Gift of the Horse

This day is full of nights.
Brightnesses of strange feathers; birds that align with the sky & take flight.
Small squeaks that get Big Grease, toxic Oil Spots on Troubled Waters.
Boats that float, by Grace alone; dirty Sailors and drunken captains that barely make the road home.

This day is full of nights;
broken bridges and soft blacktop that makes your footstep slop
land-waves and water-faults that sink a man up to the edge of his doubts;
cry-babies of politics and the often-wounded and rarely-dressed open books,
parading around with pages as blank as yesterday’s looks.

This night is full of days
signature scraps of diamond light reflecting in ten thousand different ways
glimmers of diamonds lost in the sand; white-gloved babies longing to take your hand;
the underfed and overweight looking for food, early to late;

This night is full of days
the weavings of humans, all trying to find the way
out of the labyrinth, into the trap, out of god’s uterus, launched off the map
only to fall into their own sap; the juices of life, no napkin to wrap

the light is full of light; let me count the ways
we can all find home; there’s a million sun rays
one ray is enough to burn my trembling hand,
to make all my wedding rings fall into the sand;
the light is full of light; let me taste the source: a mouth is a mouth,
and never think your gift will ride off on any other horse….

The Art of Eternal Childhood

An email from an old friend. He’s in the throes of raising an 11-year old daughter – amazed by the pure and vital energy of childhood – and asks, “why have we lost this as adults…?”

My answer would be, we haven’t lost this, but we’ve left this. We’ve left this for a set of distractions, protections & consequences that effectively annihilate our chances of returning to the place of innocence, possibility and magic that we knew as children.

As a child, I always knew there was something suspicious, inauthentic and dangerous about the adult character in general. We all know a lot as children, and have access to an amazing range of “emotional intelligence” – intuitive, perceptive and creative capabilities. We sense and live in the spontaneous and ongoing beauty of childhood; we don’t understand or comprehend the “hardening” that has masked and throttled the authority figures around us.

As we grow older, we silently, agreeably adopt and adapt – internalizing all the subtle toxicities and poisons that are handed to us on silver platters: ego, emotional suppression, material obsession, power acquisition & manipulation, playing the proper game and saying the proper words at the proper time – in the proper tone of voice. We learn to obey the Kings of the Adult Architecture: bosses, families, spouses, preachers, pundits and obligations … all at the cost of our own soul.

My own personal journey into Adulthood was interrupted by a “side-trip” into the Land of Self-Knowledge. A side-trip which became the Journey of Life Itself. All the other “main trips” eventually panned out as distractions and misadventures; the subtle and frail voice that pulled me into the heart of Knowing Self, became the most powerful, beautiful, joyful and insightful voice in my being.

Part of the process of Knowing Self seemed to be the reconnection and resurrection of the lost inner child, that – it turns out – is really “me”, after all. The “sweet part” of us, it turns out, is still very much alive, and simply waits like a long lost seed, in the deepest cavern of our hearts, for springtime to return.

But, yes, life presents the challenge of feeling somewhat unique and alone in your “child-craft”; your innocence, beauty and magic seek others to play with – others to share the innate beauty of life with – but, alas, such companions are few and far-between. Most so-called “adults” are busy with the concern of the “adult world” – politics, money, relationship frustrations, sarcasm, jadedness and various mixes of toxic distraction and approved anesthetics.

It does make you value what you do have: access to your own inner song. It makes you value the few companions in life who can indeed share your hearts’ journeys. It makes those moments of play, delight, rainbow-watching, flower-sniffing …. all that much more precious, fragile, fragrant and delicious. And, last but not least: it makes you savor your True Companion, the inner friend you’ve known all along, the one who has been and will be with you every step of the way.

So, the celebration of Eternal Childhood seems to be where it’s at for me.

Sorry, other stuff bores me.

I just don’t have the time be be “grown up” anymore.

The field of life awaits, and it’s brilliant with a million colored flowers.

The Agreement of Connection

Something about Nature, and the act of Being Out In Nature.   There’s a Cosmic Oxide produced by Running Water, Falling Leaves and Shooting Stars.    This replenishes  lost juices in your solar cortex.

There’s the smell of rotting leaves mixed with October Mist, punctuated by cold, gurgling streams, offset by the distinct possibility of Bears and Cougars in the territory.  There’s the raucous cawing of crows, an occasional eagle soaring high, high, high in Penthouse Douglas Fir Apartment-Land.  There’s egrets with no regrets, herons with no errands – silently sitting and waiting as gaunt lifeless silhouettes, on placid sparkling canals.

They invite you into their own mystique: soaring, calling, waiting, floating, swimming in the invigorating dance of their own True Little Bird-Souls.  Betraying the divine, detached, perfect beauty of their own unique program – performed flawlessly on this majestic stage of Nature’s mantle.

Something about Nature and the Art of Feeling It, Seeing It, Hearing It … as it really is.   There’s something about being inwardly at rest, far from the incessant internal dialogues we’re plagued with – in a place where the Glorious Cool Fingers of Fall can enter us, fondle our 3rd Chakras, spin our eyes counter-clockwise, send our Kundalini spiraling up the Central Pole of Sensory convergence.

