my life's work, destroyed in so brief a span.
the human part of me finds it so hard to reconcile
the love of the One and the finality of violence
but the other part of me knows that it is inseparable
for i have glimpsed the pure land.
the people aren't toxic;
they are only processing the toxins they ingest.
what is a child but the beginning of a very old story
told again as if for the first time?
and so do we not always create children
every day when we are seen walking to the corner?
in someone's mind a story of us begins to take shape---
every moment whether visible or invisible
the world is Moving with beginnings.
up in the storm we are nothing but specks
caught in crashing rivers of road signs and door frames
but the mathematical models tell us something important:
that the flow is the sum of its particles
and everything matters.
the first thing i think, when i come up out of the clouds
is where am i, where are the constellations,
can i see the land, the mountains, the countryside
and only later do i notice the change in my hands.
every belief system is a way that the mind can die
and it is only in the world that life can always be found.
in the night, i fly toward the lights of the city.
during the day a flock of geese keeps me company
and we share stories of the recent weeks.
i listen but i am searching, scanning the ground.
we can't see all the times when the story works.
when something terrible doesn't happen
because of a thought which was a memory of a story
which was another lifetime in which something terrible happened.
an entire lifetime condensed into a single moment
for someone else.
down on the street, the hatred in their eyes is a form of purification.
it is the divine justice that all paths be explored
not out of spite but that we may learn---
for life is the living embodiment of the truths of the world
and we can learn the most from our failures.
we learn and learn and learn
and still the fire rages
for still there is fuel.
when i come up out of the clouds
will i see the sun and the moon and the stars?
will i long to meet them, or will i go back down
to the earth where the rain washes everything
and tell them what i have seen?
not for the jeers of those without wings
but for the little ones with itchy backs
who look up into the grey sky
and wonder.
there are individuals who can see so very far
and have such great reserves of strength
but i am not one of those.
i am a one-legged grasshopper
nearly killed by the foot of a god
but i managed to lay my eggs in the cool earth
under the ivy, and i celebrated the rest of my days
flying as best i could toward the sky
and singing at night a half-song in gratitude
for the Motion which made me and kept me
and broke me and kept me and sent me on
in new tiny shapes emerging in the spring
with two good legs and eyes looking up
to that deep forestblood sky.
i am setting fire to my life's work,
these papers which are meaningless
in the face of the least of my daily acts,
for these are just more words to be misinterpreted,
argued over, dismissed, rediscovered, translated,
used to control, and lost.
all i want you to do
is live