The Guest House

This being human is a guest house.

Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,

some momentary awareness comes

as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all.

Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,

who violently sweep your house

empty of its furniture,

still, treat each guest honorably.

He may be clearing you out

for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,

meet them at the door laughing,

and invite them in.

Be grateful for what comes,

because each has been sent

as a guide from beyond.

This Recklessness

War Path, by Alfred Jacob Miller

I have no vocation but this,

and no need to touch every rose and thornpoint.

You are seeing through my eyes

and tasting with my tongue.

Why sell bitterness? Why do anything?

When you breakfast at the king's table,

there is no appetite for lunch.

I do not complain or brag about ascetic practices.

I would explain, but words will not help,

how there is nothing to grieve.

If you have no trace of this recklessness,

tell me your state.

I have forgotten how to say how I am.

The sun has already shone today.

Why should I describe the moon

coming up over sleeping quarters?

Grainy Taste

Without a net, I catch a falcon

and release it to the sky,

hunting God.

This wine I drink today

was never held in a clay jar.

I love this world,

even as I hear the great wind

of leaving it rising,

for there is a grainy taste I prefer

to every idea of heaven:

human friendship.

I See My Beauty in You

I see my beauty in you,

I become a mirror

that cannot close its eyes to your longing.

My eyes wet with yours in the early light.

My mind every moment giving birth,

always conceiving, always in the ninth month,

always the come-point.

How do I stand this?

We become these words we say,

a wailing sound moving out into the air.

These thousands of worlds that rise from nowhere,

how does your face contain them?

I am a fly in your honey, then closer,

a moth caught in the flame's allure,

then empty sky stretched out in homage.

An Elephant in the Dark

Elephant, by Julia Watkins

Some Hindus have an elephant to show.

No one here has ever seen an elephant.

They bring it at night to a dark room.

One by one, we go in the dark and come out

saying how we experience the animal.

One of us happens to touch the trunk.

A water-pipe kind of creature.

Another, the ear. A very strong, always moving

back and forth, fan-animal. Another, the leg.

I find it still, like a column on a temple.

Another touches the curved back.

A leathery throne. Another the cleverest,

feels the tusk. A rounded sword made of porcelain.

He is proud of his description.

Each of us touches one place

and understands the whole that way.

The palm and the fingers feeling in the dark

are how the senses explore the reality of the elephant.

If each of us held a candle there,

and if we went in together, we could see it.

How Minds Most Want to Be

You are the living marrow. The rest is hay.

Dead grass does not nourish a human being.

When you are not here, this desire we feel

has no traveling companion.

When the sun is gone, the soul's clarity fades.

There is nothing but idiocy and mistakes.

We are half-dead, inanimate, exhausted.

The way minds most want to be

is an ocean with a soul swimming in it.

No one can describe that.

My soul, you are a master, a Moses, a Jesus.

Why do I stay blind in your presence?

You are Joseph at the bottom of his well.

Constantly working, but you do not get paid,

because what you do seems trivial, like play.

Now silence. Unless these words fill

with nourishment from the unseen, they will stay empty.

Why would I serve my friends bowls

with no food in them?

Whatever Circles

Walk to the well.

Turn as the earth and the moon turn,

circling what they love.

Whatever circles come from the center.