What is the difference between a human breath and the breath of the Goddess?
Gratitude. Thanksgiving transmutes the air into an ocean of
Shakti.
The hollow of your nostril is the entrance to her grotto. On cool moist caverns
of your body are engraved the secret runes of her dance.
Beneath your tongue, nectar drops effervesce with the sound
of infinitesimal chimes.
A Spring breeze plays through the leaves and twigs of your alveoli.
In this garden of breaths is the kunj where Radha meets Krishna in a love
so pure it seems illicit to all who are not Gopis, or playmates of the groom.
And deep in the shadows of that kunj is a portal made of resonance,
where you pass into the name of Shambho, to disappear.
The black hole of swirling stillness at the galactic core of every atom
is the mouth of prayer.
What else can you do but fall into that spiral well of rubies, to become
a mere exhalation, tumbling down a staircase of crystal probabilities?
Follow the infernal passage, a thread of spider silk, until your gaze emerges
in the ruins of a desert palace. Use another eye to see beneath the veil.
You're in a city of thousand-fathomed temples encrusted in coral, at the bottom
of the breath-ocean, where reptiles made of amethyst sparkle with prana.
Surely, this is the night-breath you share with panthers, moth-wings,
mushrooms, snow, and worlds whose gravity has not yet kissed your body!
Don't be seduced by distances. All distance is a lie.
What were you looking
for?
Your own name engraved on scarlet petals in a blossom of astonishment,
as you receive a scorching kiss from the formless golden Sun.
Dear friend, the splendor without circumference is You. Your querulous gaze
emerges from the very orb of glory you’ve been seeking.
Whose voice is singing, “I thirst for the grace of a Being
who is deeper
within me than I? Yours, dear friend, yours...
The image of your own amazed face dazzles the mirror in your chest.
You marvel at feral constellations roaming the midnight of your amygdala.
As your veins breathe ancient rivers of blood, as your nerves
breathe quasars from the womb of time, as your lungs breathe
the unborn sky,
so your heart breathes God.
Whatever flows in and out, honor That.
Now a sunbeam pierces the bud. There is a cry of pain.
This
too is the name of the Goddess.
The bud opens, becomes a flower.
Yet the blossom does not
say, "It is my doing."
For the sake of the fragrance of devotion did Thou become I.
For the sake of the flavor of friendship did I become Thou.
_______________________________
Link : Hear an audio reading of this poem.
Photo: Underside of a cherry blossom by Dean Hueber.
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