The common thing between this
dark descending slowly, and this winter bird
…and your melancholy
is that there’s no true reason behind any.
Don’t look for causes –
They are red herrings
meant to keep you from looking
at the answer behind:
The unchanging sky, where
all things come and go
in the folding and unfolding
of pure Emptiness.
Sometimes you come to me
Disguised as a friend, a stranger
A student sometimes
And, sitting low below me
You ask me, ardently, to sing…
Enamored by your asking, then
Yet, slowly and hesitantly, like
A hatchling tiptoeing to the edge of a cliff
Warmed by the sun that also seems to be below
I sing my blurry-eyed song
Just a newborn, raw call across the immense valley
That I don’t yet know how to cross…
But you break into rapture
You dance on the words
And hold close my broken notes
As if they were stars of the rarest sky
And – as if they came from me –
When, I know, it is all you…
Even the wind
Even the wings
Even the valley
Even the song.
Tell me, my Master
Isn’t this how you ease me
Out of the frail safety of my nest?
Don’t you make me a hawk
And, you, the sky I pour myself into
So I may learn from your open arms
That joy has two sides:
One, a giver, two, a receiver…?
The world holds higher the giver
The singer, the poet, the painter, but
If there weren’t always the receptacle
The unconditional, bottomless heart
There would be no homecoming
No tears of joy…
Would there?
And when our exchange is done for the night
And sleep closes all outward doors
I forget all this grand knowing, except:
How much you love me
That you meet me everywhere, inside everything.
This is the gift you wanted me to find
Hidden in your disguise
Isn’t it?
The day you hear that river
Burst through the old ice
And begin to flow deep inside you
Go away far, be roaming and irreverent
Like a tiger, hungry…
For the only one who needs you the most now
Is you.
Go, lie on the open body of grass –
For it is both small and endless…
It can understand, wordlessly
When you tell it that
You are erupting like a tiny seed
That carries the blues of creation in its void.
And for once, don’t be afraid
Of that precious light
They call madness and prescribe ways to cure…
Use it for what it is meant:
The only proven method
To get the world out of your way.