When You Get Tired

When you get tired of

following the commandments,

follow the aching

in your lost rib.

Is this not after all

the land of entanglement?

There is only one law here:

you must become both

Lover and Beloved.

There’s a swing inside breathing
where two can dally.

It happens in the ancient valley

where holy rivers kiss,

the Ida and Pingala.

A path without a way

through the core of your body,
two serpents coiling round the vine

at the center of your garden.

In this world everything is foreplay.
It’s just a rehearsal for the world

deep in your bones

beyond the light of hope,

where each exhalation fills the silence

with a lyric only fools can hear,

and every inhalation is serene

addiction to the stillness

prior to desire.

Here, the flavor of naked awareness

is like musk

fermented in a buried seed

before it can be touched

by a tremor of sunlight.

The loam of your belly is fertile

and warm as a burial mound.

This rare kind of love

has no midnight or dawn.

If you think you can survive without
Radha's yearning and aloneness

you will never become the flute

that lingers on the cowherd's

half-parted lips.

If you think you’ll find nectar in a stone

high up where white clouds sting

like frozen tears of regret

you'll have to leave your mountain cave

and search for another womb.