Already Under

Late by myself, in the boat of myself,

no light and no land anywhere,

cloudcover thick.

I try to stay just above the surface,

yet I am already under

and living within the ocean.

On Resurrection Day

On Resurrection Day your body testifies against you.

Your hand says, I stole money.

Your lips, I said meanness.

Your feet, I went where I shouldn't.

Your genitals, me too.

They will make your praying sound hypocritical.

Let the body's doings speak openly now,

without your saying a word

as a student's walking behind a teacher

says, This one knows more clearly

than I the way.

Our Closeness

Friend, our closeness is this.
Anywhere you put your foot
feel me in the firmness under you.

How is it with this love,
I see your world and not you?

The Diver's Clothes

You are sitting here with us,

but you are also out walking in a field at dawn.

You are yourself the animal we hunt

when you come with us on the hunt.

You are in your body

like a plant is solid in the ground,

yet you are wind.

You are the diver's clothes

lying empty on the beach.

You are the fish.

In the ocean are many bright strands

and many dark strands like veins that are seen

when a wing is lifted up.

Your hidden self is blood in those,

those veins that are lute strings

that make ocean music,

not the sad edge of surf,

but the sound of no shore.

A Turning Night

This moment, this love, comes to rest in me,

many beings in one being.

In one wheatgrain a thousand sheaf-stacks.

Inside the needle's eye, a turning night of stars.

How We Move Inside Grace (2)

Water is the story of how we are helped.

Hot baths prepare us to enter the fire.

Only salamanders can go directly in

without an intermediary, salamanders and Abraham.

The rest of us need guidance from water.

Satisfaction comes from God,

but to get there you need to eat bread.

Beauty comes from the presence,

but those of us in bodies

must walk in a garden to feel it.

When this body-medium goes, we will see directly

the light that lives in the chest.

The qualities of water are showing us

how we move inside grace.

How We Move Inside Grace (1)

When our water here

becomes saturated with pollution,

it gets led back to the original water, the ocean.

After a year of receiving starlight,

the water returns, sweeping new robes along.

Where have you been? In the ocean of purity.

Now I am ready for more cleaning work.

If there were no impurity, what would water do?

It shows its glory in how it washes a face,

and in other qualities as well,

the way it grows the grass

and lifts a ship across to another port.

When the river slows with the weight of silt

and corrruption, it grows sad and prays,

Lord, what you gave me I gave others.

Is there more? Can you give more?

Clouds draw the water up to become rain;

the ocean takes the river back into itself.

What this means is

we often need to be refreshed.