Drink

Root down
in deeper silence.
Listen to the earth
breathe flowers of gratitude.
Sip from the murmuring spring
of ineffable modesty
that pulses inside you
like a vein in stone.
Give up your pilgrimage
to the past.
Stillness has no story.
Bow down to a leaf,
a moth wing, the cry
of an ecstatic sparrow.
Let your journey be merely
a walk in the nearby woods.
When you arrive
at the feast of Presence
She will loosen and let fall
her greenery,
anointing your feet with dew,
daubing them with moss
and clover.
Surely you must know,
 the Beloved takes the humble form
of wherever you are.
Did you think you would find her
in a ruined cloister
or a sojourner's shrine?
Or tap the voiceless diamond gush
of her song
in the Torah, the Suras,
the lips of Jesus?
Friend, the music
you've been yearning for
is the sound of one breath
pouring into another,
the spill of distant starlight
from the rim of your own belly,
the name an infant whispers
just falling asleep
at the Mother's nipple.
For thousands of years
you've been falling asleep like that.
Now is the time to fall
awake.

Image: Mary Magdalene in the forest of Provence
by Sue Ellen Parkinson