I’ve been drunk for as long as I can remember,
though it’s not on wine crushed from any grapes.
Now I stagger through these flickering realms,
dreamy realms of time’s unraveling, clouds
and sun alternating, unnoticed, unbidden.
A busy hum of tiny mayflies swarms around
my dizziness, drunk as we are on the nectar
of this omnipresent living Mystery.
You might ask a question now for which I have
no answer. Whoever I think I am – whatever
I thought I was – that is what disappears.
My lips are softly pressed against infinity in a kiss
of liquid yearning, the yearning of a wave for the sea.
Without tether or anchor, I seem to drift through
some immensity, eyes blinded by the brilliance
of a supernal light – its reflection, my own.
There is a fine line where the panorama of sky
seems to meet the vastness of the ocean. It appears
to be a line, although there really is no line at all.
Just so, this Love that lives us floods out of nowhere,
gently sweeping away the wrinkled leaves of belief
and false identity in a cool current of surrender,
drowning them at last in the limpid serenity
of Love’s own blessed sufficiency.
Like melting snow in Spring’s warming streams,
the fascination with any destiny dissolves in the flow,
timed to a perfection beyond mind’s comprehension.
In such letting go, something once so complex
resolves now into a simple clear lucidity. The closer
to its source, the more transparent it becomes.
That dreamy sense of independence, the perfume
of some separate self-sense, sifts, wafts, and weaves
within the full embrace of awareness, of open space,
changing perpetually, in harmony with ordinary
circumstance — a symmetry of white clouds
vanishing within an enormity of blue.
The need for any meaning drops away in the bliss
of remembrance, remembrance prior to the appearance
of any born being, big bang, or bundled embodiment.
The search for Tao is rendered obsolete in recognition
of the Tao which cannot be sought, cannot be lost.
For this reason, or even without any reason, I kneel now
in my own heart, the heart Life made so it could feel itself
and know the secrets which mind would know but cannot.
My palms turn upward, effortlessly holding this mountain
to the sky. It is light, as light as the feather I am, a feather
on the breath of the wind, a wind of whispering yearning.
The mere fact of yearning’s persistence is ample proof
that every dream is possible – anything — and yet
in Love’s intimate presence, there is no need
of any proof, nor any convincing rationale.
Existence is its own proof, the indisputable proof
of itself, though inherent in its transient fragility
is also the proof of its ultimate unreality.
A crumbling mountain left that kiss upon my heart,
a kiss of life’s tender vulnerability, but now these
clouds, filled with light, glide silently through
eternal night – each a lingering exhalation,
a sigh from the deepest heart of space.
Here is where we always meet, in that sky-like
timeless space between our poignant sighs.
Within that ever-potent silence, here is where
the magic’s born. Before all notions, names,
or forms which we could know or feel,
here is where this love’s alive,
here is where it’s real.
Snowy Path to Nowhere 