The Point

When I lie there dying, or here,
for it is always here that we end,
let me not discover at last,
My God, it was the little things!
It wasn’t about the party I voted for,
or whether I grokked nonduality.
It wasn’t about the vegan diet,
or how many protests I attended.
It had nothing to do with karma,
or which Guru I followed.
It wasn’t about becoming a Christian,
or a Muslim, or having any Way at all.
It was about gazing into the face
of a baby at Rite Aid.
It was the moment I caught and held
the eye of the fourth grade boy
behind the dark school bus window,
and said to him clearly, without words,
“I know how loneliness feels.
Therefore you are not alone.”
It was about finding the frog
who lived in my umbrella
at the corner of the porch.
The first Autumn rain, when I
unfolded it, spilling him into my hand,
and took him over to the rose pot,
placing him among the withered petals,
speaking clearly, with clear words,
“You may live here all Winter.
I will listen for you every evening.”
It was about this kind of courage,
to speak clearly with tiny frogs.
About not minding garden dirt
caked on my knees, and not taking
a shower on a Summer night
because I felt so good
that I had planted the tomatoes.
And about the moment I sent 
my friend with terminal cancer 
a link to Allegri’s “Miserere,”
something as easy, as small as that.
It was about pausing on a long walk
to watch the cumulonimbus roil
into a personal countenance, I won’t
say whose, I’ll let you find your own
form of the Friend, who really does
appear in clouds, trees, toadstools
springing up at midnight in white rings.
It was about the courage to whisper,
Thank You, whenever that face
smiled upon me, the courage to confess,
“Yes, this is possible, this is not foolish,
this requires no believing, only wonder.”
Therefore when I lie here dying, may I 
dare to tell my dear ones, “There are
no big things, only little ones, somehow
threaded in a wine-dark mandala,
a wreathe of heartbeats growing
fainter, fainter now, a circle made
of all the moments when I paid 
attention, even for a breath, 
growing fainter now, yet widening 
into blue, into the sky 
of one eternal heartbeat, 
the point of it all.

Photo: old bench in my back yard.