The Healing Presence

 A Beggar with a Wooden Leg, by Rembrandt van Rijn


I go to the one who can cure me and say,

I have a hundred things wrong. Can you combine them to one?

I thought you were dead. I was, but I caught your fragrance

again, and came back to life.

Gently, his hand on my chest.

Which tribe are you from? This tribe.

He begins to treat my illness.

If I am angry and aggressive, he gives me wine.

I quit fighting. I take off my clothes.

I lie down. I sing in the circle of singers.

I roar and break cups, even big jars.

Some people worship golden calves.

I am the mangy calf who worships love.

The healing presence has called me from the hole I hid in.

My soul, if I am agile or stumbling, confused

or in my true being, it is all you.

Sometimes the sleek arrow.

Other times a worn leather thumbguard.

You bring me where everything circles.

Now you put the lid back on the wine vat, pure quiet.

Etching found here

A Grape

If you would say I don't exist,

I would be grateful.

When this longing makes me disreputable,

then I have a little self-respect.

A vine begins to become wine

when you say, Pressure is necessary

to burst open.

Certain Sunfish

If you put on shoes that are too tight and walk out

across an empty plain, you will not feel the freedom

of the place unless you take off your shoes.

Your shoe-constriction has you confined.

At night before sleeping you take off the right shoes,

and your soul releases into a place it knows.

Dream and glide deeper.

Physical existence is so cramped. We grow old and bentover

like embryos. Nine months passes; it is time to be born.

The lamb wants to graze green daylight.

There are ways of being born twice, of coming

to where you fly, not individually like birds,

but as the sun moves with its bride, sincerity.

Loaves of bread remind us of sunlight,

but when we are inside that orb, we lose interest

in building ovens, in millwork and the preparation

of fields before the planting.

Fish love the ocean. Snakes move like earth-fish

inside a mountain, well away from seawater.

Certain sunfish, though, turn snakes

into ocean-lovers.

Discipline

painting by Louis Comfort Tiffany: Algerian Shops

Don't avoid discipline.

You have learned ways to make a living

for your body. Now learn to support

your soul. You wear fine clothing.

How do you dress your spirit?

This world is a playground

where children pretend to have shops.

Sometimes when they wrestle,

it may look like sex,

but none of it is real.

They exchange imaginary money.

Night comes, and they go home tired

with nothing in their hands.

I Met One Traveling

In the evening between sleep and waking

I met one traveling. He was the light of consciousness.

His body was soul, his pure wisdom apparent

in his beautiful face.

He praises me for a while, then scolds.

You sit on the seven-sky throne, in prison.

The sign of Gemini has set a table for you,

yet you stick your head down a drainhole again.

Essence is not nourished with food and sleep.

Do no one any harm in this timefield

of short crops where what you sow comes up very quickly.

You try to accomplish things, to win,

to reach goals. This is not the true situation.

Put the whole world in ambition's stomach,

it will never be enough.

Assume you get everything you want.

Assume you have it now. What's the point?

The next moment you die.

Friend, the youth you have lived is ending.

You sleep a dreamless sleep

with no sense what morning you could wake inside.

Flowers open

"Stars That Set the Heavens Alight" by Isumi Omari

Flowers open every night

across the sky, a breathing peace,

and sudden flame catching.

These Lights

Inside water, a waterwheel turns.

A star circulates with the moon.

We live in the night ocean wondering,

What are these lights?