Poem to Turn the Year

The sun is buried here,
nursing loam with fibers of old light.
Until you are lost and sinking in green,
you won't find even a trillium seed.
Until you kneel among weeping cedars
you won't find the footprint
you made before birth.
Just ripen and fall.
Every stumble becomes
a path for your children.
No straight lines among stars:
only circles whirling, rhythms
of carbon and fire.
Disappear in This, too lost
to remember your name.
You'll hear a Mother calling,
"Be still as all is turning."
She'll offer you the breast
you've been too thirsty to notice.
Virescent nipples trembling
out of Winter's brown body,
streaming with the milk of bewilderment.
Sleep, traveler, like a ruined bulb
among these withered vines, your fire
composting in forgotten gods.
Remember moonbeams,
borrowed crystals of another light:
how she held you in her lap
and sang your memory full of heroes
at a hearth of yearning, in a house of bones.
You are not more or less
than the elegant poverty of her breathing.
Coming and going make no difference.
Who told you there is only one?
You have as many chances
as wafted thistle or wind-blown milkweed.
Who told you the path was narrow?
I tell you, there is no path.
Only wandering, discovery, return.

Seed

Seed Fire, meet
Mother Darkness in this body.
Flesh is not cold loam but
glittering sky.
I'm a star shattered
to a host of nights.
I'm a silent convocation of wombs
all birthing one ray.
Seed Christ, meet
Mary in my every atom.
I'm not Christian,
I'm a Christmas.

The Panther

Ruby-eyed Thanator of Navi moon,
sweet-breathed Leopard of Dante,
Jaguar of the West who swallows the sun,
totem of maidens who bear stars
in the dark womb of Art:
show me the way of the Goddess,
show me my truth and power,
what I was conceived for
in dawn's unutterable longing,
when the sleeping circle of Wisdom
sprang to life, feline and wild
as midsummer sun on salt waves
rolling over the sands of a planet just born
in the clarity of these awakened eyes,
eyes of Earth's and Air's daughter.
Because of You, I meet my end in my beginning,
the tail of the Panther in its own teeth.
Because of You, I am the cat-like infinite
possibility of Fire emerging from Night.
Because of You, all-devouring Wisdom,
I am bold to pray: devour all,
devour all that does not reveal me,
devour all that is not my song,
devour all that empowers not love,
devour all, devour all
but Beauty!

Air

Don't stop leaping
into Beauty.
Fall off the cliff
of what you already know.
Nobody
will catch you in his arms
the way air
catches wings.
He, Nobody, is the lover
who is everywhere.
If you don't understand this,
jump!

Root

Paul Heussenstamm, Mandala Art

A White Swan
settles on the still lake
of my Heart
seeking one Seed,
the Name
of Shiva.

The luminous blossom
containing the Seed floats
here,
but its long sinuous root
springs from black mud
there,
at the bottom.

Every beauty, every radiance
is rooted
in the Dark.

The Local

After the collapse
of post-industrial corporate feudalism,
its imperial armies and global banks,
its hierarchies of priestly credit and debt,
all that is vast, abstract, untenably complex
will die into The Local
like a cluster of vines to the root.
We too, locating ourselves, will return
to the family farm of origin
and remember how to eat,
how to grow woolly well-muscled sheep
and uniquely delicious tomatoes,
discovering our hands for seed scattering,
for stone setting, for writing poems
on trees and caves; discovering
our feet again for grape crushing.
Later, by December fires, we will listen
to silence, we will learn to listen again,
energized by wind and water.
In a terrible and lovely antlered mask,
the village shaman will birth us in Springtime
and bless our old bones in Autumn,
preparing our Winter souls
for new bodies. A circle of friends,
chanting, drumming, dancing,
will bind us to our Creator,
as our Creator is bound
to this heart.

Take a Moment

Red begonias with burgundy pelts,
opulent, furry as otters
wriggling in November rain
through your vacuous eyes,
where a constant wind sucks inward
all light, to make a compost
of pure consciousness.
No need to stop time, just take
a moment for eternity.
Observe all day the back yard
sacraments, trans-substantiations,
a drowned mouse in the birdbath.
Nothing is ordinary, not even
a coke bottle in the black loam,
polished to a smooth green talisman
by the tumbling earth.
Rest in no space but your own
clarity, that which is never
a distraction. Let your tongue,
your nostrils, ears and eyes
become the angels
of revelation.

