A Just-Finishing Candle

Study Head of a Woman, by Jean Baptiste Greuze

A candle is made to become entirely flame.

In that annihilating moment

it has no shadow.

It is nothing but a tongue of light

describing a refuge.

Look at this

just-finishing candle stub

as someone who is finally safe

from virtue and vice,

the pride and the shame

we claim from those.

Say Who I Am (2)

The musical air coming through a flute,

a spark off a stone, a flickering in metal.

Both candle,

and the moth crazy around it.

Rose, and the nightingale

lost in the fragrance.

I am all orders of being, the circling galaxy,

the evolutionary intelligence,

the lift and the falling away.

What is and what isn't.

You who know Jelaluddin,

you the one in all,

say who I am.

Say I am you.

Say Who I Am (1)

I am dust particles in sunlight.

I am the round sun.

To the bits of dust I say, Stay.

To the sun, Keep moving.

I am morning mist,

and the breathing of evening.

I am wind in the top of a grove,

and surf on the cliff.

Mast, rudder, helmsman, and keel,

I am also the coral reef they founder on.

I am a tree with a trained parrot in its branches.

Silence, thought, and voice.

God in the Stew

Is there a human mouth

that does not give out soul-sound?

Is there love, a drawing-together

of any kind, that is not sacred?

Every natural dog

sniffs God in the stew.

Look inside your mind.

Do you hear the crowd gathering?

Help coming, every second.

Still you cover your eyes with mud.

Wash your face.

Anyone who steps into an orchard,

walks inside the orchard keeper.

Millions of love-tents bloom on the plain.

A star in your chest says,

None of this is outside you.

Close your lips and let the maker of mouths

talk, the one who says, things.

One Transparent Sky

Lovers think they are looking for each other,

but there is only one search.

Wandering this world is wandering that,

both inside one transparent sky.

In here there is no dogma and no heresy.

The miracle of Jesus is himself,

not what he said or did about the future.

Forget the future. I would worship someone

who could do that.

On the way you may want to look back, or not,

but if you can say, There is nothing ahead,

there will be nothing there.

Stretch your arms and take hold

the cloth of your clothes with both hands.

The cure for pain is in the pain.

Good and bad are mixed. If you don't have both,

you do not belong with us.

When someone gets lost, is not here,

he must be inside us. There is no place like that

anywhere in the world.

A Subtle Truth

If you want money more than anything,

you will be bought and sold.

If you have a greed for food,

you will become a loaf of bread.

This is a subtle truth.

Whatever you love, you are.

Your True Life

 As you start to walk out on the way,

the way appears.

As you cease to be,

true life begins.

As you grow smaller,

this world cannot contain you.

You will be shown a being

that has no you in it.