on my first day I go down to the river
ask her to receive me. I am an unexpected arrival.
God welcomes me in his miraculous ways:
your upward path, my downward flow
are fixed by law divine.
my task is to refresh your soul
yours to discover mine.*
a life of searching
for god’s soul. on tree branches,
within lovers and the heart of prayer
under my skin your lips the moon’s dry cracks.
I seek the stillness of morning. This breath my daily prayer
as I remember all the forms of god
I loved so much. Seablue god, dancing god
stuck in my heart-muscle like a splinter.
Today
I open like a vessel from the top of my head.
a head branching out, or blooming
like a bud
open, lotus-head.
I do nothing else.
Nothing
but this opening.
The quiet holds more than I ever found in the dissonant loud.
The meagre dark, more than the dazzling brightness
more in a whispered prayer than grandiose rituals of adorned priests.
abundance weighs me down with its heaviness.
So I seek the lighter way
the love in the humble heart.
I now hear more in the unspoken
in the absence between words
feel more in the empty space between inhale and exhale.
This spring blossoms softly.
Do you ever hear the trees gloating about their creations
or the buds thundering their growths?
the season cycles gently, winter melting away with no fuss.
it’s a quiet emergence into the new.
the humbleness of nature
that holds to its magnificence.
my task is to refresh your soul.
yours
to discover mine.
*Words written on a plaque by the river. Author unknown.
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