go to your chest.

           Do not breathe.

If you understand this,

                you are not here.

Photo by Kristy Thompson