Talking through the Door (1)

Patio de los Arrayanes, The Alhambra
Granada, Spain
Photo from Wiki Commons


You said, Who's at the door?

I said, Your slave.

You said, What do you want?

To see you and bow.

We talked through the door. I claimed

a great love and that I had given up

what the world gives to be in that love.

You said, Such claims require a witness.

I said, This longing, these tears.

You said, Discredited witnesses.

I said, Surely not.

You said, Who did you come with?

This majestic imagination you gave me,

Why did you come?

The musk of your wine was in the air.

What is your intention?

Friendship.

The Worm's Waking

This is how a human being can change.

There is a worm

addicted to eating grape leaves.

Suddenly, he wakes up,

call it grace, whatever, something

wakes him, and he is no longer a worm.

He is the entire vineyard,

and the orchard too, the fruit, the trunks,

a growing wisdom and joy

that does not need to devour.

The Seed Market

Can you find another market like this?

Where, with your one rose

you can buy hundreds of rose gardens?

Where, for one seed you get a whole wilderness?

For one weak breath, the divine wind?

You have been fearful of being absorbed

in the ground, or drawn up by the air.

Now your waterbead lets go

and drops into the ocean, where it came from.

This giving up is not a repenting.

It is a deep honoring of yourself.

When the ocean comes to you as a lover,

marry, at once, quickly for God's sake.

Don't postpone it. Existence has no better gift.

No amount of searching will find this.

A perfect falcon, for no reason,

has landed on your shoulder, and become yours.

Whoever's Calm and Sensible

There is a light seed grain inside.

You fill it with yourself, or it dies.

I'm caught in this curling energy. Your hair.

Whoever's calm and sensible is insane.

Love's Confusing Joy

If you want what visible reality

can give, you are an employee.

If you want the unseen world,

you are not living with your truth.

Both wishes are foolish,

but you'll be forgiven for forgetting

that what you really want is

love's confusing joy.

Happy Valentine's Day

Escaping to the Forest

The Dream, by Henri Rousseau

 

Some souls have gotten free of their bodies.

Do you see them? Open your eyes for those

who escape to meet with other escapees,

whose hearts associate in a way they have

of leaving their false selves

to live in a truer self.

I don't mind if my companions

wander away for a while.

They will come back like a smiling drunk.

Thirsty ones die of their thirst.

A nightingale sometimes

flies from a garden

to sing in the forest.

Evolutionary Intelligence

This groggy time we live, this is what it is like:

A man goes to sleep in the town

where he has always lived, and he dreams

he is living in another town.

He believes the reality of the dream town.

The world is that kind of sleep.

The dust of many crumbled cities

settles over us like a forgetful doze,

but we are older than those cities.

We began as a mineral. We emerged into plant life

and into the animal state. Then into being human,

and always we have forgotten our former states,

except in early spring when we almost

remember being green again.

Humankind is being led along an evolving course,

through this migration of intelligences,

and though we seem to be sleeping,

there is an inner wakefulness that directs the dream.

It will eventually startle us back

to the truth of who we are.