INNER AND OUTER DIVINITY

     THE SILENTEST PLACE

silently go to the silentest place
removing with reverent touch
the last obscuring veil   such
unmediated Light streams out
irradiating your thirsting soul

drink from this Holy Presence
which alone is flawlessly real
so an intimate companionship
wakes the essence of all-that-is
till not even a dust mote is dark

the joy we seek is the joy we are
love we crave is the love we give
curl in closer to hear the singing
the secret psalm of our molecules
the ringing music of the spheres!

all my words run away and hide
they can't define a seed so potent
holding the sun  moon  and stars
your face   my voice   our deaths
our births   the endgame of time

silently go to the silentest place
what you discover   is who you
truly are   that impostor the ego--
demolished!   now no one's left
only this boundless Communion

                    ***

 This poem evokes one aspect of the Divine--"Hidden Transcendence." Here God is silence, emptiness, formlessness--a secret Spirit of Holy Presence at the innermost core of our being, of all being.  This Hidden Transcendence is the crux of who we most deeply are, our profoundest identity. Paradoxically however, we can only come home Here by disappearing! That "impostor the ego" must be demolished. After this happens, our imperious "I" has vanished at last into a transcendent "We" of boundless Communion. 

                    SHOUTING HELLO

something brazenly red is shouting "Hello!"

it's quite far away along the sidewalk as yet

next to a tree and near a parked car   I can't

make out exactly what I'm seeing   just that

it looks huge and round and outrageously red

drawing closer   I realize it's a giant blossom

I don't know what kind of flower   but exotic!

with five petals arrayed in a star-like pattern

a chartreuse pistil thrusts out from the center

there's a fragile black stigma flaring at its tip

what amazes me though--the blossom shouted

"Hello!" hollered from half way down the block

No   not using some humdrum human greeting

nor with any articulation my mind could grasp

it sent a scarlet semaphore straight to my soul!

now we stand here   face to face  (so to speak)

I feel shy   awkward   not knowing what to say

how can I fathom the inner motive of a flower?

but while out walking by myself today   I thank

this red blossom for shouting its joyous "Hello!"

                                ***

   This poem celebrates the outer, incarnate aspect of Divinity--its "Immanent Glory." Only when both inner and outer expressions of Godhead are recognized as One, can we embrace our own wholeness and full potential. That exotic red blossom and I never could have communed with each other, unless each of us first was one with the Hidden Transcendence at the core of our being. One Is All. All Are One. We Are That!

ENCOUNTERS WITH THE UNKNOWN

           KNOCKING ON THE DOOR

I knock   knock   and knock at the door
of the new poem that wants to be born
but as it swings wide open there's only
Emptiness--Emptiness waits to blossom
to grow transparent on this page  in me

so I ask   ask   and ask of the Emptiness
"what do You want? why are You here?"
but Emptiness replies only with Silence
it seems Silence also presses to be born
born right now   at the center of my life

I knock   knock   and knock at the door
of Silence until it too swings wide open
and there in Silence's heart is Presence
nothing I can see hear touch taste smell
just utter connection   pure relationship

so I ask   ask   and ask of this Presence
"what do You want? why are You here?"
and the Presence says  (without a word)
"I'm the deathless Source of all you are
what's infinite and eternal in your soul"

                           ***

     For me, starting a new poem is always an encounter with the Unknown. Unless I'm willing to face that Emptiness, that chaos of infinite possibilities in the world, and inside me, I'll never take the all-out, naked risks necessary to break through my ego's prattling, or the inevitable constrictions and evasions of language itself. More and more, this creative emptying opens me to unmediated Presence, that Eternal Source which dwells in the heart of Silence, and from Which all meaningful speech is born.

                     BIRTH THROES

drawing a blank   it's what always happens

right here at the beginning   without a clue

facing the blank page   everything possible

what's hardest?   wrestling with emptiness

what's sweetest?   dancing with emptiness

no barriers   no rules or limits   wide open!

such freedom's breathtaking   scary as hell

but I dive in anyway   taking crazy chances

now I'm splashing around in a huge ocean

trying not to panic   praying not to drown

the next line pops up like an inflated dingy

and I climb in   hold tight   gasp for breath

roller-coastering these mountainous swells

feels like they rise up in eight-line stanzas 

if I could just keep afloat for one more line

maybe I can weather this fierce soul-storm

gradually a vast wind subsides   the waves

slacken   here I am again   sitting in a chair

staring at the page   but it's no longer blank

there's a struggle marking it   a raw voyage

as if something naked and primal got born

I'm not sure what that is or why this ruckus

but I want it to live   flourish   grow strong

I want it to exfoliate in me as fearless love!

                             ***

     This poem expresses its own birth throes from the bloody womb of the Unknown. It's a harrowing journey to a new world through the ocean of chaos and uncertainty. But isn't this always the way if any new, vital life ever succeeds in being born? Incarnation's not for sissies! To give birth to form, meaning, new possibility, out of nothingness and emptiness--isn't this the essence of the creative act? We must be willing to surrender control and put everything on the line, plunging nakedly through the storm of transformation. As Friedrich Nietzsche wrote: "One must have chaos in one, to give birth to a dancing star."