Twice a Day

In the tavern of my heart
I get drunk twice a day.
On the door there's a name
that turns all other words to laughter
but I can't pronounce it when I get like this
so I just point and dance.
I yell at people in the street:
"Don't go to work! Step inside,
drink this bewildering wine!
The tavern keeper won't bill you
till the end of time.
Then you can tell him, 'It's your fault:
your grace made me tipsy!'
Such wine is better than breast milk.
When nothing is left, you'll see your Beloved
gazing from the bottom of the cup.
This is the emptiness we all adore!"

Whirl

Don't be a star, be darkness.
Don't polish your cup, become wine.

Take these old commandment-bones
and stuff them with ambiguous marrow.

Take these withered creeds
and soak them in the nectar of uncertainty.

Then you can eat again, making soup
out of holy things.

Be a question mark, in the shape of God's backbone:
a serpent dancing on its head.

Now the Bible is closed, a box of echoes.
It once was a lyre in the breeze:

A map for wandering voices,
leading their songs home to silence.

You could have remembered the end of your journey
before you even started

If you had not fasted from the sweetness
of what was never forbidden.

Don't be a sun, a center of light.
Be night. Leave everything.

All noble slowly turning creatures,
even galaxies,

happen inside you
beyond control.

They whirl, enselved
on the axis of your silence.

Commandment

God has commanded us to splurge on everything beautiful:
lentil soup, taste of pumpkin, scent of autumn rose;
The sound of a mockingbird in the withered cornfield under a full moon;
Warmth of hands circled in friendship, singing candles, lighting songs;
The golden sap that overflows each cell of our Mother's honeycomb gift, this body;
And the strong dark wine of silence.
Drink, pass the cup, fear not abundance; all that is lovely is yours.
Enough belt tightening, enough cutting back; God isn't interested in discipline!
Empty space is butter, warmest ghee, dripping over all creatures.
The distance from the earth to the sun tastes like cooked sugar.
Eternity is not duration but flavor, seeping through what bakes in our gaze.
If you tasted naked Being as God does, or breathde the sweetness of your soul,
you'd never need another dessert.
Instead of Thou Shalt Not, Shyam whispers one word to this starved heart:
Feast!

Another Season

There could be another season
after February, before March,
when ghostly blossoms born of fog
cluster the gnarled plum
like pearls in an empty hand,
where knives of ice slice themselves
to water and seeds swell
to the rhythm of longer days
buried in a doom of roots.
There could be another season
for summer's end,
the blushing finish of melons,
crickets crinkling in dewless grass
inviting leaves down,
a peach, shamelessly sweet,
unsnapping its one button to fall.
There could be a season
on the verge of November
when the buxom zucinni sidles up
for warmth beside the pumpkin,
matted yellow maple leaves
enormous and slick on a wet sidewalk
turn dying to paths of light,
nothing but a nameless glow
distinguishes evening from noon,
mist from mood, the land
of the dead from a bony cornfield.
You gaze and see nothing. On the window
breath appears. Fire starts
on your hearthstone, gnomes of flicker
tease your gaze inward toward gold
more gold than the sizzle of a lightning bug
in the endless twilight of that other season
when May stands naked before June
and everything, even night, catches fire.

Path of the Swan?

The Hamsa Swan named I Am That
circles over soul waters
gazing down at its reflection.

'Beautiful swan!' sings Hamsa,
'I shall call you My Beloved!'

The Hamsa Swan named I Am That
touches the still water,
merges with its reflection,
majestic, silent, one.

'When I sing of this path,' the Swan cries,
'Shall I sing of two or one?
Devotion or unity?'

A circling in space,
a settling on silence,
a soul in its mirror, the Self,
wings of in-breath and out-breath
folding upon the still heart
are no path at all,
Merely Hamsa, the Swan,
resting on a lake of light:
merely I
returning to Am.

The Swan sings, 'I Am That!
Neither two nor one,
neither Bhakti nor Vedanta!
No path but coming to rest,
No path but delight,
delight of knowing my Self
as You!'