Your life wanders through you,
Lines of laughter and worry,
A hundred stitches of life,
Attaching moments to moments
On a canvas of skin stretched from
Beginning to end.
Conversations of silence and of words
Filling threadbare bags of years.
Carry it proudly, be with yourself, even in
Your loneliness, with all of your humanity.
For this journey is about you.
You are the life, you are the wanderer,
Wandering through
Yourself.
Days stand still, windless,
Like a burning wick without flickers,
Listening, mostly, to drifting clouds,
Looking for “bygone” in falling leaves,
Finding all creatures’ aloneness
In the passing and arising
Of life.
You always remain
Asleep in yourself,
In your thoughts, your eternity
Are you like one of those lake birds
Standing one-footed on a rock
Watching the grayish-purple mist
Settling on the lake
While the rain dips your wings
In grace and melancholy.
And the wind, with hands like days,
Roll your feathered heart alternately
Between cold and warm gusts.
I fear the deafening quiet
Of hungry light.
My lawless longing walking
Barefooted along
An abandoned beach,
The sound of thoughts
Like waves intruding,
Washing out its own image
And retracting
Into oblivion.
I can see it in the afterimage
Of a dream
A pathway of stars like paw prints
On the washed out surf
Showing me how to decipher
The unsilhouetted silence
Hiding behind all things born
And revealed.
The red tint of myself gleaming
Weakly on the broad wordless
Horizon.
There is a clear audacious
Aftermath of night in the morning air.
It as though the wingspan of a nautical bird
Or a home bound swan has left
Its sweeping behind:
A barely perceivable aura of voyaging,
Scattered in the snow like a rodent’s
Erratic paw prints.
It is as though gravity itself has been lifted
For a moment’s rendezvous
Between heaven and earth, stars and cold palms.
And I swoon as my body becomes weightless
And a sense of eternity threatens
To whisk me away.
That is when I hear you rummaging in the kitchen,
And the scent of your morning coffee
Settles me back into
My love-hungry body.
When I stand by the sea
On a slanting black cliff,
I hear myself echoing the waves.
And in the pit of my humanity
A stream stirs to life,
Pulling towards the horizon.
I let that tender unity
Pour out of me,
until I am stretched
Far beyond the visible horizon.
The stillness has finally settled,
It is as though the arctic night
Has lent its voice to the sunny day.
And I can hear branches swaying softly
In the wind, like wings preparing for flight.
And my own heart leaving
To be caressed by the pointy light hands
Of stars, as it listens
To the softly humming breath
Of God.
