Gospel

September now.
I hear petals weeping,
singed with their own fire.
I hear seeds grieving lost goldenrod
and mountains gliding home on clouds.
I follow the glistening pilgrimage
of that old summer snail across the hosta leaf.
Yet I have renounced world sorrow
for the hidden pain of love,
given up charity and pity to gaze
into your face, where I find all
the otherness I can endure.
With a single inhalation, I bind and heal
the wounds of rich and poor,
oppressor and victim.
My brain is busy with forgiveness.
Both chambers of my heart are murmuring
with gratitude: the empty one says
thank you to the one that pours,
then offers back the ancient gift
of my grandmother’s blood.
My temple is the pillaged garden,
my alter the sky.
We hold satsang in the wetlands,
the frogs, blackbirds, and I.
When in doubt, I walk barefoot
in wet grass at midnight,
un-naming the stars.
Friend, it’s not the world that makes you suffer,
but your judgments about it.
And surely, the last judgment
is the silence of a white chrysanthemum
bursting under the Autumn moon.
This is the Gospel of Astonishment.


This poem is from my book, 'The Nectar Of This Breath.'
And this is a watercolor, not a photograph, by Rukiye Garip.