Bonfire at Midnight

Fire of Finland, by Kim Leonard

A shout comes out of my room

where I've been cooped up.

After all my lust and dead living

I can still live with you.

You want me to.

You fix and bring me food.

You forget the way I've been.

The ocean moves and surges in the heat

of the middle of the day,

in the heat of this thought I'm having.

Why aren't all human resistances

burning up with this thought?

It is a drum and arms waving.

It is a bonfire at midnight on the top edge of a hill,

this meeting again with you.

The Music

For sixty years I have been forgetful,

every minute, but not for a second

has this flowing toward me stopped or slowed.

I deserve nothing. Today I recognize

that I am the guest the mystics talk about.

I play this living music for my host.

Everything today is for the host.

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.