Tsunami

(Stream of consciousness reflections on the recent disaster.)

Can you hear the echo of voices
of so many lost ones,
looking, looking, looking for the others?
Where have you gone?
And when the waters recede, will we meet again?
Will we ever meet again?

A great wall is coming.
A great flood.
It keeps happening, Noah,
the great flood comes to wash everything away.

Purification is
a necessary part of nature.
But this disaster,
can we ever consider such a horror
purification?

And how could nature choose this part of the world
to cleanse?
India,
Sri Lanka,
Indonesia...
these places of such reverence,
of spirit, of beauty.
Places of great poverty, materially speaking,
but of great wealth in heart.
America
is far dirtier, far more ruined.
(Perhaps that itself is why...)

There has been a great sacrifice.
Christ in the form an earthquake
that shakes the entire world.
Christ in the form of a great wave
that washes us clean.
Christ consciousness will always return.

There is nothing personal in disaster.
Nothing personal,
even though many beings
have been pulled into the sea,
back to God-Nature-One.

We must remember that
our suffering
is ours.
We are not victims of disaster,
but of our attachment
to the impurity we prefer.

I honor the lives lost in this disaster.

11/3/04

I am

What is it that I’m doing here?
I sit and watch,
observing the passing
time and people.
And why am I doing this?
Because I see myself
over and over again.

I am the woman complaining about
her disloyal boyfriend
and the ten pounds she needs to lose
in order to look her best.

I am the man talking about the
dropping interest rates and cars,
and how things are
on the stock exchange.

I am the little child
who’s bored with being inside
in the boring adult conversation place,
who’d much rather be playing and
running around
and squealing at nothing
and everything at the same time.

I am the pierced kid,
a bolt in my eyebrow, a loop in my lip,
and spaces in my ears wide enough to
slip spare change through.
Why do I puncture myself with metal?
For the same reason you puncture yourself
with busy,
with okay,
with later,
with good enough.
It’s just that I prefer to keep my
abuse simpler.
It will hurt for awhile,
but will then decorate my body,
instead of slowly
and blindly eroding away my heart.

1/2/04

Today at 2:30pm

I celebrate
the Great Mystery
that dances each of us
into the world,
teeming with possibility.

And has the Great Mystery
come to your door yet?
Knocking quietly,
unassuming,
waiting for you to invite it inside,
having no idea that you were
meeting your maker,
today at 2:30pm,
while you’re between errands,
and all of a sudden
there’s a fire on the stove,
and the phones are ringing,
but you only remember having
one phone before...
And your front door has come
unhinged, and into your
living room has come a
swarm of bees, dancing
with a flurry of butterflies...
and wait a minute,
isn’t it winter, and the
bees should be sleeping,
and the lawn doesn’t need
mowing either,
but instead of grass,
there seems to be
nothing but blossoms
unfurling their fragrant,
sensuous red petals,
beckoning you outside...
but the stove is still on fire!
And what about those bees...
there were bees...
but the intoxicating fragrance
lures you out anyway,
out into the brilliant
sunlight...
No, but the lawn is grass,
what are these...
red...
(sigh.)
(smile.)

Dear one, why do you struggle so?
Where do your ideas come from?
Winter?
Grass?
Fire?
In the Great Mystery, creator and
destroyer are one...
lie down, surrender to this
blissful red dream.
For is it more or less real than
the illusion of today?

11/27/04

Essence

To understand the essence
of you
I would have to walk
backwards in time to
a small, quiet place
of possibility
and then sit with the great spinner
and listen to her
tell a story
of a day,
just like any other,
when an old soul
conceded to again
take the human form
and walk the long road from womb to sky.
Impressions of
lifetimes,
of connections and stories~
the web she spins is
without a final pattern...
all I can see is the trace
you have left in her web.

11/27/04

Solstice

The darkest day,
the longest night,
the ice crystals
I breathe into my lungs
are sharp, and yet
so crisp and refreshing.
And on this day of gray sky,
the morning sun
barely nods to me as I
walk briskly
through the woods.
He knows that the day will be dim.
Soon enough the moon will cast her
luminous glow,
creating a sparkle on those ice crystals.
And though during this
longest night,
the howling winds will
penetrate
any crevice or threshold,
the glimmer
dancing across the ice crystals
will remind me
that even in great darkness
magic abounds.
There is still light.

12/20/04