The Flower's Eye

Find me near the flower's eye

that takes in provocation

and begins to grow.

Love is a baby that struggles

and fights, stops nursing, then runs out

through the door, escaping as a fire

jumping to the next burn.

The Nothing of Roselight

Death comes, and what we thought

we needed loses importance.

The living shiver, focused

on a muscular dark hand,

rather than the glowing cup it holds

or the toast being proposed.

In that same way love enters

your life, and the I, the ego,

a corrupt, self-absorbed king,

dies during the night.

Let him go.

Breathe cold new air,

the nothing of roselight.

Your First Eyes

A lover has four streams inside,

of water, wine, honey, and milk.

Find those in yourself and pay no attention

to what so-and-so says about such-and-such.

The rose does not care

if someone calls it a thorn, or a jasmine.

Ordinary eyes categorize human beings.

That one is a Zoroastrian. This one a Muslim.

Walk instead with the other vision given you,

your first eyes. Bow to the essence

in a human being. Do not be content

with judging people good and bad.

Grow out of that.

The great blessing is that Shams

has poured a strength into the ground

that lets us wait and trust the waiting.

Painting found here.

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.