Exploring The Mystery

Creatures arise, creatures vanish;
I alone am real, Arjuna,
looking out, amused, from deep
within the eyes of every creature.

I am the Self, Arjuna, seated
in the heart of every living creature.
I am the origin, the middle
and the end that all must come to.

                      -- The Bhagavad Gita

      Here are three recent poems of mine. Each, in its own way, explores the mystery of the soul.


                       ALL OUT

what stammering of mine could express so much
as the rain's palaver this morning on my window
or a gust's hoarse whisper through bare branches?

I guess I'll have to conjure some half-baked excuse
to keep fussing with this poem anyway    admitting
I can never communicate as purely as the weather

maybe I should take my cue from the cawing crows
their gutteral slang's the language of thunderheads
it's sinewed with such rich veins of night and death

wide awake    living all out    precariously balanced
at this bitter    exhilarating razor's edge    how else
can I profoundly know you      tell you who I am?

                              ***


             NOT A STONE OR A STAR

I hang out here between the stones and stars
not cold    shuttered    contained    unreadable
nor hot    outpouring    flagrant    unquenchable
but a sort of funky hodgepotch of this and that

there are times I yearn to grab and kiss you!
or fold you like an origami bird into my heart
at other's though   I don't love anything human
my profile's a headland pounded by breakers

try as I might   I can't pin this weird self down
the longer I scrutinize my soul the less I know
I'm disappearing into a Light that consumes me
not a stone or a star but a mystery fusing both

                             ***


                      HARRIED AWAKE

just as I stepped from the car a flock of starlings
swooped in low right over my head!       at that

split second I stopped being a sullen sleepwalker
stuck on autopilot    humping to the supermarket
mindlessly slipshodding ever faster toward death

at that split second I was harried from my stupor
swept up out of nowhere by one ecstatic breath
snatched into the outrageous freedom of the sky!

which state was the illusion      which the reality?
why are we all still sleeping?   Time To Wake Up!

                               ***


Holy Spirit
giving life to all life,
moving all creatures,
root of all things,
washing them clean,
wiping out their mistakes,
healing their wounds,
you are our true life,
luminous, wonderful,
awakening the heart
from its ancient sleep.

                -- Hildegard of Bingen