Mitch

What Moves Us All to Dream

What moves us all to dream,
to think, to love, to act,
to give it up for some great cause
or double back to pause before our plans
of having more or getting there
or going to the country fair
is the same for everyone:
the sage, the fool, the king,
the self-appointed ministers of fun.

Einstein said it best, I think,
or maybe it was Rumi,
both of whom were missing links
from this to that, from here to there,
mystics of the unseen arts,
demystifying what it is that moves the air
and the human heart.

Still I wonder what it is I thirst for in my bones,
what will be enough to feel.
Is it what I see with these two eyes
or what I know beyond them both
is always just a bit concealed –
that which seizes me from deep within,
the mirror of my soul, my other half, my perfect twin,
the one who knows, but doesn’t tell
or if he does, it’s just enough
to dig my tunnel deeper to the well
where all the seekers that I am have come to drink,
long before the first parable was told.

excerpted from The Heart of the Matter

The One For Whom It All Makes Sense

I have written a thousand poems for you
that have never left my room.
They fill the pages of notebooks stacked high on a shelf
no one can reach.
Orphans they are, beggars afraid they are not noble enough for the King,
would never make it past the guards.
I make a vain attempt to dress them up,
disguise their ridiculous origins, but still they smell bad.

There are times, late at night, however, when they think I’m asleep,
I can almost hear them talking to each other,
conjuring new ways to make it to your court.
Oh, the arguments they have! The barroom brawls!
Some of them actually think a shower and a shave is all they need.
Others insist on practicing, all night long, the perfect way of greeting you.
There is much to be said for these backroom bards,
these arm wrestling vagrants from another world.

Indeed, if I was dead,
my ambitious biographer, after paying his due respects
and asking permission of my dear, sweet wife,
would borrow them just long enough to search for pearls
and find the perfect turn of phrase, the verse,
the sudden storm of brilliance even my harshest critics would have to praise.
He’d think of clever titles for the tome, describing, in his carefully written way,
the “man who left his muse too soon”
or some such thing that might make you wonder
why I never gave these poems to you –
the one for whom it all makes sense even when it doesn’t.

How to Listen to the Master

First of all,
give up everything you know
about listening –
it has nothing to do with your ears.
That kind of listening
will only take you so far.
If you really want to hear,
you will need to leave your ears at the door
and while you’re at it, your head.
Then, take a seat,
breathe deep,
let go
and become
a flower
opening to the sun.

Excerpted from The Heart of the Matter

Speechless

It’s not what I say,
it’s what I don’t say.
But every time I say nothing,
what I don’t say
leaves so much to be said,
I am speechless.
Maybe that’s why Groucho
raised his eyebrows
and Jesus raised the dead.

One Voice

I live in Woodstock, NY. After the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center, my wife, Evelyne, organized a daylong gathering in our town – “ONE VOICE” – of all religious groups and spiritual paths. Everyone was in attendance: the Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Rastas, Sufis, Atheists, Agnostics, the devotees of Gurumayi, and everyone else who felt the need to join together and acknowledge our common humanity.

What follows is the invocation I was asked to write and perform at this gathering. I hope you enjoy it. (Read it aloud for maximum value).

Today I speak with One Voice, here in this town known around the world for peace – a place now metaphor for the highest aspirations of the human race – Woodstock.

What I have to say existed long before speech, long before teachers and those who thought they needed to be taught. I speak of the time before time, before “us” and “them” before otherness, separation, and the need to make amends. Pure presence there was back then, isness. First light. What the wise ones among us call by many names according to their faith, but it has no name, this “impulse to be,” this pulsation of life – what poets feel before they pick up their pens, why dancers, quivering in their own skin, look around the room for space in which to move.

Create!

A star exploded deep within you years ago
and still the light has not yet reached your eyes,
not yet turned the night to day for birds to leave their nests
or monks their caves to play.

Blind to your own infusion, you insist there is nothing to see,
nothing to celebrate your reasonless being for,
and yet you feel it, you quake,
you quiver to begin.
An unseen trembling turns your head,
the way you stand, the wind,
the ground beneath your feet.
You think the shock of this bodily remembrance is fear
and do not sing,
do not burst into song,
do not wring the beauty of the sound
long buried in your bones.
You stop and throw a stone,
half hoping it will come back to you,
and wait…
as if there was time,
wait…
like a beggar ashamed to ask for a bowl to beg with.

How can this be?
The sky is bluer than the eyes of your own mother
on the day she first beheld you
and still you cast your gaze down.
Don’t you remember?
You were made in the image of God!
The creator!
The one who creates
river, eagle, ladybug, leaf.
If anyone else gave you the moon you’d call him a thief
or worse, refuse to look.
Give up the notion of stealing from God.
The only crime here is to hoard.
Prometheus?
Only bored of chilly nights
with no flame to write his poetry by.