Don't Worry Restless Cricket

Don't worry, restless cricket.
Don't worry, dragonfly who can't quite get still on your sunlit cattail.

Don't worry, implacable circling hawk,
skittish rabbit, obsessed politician.
Nor you, sleepless seed, smoldering
all Winter with desire.
I have surrendered on your behalf.
I have immersed you
in the beauty of this breath.

A bud can't imagine what a petal is.
The apple was the pain inside a flower.
Neither stamen nor pistil, nor leaf nor pollen
has an "I" who might say, "I am a rose."

Therefore, enjoy your voice, O ye who have been selved!
Your ego is a thing of beauty.
Speak for those who don’t know how.

Be the song of a wanderer heard in a dream.
Let there be no outrage in the valley
between your thoughts,
only a well of compassion to heal
ten thousand light-years of darkness.
Listen to the stream of nectar
oozing up your root.
Witness the dance of scarlet poppies
royally adorned in the meadow of your spine.
Be a troubadour whose lips are parted,
yet whose poem is never quite spoken.
There is an eye beyond night, a sky
of awareness unfathomed by mind.
This is seen through That alone.

Yet time will come when gazing is fire
consuming the seen in the seer,
singeing the most intimate veil
of the gossamer difference
between inside and out.

Then the moon is only the moon,
crickets delight in rubbing their wings,
and your silence outshines singing.

The rabbit ascends, surrendered
to the hawk, sweet juices of the fallen apple bubbling in the sun.
The worm appears,
and all that remains is a hole.
Yet we need holes to fill with music.

Dear friend, in all that vanishes,
still, you taste the one clear sap
and call it sorrow, call it joy.


Listen to a reading of the poem at this LINK.