Thanksgiving Incantation, 2010

Our gratitude is the simple recognition
of what is right before us
and what it offers us right now,
from here in the center
of this moment.

Someone asked for a prophecy,
a word of truth,
and I said
I still see Christmas angels
coming in waves,
overwhelming the forces of hell
in the darkest hour.

Each of us
in our own Gethsemane
drops to knees,
falls into the lotus
at the center of the pond,
the jewel on the altar,
the incandescent offering
of God.

At the heart of our aloneness,
we find each other.

It is here that peace begins,
here from which all power flows,
here the home where
all things are seen as one again,
and all made wholly new again
in this endless and unflickering love
that does not ever
compromise with fear.

Look here
into each other’s eyes now,
one being after another
until you return to the first.

May all sentient beings be happy
and have the causes of happiness.
May all sentient beings be free from suffering
and the causes of suffering.
May all sentient beings never be separated
from the happiness that is free from suffering.
May all sentient beings abide in equanimity,
free from attachment and detachment.

Our gratitude
is the simple recognition
of what is right before us
and what it offers us right now,
from here in the center
of this moment.

Let us see the single skin
of all we witness now,
and with all our senses, feelings,
thoughts and intuitions,
may we witness fully
the singularity of being,
this union of the witnesses
with what is witnessed
in the flash of birthless deathless love
from which creation flows
from God right through the center
of every one of us
entirely unresisted by illusion,
unclouded by ignorance.

May love flame steady as the first star
in a long dark night,
and burn until there is
no more room for light.

Hearing

Big sky slides high overhead
racing weightless glowing glaciers
paint dancing aerial spectacles,
improvisational abstract renderings
in white, gray and endless bright blue,
a seductive living Rorschach test
into whose pliant arms are laid
all our most secret self-narratives,
all of the nightmares,
all of the dreams.

There is no end
to tales mumbled by mist;
but whispered just beneath the skin,
under the white noise sparking
from these condensation continents
scratching against the wind,
deeper than all of that,
the oldest story beats
at the heart of it all.

A clear day
is coming.

Confession

Nothing is easier to walk away from
than what isn’t even here.

Be human with me
while we still can.

Tell me what kind of dreams
you’d most like to have;
I’ll show you mine.

Nothing is easier to bump right into
than what’s always been here.

I don’t remember what train
I came in on,
who I was going to see,
what I wanted to say
or needed to do,
how long I was going to stay,
or what any of this was for.

But I remember you.