SIFTINGS OF THE SOUL

                HEARING WIND GUST


hearing wind gust through bare branches
draws me back home to what's elemental
in my bones   their roots still tangled with
The Big Bang   the roil of galaxies forming

an infinitesimally living spark of all this   I
sense I also contain it all   experience it all
all time and space   all dying and becoming
the abyss of the void   the birthing of stars!

when you and I vastly meet   we encounter
as two universes--both familiar and strange
each an uncharted cosmos to the other  yet
each an indispensable portion of the whole

I'm floored by the enormity of a single seed
stunned by the intimacy of the morning sky!
everything's connected   everything engages
everything's a cryptic companion of my soul


                              ***

  There's nothing but relationship. Complete independence, total isolation, is an alienated illusion. The gleaming from the farthest star, shining into my eyes after traveling untold light years, changes me--for I myself am created from star-stuff. As Walt Whitman wrote: "All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses; and to die is different from what anyone supposed, and luckier."

                THE STILL SMALL VOICE

I might believe I have infinite choices about

how to live   but underlying all that confusion

there's only one--saying either "yes" or "no"

to a mystery   the still small voice of my soul

most of us   most of the time   crave to have it

both ways   I know I do   my ego or id clamors

"me first!" "me now!"  and off the rails I lurch

careening blindly toward my next train wreck

"what hit me?"  "how'd this happen?"  "why?"

I'm the bewildered victim of my own conceit

so back I stumble to humility's kindergarten

hoping to grasp the teaching I failed to learn

which isn't rocket science   it's an open secret

I parse it in the glowing full moon calling me

catch it in the muted cry of a mourning dove

sense it shiver when you voyage into my eyes

the universe's great mantra isn't "I" but "We"

like each glittering shard of the kaleidoscope

whatever exists is part of a profounder Unity

it murmurs in the still small voice of my soul

                               ***

    It's with us all the time, if only we will listen. It guide's us through the maze of each day's struggle and confusion, if only we can hear. Go deep, become silent within, open to the mystery. This is our Home Base, our Refuge among all the sound and fury of the world. When we're awake and attuned there, we're never alone. We're in intimate communion with the still small voice of our soul.