Testament

Posted on January 31, 2018 by Bob OHearn
I arrived during the time of the Blue Galactic Storm,
taking this specific form so that I could find You.
 
I knew that You would always recognize me
since I have never been other than You,
though I appear here as myself.
 
I am guided by the power of Universal Water,
the same essence that lives as all sentience.
 
Oceans of heartbeats, all flowing resonant light,
naturally magnetize to Your essence.
 
In order to please and delight You,
I sealed the crucible of birth and death
with the overtone of liquid radiance.
 
Now all forms are only this
rippling luminosity.
 
Ice melts into flowing water just to find You,
to blend at last with You, until there is only You.
 
You are all that is, has been, or ever will be.
 
Still, when we wake from the dream we know:
nothing has blended, nothing has merged.
 
Nor has anyone awakened.
 
Why does that make us so happy?
 
In the enchanting play we call “the world”,
life force spirals, inhaling, exhaling . . .
 
In the midst of such exquisite magic,
somehow we appear.
 
What appears, disappears.
 
It is not even an emptiness, and yet
it is so much more, even more
than the great bliss of union.
 
But stop talking now, listen.
 
Here is the Testament,
the Sutra, the Gita:
 
“Nothing, anything,
everything.”
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That Wordless Thing

Posted on January 31, 2018 by Bob OHearn
While caressing you to sleep last night
I slipped silently into my own dream.
 
Sometimes I remember dreams, mostly I forget —
either way it doesn’t seem to matter.
 
Tonight, strands of evidence gathered through my senses
during the day and all of my life were synchronized
with some mysterious thoughts from who knows where
to produce a brief movie of my hand caressing you.
 
When I woke in the night, that hand was on your chest
making soft little swirling motions just like in the movie,
the dream within a dream which somehow fit perfectly,
one within the other, just as our hearts fit perfectly
within each other, even as we dream.
 
We couldn’t tell the dreams apart as they swirled
so gently back and forth between our sighs beneath
the sheets, and we were half awake and half asleep
in the pale light of the passing moon, just feeling
that luminous presence without uttering a word.
 
How many nights have we spent like this?
Was there a before, will there be an after?
 
Maybe sometime we’ll awake from this dream of forever
and remember everything, each little sigh, every moon
floating majestically over us while we created little movies
in those transient dimensions for which we have no name.
 
What will be then — a lingering perfume of experience,
neither happy or sad — only that wordless thing
we always share as we drift off to sleep.
 
Just as it’s been since the moment we met,
it will always be more than enough.
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The Distance Between Earth and Heaven

Posted on January 31, 2018 by Bob OHearn
If the way to the Heart’s verdant oasis
were a route marked on some paper map,
I’d say, “Burn that fraud of an atlas!”
 
If the Mystery could be grasped
by the mind that reads road signs,
it wouldn’t be the Mystery.
 
Wanderer,
look into your mind —
wherever your attention rests,
just stop and experience that.
 
Snagged on the luminous hook
of this quarter moon tonight, attention
is dragged skimming over treetops,
regardless of any pious intent.
 
The bark of a dog, startled at midnight,
effortlessly bridges the distance
between earth and heaven.
 
The song of the lone peacock
feeding your heart has waited
a lifetime for its cry to be heard.
 
A slice of moon, a barking dog,
the poignant cry of a calling bird –
 
all grant memory the kind of cloth
that Presence weaves into the robes
you’ve worn throughout this magic night.
 
Now she’s running to you at dawn-break
with two handfuls of freshly-picked sweet peas,
perfuming your room with her intoxicating fragrance,
and suddenly both heaven and earth are forgotten.
 
When her darling smile outshines the rising sun,
how long will it be before you’re swooning
in the ardor of her thrilling embrace?

 

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The Kiss

Posted on January 31, 2018 by Bob OHearn
She stood on the front porch admiring the orchid blossoms.
Her care and patience had yielded a beautiful specimen.
 
Now that the cooler autumn weather had arrived,
they would last much longer, she thought to herself.
 
There was some music playing off in the distance,
a secret transmission from another world perhaps.
 
Then a sudden breeze snatched it away, and now
the random rustle of settling leaves, subtle noises
from little creatures vying for a place to rest and decay.
 
The spirit forms of countless silent beings swirled around her,
approached and passed right through her, but she didn’t flinch,
she was wise in that way, and she kindly let them have their play.
 
The bird baths needed to have their water replenished,
her dog was lobbying for his next meal, and besides,
there were cashews to salt and roast waiting in the kitchen.
 
She was her own lyric poem, happy, and this is how she read:
trading songs with her canary, the whole wide world is kissed.
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The Last Song of the Kauai O’o

Posted on January 31, 2018 by Bob OHearn

(The Kauaʻi ʻōʻō was the last member
of the ʻōʻō family of birds from Hawaii.
The entire family is now extinct.)

I slipped into your dream last night.
You gave me this gracious permission
in that pre-existence before pronouns.

