A Turning Night

This moment, this love, comes to rest in me,

many beings in one being.

In one wheatgrain a thousand sheaf-stacks.

Inside the needle's eye, a turning night of stars.

How We Move Inside Grace (2)

Water is the story of how we are helped.

Hot baths prepare us to enter the fire.

Only salamanders can go directly in

without an intermediary, salamanders and Abraham.

The rest of us need guidance from water.

Satisfaction comes from God,

but to get there you need to eat bread.

Beauty comes from the presence,

but those of us in bodies

must walk in a garden to feel it.

When this body-medium goes, we will see directly

the light that lives in the chest.

The qualities of water are showing us

how we move inside grace.

How We Move Inside Grace (1)

When our water here

becomes saturated with pollution,

it gets led back to the original water, the ocean.

After a year of receiving starlight,

the water returns, sweeping new robes along.

Where have you been? In the ocean of purity.

Now I am ready for more cleaning work.

If there were no impurity, what would water do?

It shows its glory in how it washes a face,

and in other qualities as well,

the way it grows the grass

and lifts a ship across to another port.

When the river slows with the weight of silt

and corrruption, it grows sad and prays,

Lord, what you gave me I gave others.

Is there more? Can you give more?

Clouds draw the water up to become rain;

the ocean takes the river back into itself.

What this means is

we often need to be refreshed.

Joseph

Joseph has come, the handsome one of this age,

a victory banner floating over spring flowers.

Those of you whose work it is to wake the dead,

get up. This is a work day.

The lion that hunts lions charges into the meadow.

Yesterday and the day before are gone.

The beautiful coin of now slaps down in your hand.

Start the drumbeat. Everything we have said

about the Friend is true. The beauty of that

peacefulness makes the whole world restless.

Spread your love-robe out to catch

what sifts down from the ninth level.

You heart closed up in a chest, open,

for the Friend is entering you.

You feet, it is time to dance.

Don't talk about the old man.

He is young again. And don't mention

the past. Do you understand?

The beloved is here.

A Wished-For Song

You are song, a wished-for song.

Go through the ear to the center,

where the sky is, where wind,

where silent knowing.

Put seeds and cover them.

Blades will sprout

where you do your work.

The Orchard

Come to the orchard in spring.

There is light and wine and sweethearts

in the pomegranate flowers.

If you do not come, these do not matter.

 If you do come, these do not matter.

A Bowl

Imagine the time the particle you are

returns where it came from.

The family darling comes home. Wine,

without being contained in cups,

is handed around.

A red glint appears in a granite outcrop,

and suddenly the whole cliff turns to ruby.

At dawn I walked along with a monk

on his way to the monastery.

We do the same work, I told him.

We suffer the same.

He gave me a bowl, and I saw.

The soul has this shape.

Shams, and actual sunlight, help me now,

being in the middle of being

partly in myself, and partly outside.