I raise a glass of Pinot Noir to my lips, since
alcohol and venomous snakes don’t mix.

The lama crawls into his disciple’s bed, and planes
drop retardant over a raging wildfire in Oregon.

A turn of the key sparks the ignition in my automobile,
and another politician repeats a lie on Prime Time.

The mystics and their parrots claim everything’s connected,
but maybe it’s not even that — at what point does the sun
and its light connect, the songbird and its song,
the stream and water, the experiencer
and the experience?

Perhaps everything is so wrapped up in everything
that not even Einstein can tell energy from mass
plus the speed of light squared.

Consciousness and light — are they two separate
things that happen to intersect and connect
here and there, now and then?

The preachers tell us to go to the light,
but we are that light, so where should we go?

That which perceives cannot be found
within the world, since it is the world itself.

Just so, I sit here by the river, watching it flow,
yet the only thing flowing is me, I am it.

Whatever is happening, there I am too —
the secret of love: you are me,
I am you.