We come to Nature – but Nature also comes to us.  So many times, I’ve sat and waited in silence – only to have been approached by insects, cats, ducks, raccoons, moths, butterflies, zebras … they come calling.  They come looking for “connection”.  They come inquiring about the Soul of the Visitor: they say, “how are your Insides feeling today, long-lost & weary friend …?”  They say “who are you?”, without noticing your face,  your wallet, your underarm odor or any of your failures in the world of finance or relationship.  They come for connection, and connection only.

The silent unspoken agreement that we all enter into, upon re-acquainting ourselves with Nature, is this Agreement of Connection.  We notice it, we feel it.  Our skin-of-skins breathes it.  Our heart-of-hearts knows it.  The Deep Silence, the Dreamer, the Lost Soul within us, finds home once again … settles into Knowing the Beauty of the Known, rather than struggling with puzzles and eating the fibrous, uncooked recipes of doubt & desire.

We settle in to the reassuring meditation of What Is, rather than the unsettling mysticism of “what was”, “what might be” or the rancid smells of all the unattended pots we’ve left on back-burners through our myriad lifetimes.

Something about Nature, the act of plunging into cool water, the Sacred Art of  Being Alive.  The beautiful symphonies that broadcast to us on a frequency only we know.  The whispers of Wind in Tall trees that we inhabit, with the Eagles.  With the Silence, the Mystery, the Dancing Clouds.

And that one Agreement we made, before the World of Words became Flesh ….

The Burning Leaves of Autumn

Yesterday was a gentle walk in the woods.  September days are quiet, soft in their own right, messengers of times to come, days of change.

Sunny days in September are a double blessing: light and warmth without the intensity of August, yet the amazing colors of a turning seasons included, free of charge.

I carry a camera with me on many walks, watching and aware of those moments that hold a portrait, those moments where light, texture and form tell a short story worth acknowledging.  On this particular day, the woods were quiet and deep, shadowy and thoughtful.   Little photogenic content; merely a day for feeling the sweet earth and breathing in that mysterious oxygen.

But one leaf caught my attention.   It was a single Maple leaf, bathed in a solitary beam of sunlight, against the shadowy background of evergreens.

Something about this leaf, the change of seasons, made me think about my own life and the changing of my own seasons.   It has occurred to me before, that what we see ‘outside’ in Nature, is often a reflection of our own self, our own life: our beauties, our strife, the wideness of our compassion, the blossoming of our own soul.

When you get past 50 – and you see your own body changing – these things take on new meaning.  We’ve all heard this, and we all know this.  Aging.  No one wants to be reminded of this inconvenient little clause built into the contract of human life.

And it’s struck me before: why do we see such beauty in the aging of Nature, yet we see ugliness in the aging of humans?  We see the Cycles Of Everything – coming and going: seasons, jobs, relationships, homes, children, cars, friends, lovers.  And somewhere inside of us, we cling to our fabricated immortality of these things, and we suffer, we cry, we hurt … when these things change and move on.

There’s something in Nature that Gives.  And, relentlessly, IS.  We, anchored in all our “holdings”, our small-town religions we’ve fabricated, look through our tiny portals – from our unnatural world, into the natural world – and we breath a sigh of relief.  There’s something real out there.  There’s something out there that speaks of Life and Giving and the true Divine Plan of things.

Somehow, we’re all a part of that plan.  No one is exempt.

Why is it, that only later in life you see the inevitability of things?  There’s some measure of sobriety that’s gained from sensing deeply your own mortality – the mortality of life itself – and also the mortality of persons and things that you love, that you surround yourself with.

In the folly of my youth, I was surrounded by the folly of other youth.  I was not mentored by wisdom, by those steeped in self-knowledge, by ones who had seen deeper than the facade of life.  Perhaps this is a thing of the world, and world itself is coming of age.  The world itself is mortal, and this fragility and mortality is being spelled out graphically in front of all our eyes.  It will all go, and it will all change, even if this is enacted over eons of time.

But … our tiny little time?  Our sweet and short encounter with breath on this planet?  Our transparent skin, our falling hair, our disappearing resources, our ticking clock.

One day, our children may be taught to appreciate this – at an early age – from those who “get it”.  From those who see.   Until then, it’s up to us: our own thirst, our own knowing, our own seeing.  Our own understanding.

Bullet-Holes of God

there is a time for going back
and a place-holder for Infinity.
i will remind you of the Road For Angels
and the Bullet-Holes of God that are
placed lovingly in your flesh

but first you must commence
the Lonely Voyage,
the one and only Journey
to your own core,
until you understand
your thirst
your value
your fragility
your connection
your capacity for sweetness
and your ability to forget
all that you know
for the taste
of  sugar

Thirst

Old Radio — Endless Static

I am listening to Van Morrison
on an old radio.

I am an Old Person.

I am remembering a Long Life;
a life that no longer exists.

I am entering this moment called “Now”,
and I can take nothing with me.

Van Morrison fades, and the Radio is gone –
gone into something Younger,
a voice I hardly know.

A Younger Voice is singing about Love & Sweetness;
these Guitar Chords have been used before.
the Minor makes the Major all-the-more worthwhile.

It’s an Old Guitar and a Young Voice,
and the Afternoon aches for recognition
as Time slips by.

Van Morrison is gone, and I can’t recall his name.
Young Voices have taken over the radio
and I’m dissolving in a Purple Flame.

The Magic of Love is massaging my Heart,
and I just don’t know What To Do.

Perhaps I’ll just be quiet,
And let the Triumphant Armies of Love
Come Marching right on through.