The Whole Everything
There is no plan of study,
no readiness assessment,
no work at tilling fertile soil
in preparation for it;
enlightenment just happens,
like a sudden strike of lightning.
There’s no way to see it coming,
nor a warning bell that sounds.
There is no path toward it,
no life of worthy action,
no certain way of being
more conducive to its coming;
enlightenment is sudden,
almost random, never plotted.
There’s no one way or another
that it finds you in the end.
It’s not warm and fuzzy lighting,
nor in any way a comfort.
No one’s happy struck by lightning,
all at once, you’re caught on fire.
When enlightenment arrives,
your life is totally disrupted;
once it happens (for an instant)
your whole everything is changed.
22 AUG 2017
12.17.10
All That Is: a chant
Breath and body,
word and function,
birth and death
are both redemption;
Light and shadow,
whole and hollow,
clean and dirty,
fair and foul.
All is holy, all is sacred.
Friend and stranger,
love and hatred,
fruit and flower,
meat and mushroom.
Crypt and cradle,
bed and altar,
desk and hammock,
tent and mansion.
If not holy, nothing is.
Lust and anger,
peace and kindness,
male and female,
new and ancient.
Seen and unseen,
poor and wealthy,
cute and ugly,
shown and secret.
If not sacred, neither is.
Form and function,
toil and leisure,
want and lacking,
pain and pleasure.
Past and future,
earth and water,
air and fire,
self and other.
All is sacred, all that is.
17 DEC 2010
| Posted in Poems | 1 Comment »
A Sense of Place
Six years, the longest I have ever been
in one spot without moving out and on,
and still this place does not possess my bones
the way it would if I had come of age,
or taken my first steps, read my first book,
lost my virginity or first paycheck,
under these spreading, great magnolia trees,
through hurricanes and floods and summer’s heat.
My ties are severed to those memories;
there is no real connection back to where
the formative in me began to set,
to where grandparent’s porch-swings gently rocked,
or drifted snow blew up against the house
so high it blocked the window of my second story room.
There is no chain between me and the land;
what sacred space I ever found is gone.
And even when I visit, after years and miles away,
only their ghosts, if that, remain as shadows.
As always, disconnected from my peers,
whose constant habitations in one sphere
I wished to share, but never had the chance,
the sense of place in me is hollowed out.
At home, but homeless, my spirit abides
in pieces cast among my former selves;
How long before I call this city “mine”,
and recognize its rhythm as my own?
2 AUG 2005
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The Sacred in All Things: a carole or carol
Let all the world rejoice and sing
to see the sacred in all things!
The universe in varied forms
and diverse structures sets the norms:
with every death, life is reborn.
Let all the world rejoice and sing!
Each flower blooms and goes to seed;
to exist, each finds what it needs
and understanding this, proceeds
to see the sacred in all things!
There is no rank or hierarch;
within each thing glows the same spark,
composed of light and also dark.
Let all the world rejoice and sing!
Each moment fades with no reverse,
affecting the wide universe,
and in shared energy immersed
to see the sacred in all things!
Let all the world rejoice and sing
to see the sacred in all things!
08 APR 2004
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| Posted in Poems | No Comments »