Buddha's Elegant Antique Christmas Carole

There were shepherds
living in the fields nearby,
tending their flocks at night.
A Messenger of Being
appeared to them,
and the glory of Being
shone around them,
and they were terrified.
But the Messenger said to them,
“Do not be afraid.”

At midnight’s bleeding edge
just over the horizon
at the back of the skull,
first shimmers scamper
bright, engulfing
and brief.
The world is all
emptiness at play,
and something silent,
deep and wide as God’s own sea
lights up.

Wet green blades of grass,
iridescent under the dark blue glow
of morning rain-clouds,
grow fat,
turgidly exuberant
on the thick veins of moisture
flooding roots.
A thousand emerald Excaliburs
rise from the Earth
exhale offerings of oxygen
in ever-deepening sighs.
Winter is on us.
Cold soil
sprouts a verdant overcoat,
curls up well-fed
on little hypnogogic peppermints,
pockets of visions
begin to puddle here and there
until she sleeps again,
tills her womb
with the first dreams of spring
almost three months off still.

Christmas slides more deeply
under the skin this year;
everyone feels something
vast draw near.
Kings, Queens,
Presidents, Prime Ministers,
Premiers and all the other
hireling agents of the Oligarchs
on every continent
startle in unison,
sphincters reflexively
tightening an instant,
sensing something coming,
something omniscient, immortal,
free, inexorable.

The Avatar approaches.
Everyone feels
the light in their bones brighten,
sees
their karma erupt from the mud
like a lotus in time-lapse,
in space-collapse
phosphorescing lavender petals
in every direction
until all of us
see through it all.
When the masks,
and the masks behind masks,
come off,
and nothing false is left to see,
this place
is a soliloquy of light
in a cathedral of mirrors
wide enough
to hold the stars.

Very long ago,
on Grandfather’s lap
you heard him tell you
how old they are,
and how astronomers had
figured it all out.
He said
“You can look it up your self!
It’s a proven fact.”
You’d always believed him before;
but when he says
how old the stars are,
you know he must be
teasing you.
You’ve known forever
the stars are always there.
Whatever we see
in the least of us,
we see in God’s child.

There is a prayer
crackling through the air,
a petition for union
scrawled in the shared mind-scape
by the once-awakened, once-born,
once-risen, once-returning
One.
Come quickly Maitreya!
I see you in
every open eye,
through each mirage,
risen immaculate,
infinite, radiant,
present, alive and wakeful,
looking back at me,
seeing everything.
Your glory is endless.
When I look at you,
the bright white sun of Being
pours through your pores,
and you let it,
and it comes,
it all comes clear.

Here,
let me dust it off,
use this elegant
antique English word
just one more time;
it is almost
adequate.
You are
glorious
to me.

“Do not be afraid.
I bring you good news
of the great joy
that will be for all people.
Today in your town
a Savior is born.”