Sifting in quietly, so as not to disturb
the elegant symmetry you were projecting
so vividly onto the magic neural screen,
I melded with your astral architecture.

In the dream, everything seemed real.
Dreamers have that power, just as we do
now — how else to account for ourselves
in the midst of all these many statues?

Simultaneously, these silent sacred statues
opened their eyes to see what we were seeing
when we were seeing only God, the Beloved,
in the forms of each other and everything.

In this dream, a luminous procession of angels
was dropping slowly down into the cruel fields,
rescuing many bewildered denizens from sad
delusions, raising them into their own glad selves.

In the same way you would lift a small fallen bird
that had collided with a window, so too did they
lift up the broken souls, and so very tenderly!

As I observed the scene, you reached towards me.
You lifted me up, lovingly, in the same way
you would lift a dazed Hermit Thrush.

You gently placed me on a waiting branch.
There I listened, and as I did, I heard a plaintive song.
It came from the heart, from a lone bird’s beating heart.

It was the last of its species — all of the rest were
now extinct — and still it was crying for a mate,
a phantom mate that would never come.

Some may wonder:
“How could this happen?”

I don’t know. In the dream, everything is born,
thrives for awhile, and inevitably disappears.

Birds, humans, planets and stars, whole universes
of turning glowing galaxies come and go perpetually,
like clouds in a vast and endless sky, and so too
the melodious song of the vanishing Kauai O’o.

When the angels arrive they are unbearably bright.
We lie down and close our eyes. They gently
wrap us in cocoons woven of golden light.

Now what awaits the caterpillar?
A new name, and the power of flight!

Each Angel has a special name we cannot say.

If human ears could possibly hear such a name,
it would sound like the poignant cry of a vanishing
bird, the last of its kind, echoing softly into the Void.

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When I First Read Something You Had Written

Posted on January 31, 2018 by Bob OHearn

August 12, 2025

When I first read something you had written online, I knew that the only possible form of relationship we could enjoy together would be one of mutual expanding divine recognition. I would recognize you as the manifestation of the Feminine Divine, and it would be a simultaneous and equal recognition. Perfect balance. Just so.

Later, when we first actually met in person, I realized that this was going to be beyond easy, since you already were manifesting as That. I need not look to see if the Divine is flickering somewhere inside of you, when your very existence is all the proof one requires to know God. This is how I know you.

This knowledge is pre-existent to our transient forays into the psycho-physical playground of fleshy embodiment, but only directly realized through our miraculous shared beingness here and now. That we Are. Throughout the multidimensional realms of awareness and experience, Love alone suffices.

The implications of resonating at this same precise frequency of mutual unconditional God-recognition overwhelm us with mirth and tears. Poems run through our thoughts when everything rhymes. Still, how could we have prepared to be two, when our true identity is an immortal luminous singularity?

This has been our happy koan, revealing itself anew every moment we share together. I merely offer these words to remind us, should we ever doubt and imagine that there is something outside of this love, some reason to fear or cling. There is not. We are already relieved, already released, already in love forever. This is how love has been for us, and evermore shall be.

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The Note

Posted on January 31, 2018 by Bob OHearn

If you glanced out your front window and saw me walking towards your door, you might imagine that you know me, that I have a familiar look, a friendly face when you least expected to see or know one — nobody special, someone who would understand that you only wished to hear the song of your beautiful canary, someone who would, in deference to that beauteous song bird, simply leave a narrow note by your doorbell, after knocking once or twice, and when you got this note — maybe tomorrow, maybe by this time next week, maybe in the time it takes for limitless awareness to ripen and unfold at the heart — you would open it and read:

I was here. You know me, though
not by name. It’s not important.
I heard the beautiful canary
singing. It was enough.

With my hand made of flesh and bone,
with my hand made of blood and sinew,
with this hand composed of thought,
with my every thought made of mind,
with this mind I raised a single hand.

I was standing, knocking on your door,
the door made of wood and metal,
metal made of mind, a mind door
appearing in the midst of space,
this space made of emptiness,
still, transparent, this emptiness
pristine, not a thing amidst things,
not an object of mind, not really a door,
not even a mind, and I was knocking,
smiling, I was knocking on your door.

It was in perfect beauty that I walked
to your door. There was beauty before me,
beauty behind me, and all there is, this
beauty, it surrounds me. It leads me
to this door, leads me to your door.

I was standing at your doorway with a heart
floating on a foam of ecstasy, of beauty,
with my hand composed of every beauty,
and my mind, my mind made of beauty,
beauty this emptiness, beauty this fullness,
beauty this very heart-essence, the essence
of you and me, of all of us, of everything
with any beautiful sense of beauty —
beauty our rest and beauty our motion,
our motion erasing itself in more beauty —
that same beauty was knocking at your door.

There is beauty in the shadow, as much
as in the shine, beauty in the mist and fog,
the euphoria that thrills the air just before rain,
beauty in the leaves, twigs, and stunning stones
strewn along the path, a path with beauty,
beauty returning once again to beauty,
a path that led to your front door.

I wandered, mindless, to your door,
drawn to beauty, I knew it from memory —
that personal impersonal beauty, I sensed it.
In an instant, life can change forever.
I have no words, no beautiful words
to coax you from your silence,
to coax you to the door.

I am nothing but flowing water, ripples
without beginning, I change but I do not.
It is that beauty I came to share with you,
with you who can bear your own silence.
I was flowing, silent, washed up to your door.

I will show you the beauty of the water
we are, flowing together, molecular bliss.
I’ll appear like sudden soft rain falling
on a cloudless day, or maybe I’ll sizzle
with white lightning, a zigzag lightning
lit with hot beauty, an electric mirror
of our same sheer beauty, this beauty
flashing brightly here, flashing
at your cottage door.

For us, there need be no confusion
about what remains when the embers
turn to ash. This is beauty, that is beauty,
yet I renounce all prior beauty now
to walk on water to your door.

When I leave here I’ll be smiling,
happy to walk in beauty, happy
to leave even beauty behind.

Before me, only beauty.
Behind me beauty shines.

I am leaving you this note here.
I am leaving it behind.

If you read it you will realize,
though this note has not been signed,
the canary’s song as I am leaving:
it’s the sound of our one mind.

11/17/17

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The Old Lines

Posted on January 31, 2018 by Bob OHearn
There is a hidden meadow deep in the forest.
It is a secret place where some weary ghosts go
who want to forget their sad time in human form,
want to forget how the humans poisoned each other,
want to rest and let the old trees whisper little prayers
to them, and the grass grow up all around their heads,
and the fragrant wildflowers nestle in their open wounds
and pour their spirit grace into them, and because sleep
is the best way to heal the heart, they will lie down there,
they will sleep and they will dream, and only awaken
when the gentle rains drip moisture’s blessings down
through the vines, from one leaf to the next,
mercifully washing their soul eyes clear.
 
Although I am here, I will also be there.
I will be very quiet, and just nod my head
as they wander into the clearing, luminous
in their ghostly vestments, and I will sit and make
words and phrases for later, when poetry is needed
once again, and the wild gods re-appear in the forms
of song and wine, and drunken toasts around the fire.
 
I will stand up then, and although I would rather be
with you, and the blankets thrown down while we
turn together in the wordless ecstasy, I will still
stand and speak the old lines I’d written once
in the time of ghosts, and tears will spring
from my eyes, and you will just smile,
fiercely.

 

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The Sound of Me with You

Posted on January 31, 2018 by Bob OHearn
There’s a poem I cannot write —
I just don’t have the words.
 
What lyrics could ever fit themselves
into a silence that lovingly swallows
them whole before they reach an ear?
 
This song came before any ears,
before any tongue began to move.
 
It’s a tune we hum together, me and you,
twined sounds from our own silence.
 
We rhyme — one sound me, one sound
you — it works, it hums, so we become
one singing poem, no longer merely
made-up words, not a thing that one
can hear or not, sing or not, or say
in any way except with silence.
 
Still, we hum away, not knowing
one song from the next, just tunes
to instantly forget while captivated
by the next – a cavalcade of greatest hits,
played again for the ones we missed.
 
A poem-song’s humming through us,
not a memory or tingling sensation,
nor refrain from some by-gone day –
 
just the bliss of what we cannot say,
and yet we say it anyway, the word
that goes unspoken, the same way
we go too, a hum of rest in motion –
the joyful sound of me with you.
 
 
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The Sound That Makes Love

Posted on January 31, 2018 by Bob OHearn
Within the sea of pure potentiality,
the ocean of consciousness, an energetic resonance
precipitates movement, spawning waves and ripples
which intersect and mingle, rise and fall.
 
This one dynamic impulse reverberates within itself,
birthing the totality of universal manifestation
through the play of complex living forces
initiated by its vibration.
 
Without beginning, this unspeakable power
manifests in increasingly differentiated levels,
with each successive layer contained
within its more subtle predecessor.
 
When the life-energy moves out and down
into the more solid dimensions,
desire is born.
 
Thus it was that you appeared here,
even in this far outpost of materiality,
with the unquenchable desire to be and to know,
to know yourself as two, as four, as many
as it takes to make a world,
your world.
 
At first unsure, but curious, you circle
around yourself as if you were an other,
so shyly at first, but wanting to touch,
to touch and be touched.
 
You want to feel it all,
all of yourself.
 
Yes, you came to see and be seen,
to hear and be heard, to make a world
out of your vibrating thought, the thought
that brought all of this into existence,
just so that you could love
and be loved.
 
All of the ensuing complication,
the infinitely alternating play of expansion
and contraction, of pursuit and retreat, is the play
of that love in time and space, the pulsing sound
brought down by love into this warm flesh
to shine its light in vast emptiness.
 
 
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