Winter Follies

They were standing on the viewing platform 

with their focal acquisitions, long 

zoom cameras, spotting scopes, and carbon fiber 

tripods, looking for another bird 

to acquisition for their memories, while 

consulting with each other on the technical 

specs of their recently-acquired equipment, 

divulging stories of the special sightings 

they remembered like a snowy owl 

consuming innards of a meadow vole 

as twenty birders grabbed exclusive pictures. 

Their chatter was annoying me as I 

looked out upon a spacious empty winter 

marshland. What about my own attempt 

to acquisition all that precious silence?

The Big Wave

Universal consciousness 

is like the sea and body-mind 

is like a wave and pure awareness 

is the sun reflecting in 

these waters after its intent 

to know itself unfolded into 

being as the sea evolving 

into wave upon wave upon wave 

until a single one of most 

particular complexity 

like Hokusai’s 'Great Wave' could see 

the sea and its reflection of 

itself, that precipice of sun, 

the one with no beginning and no end…

Samāpatti Rocket Mechanism of Myself

Sitting silently while looking out the window, 

it came to me the trees were just extensions of my body 

and in time this intuition had extended to the stars, 

including ones one only sees through Hubble’s eye. 

Resting silent as this universe, 

I looked within and saw an energetic fire 

and knew this inspiration filling me 

and trees and all the universe is what I really am. 

Existent, suddenly I saw I wasn’t in that space—

my divination says I am that space 

and all this matter of an energetic knowingness 

is actually within my silent seeing. 

Now a flash of revelation shows 

that even silent seeing space is just reflecting 

my unknowable and infinite awareness.

The Waking Giant

I rest my feet 

upon the coffee table 

and superclusters 

untold years away 

support their weight. 

I scratch behind 

the ears of Pluto 

and Andromeda 

wags its tail. 

I place my arm 

around a maple tree 

whispering 

she’s a lovely 

friend and universe. 

Awakening, 

I rubbed my eyes 

this morning; stars 

emerged to clear 

an age of sleeping.

This Sermon on This Life

Right now, I’m here alive. 

And when I die, 

this life will never know I’m dead. 

So why, as this vitality, 

should I concern myself with dying? 

The leaf will fall; 

the woods don’t mourn the summer 

while the trees prepare for spring. 

Am I the leaf, 

and if I am, 

I process light to know the light. 

Am I the tree, 

and if I am, 

I process light to know the light…

The Sermon on This Land That’s Your Land

I had always wanted to drive cross-country. Maybe it was Chris who forty years ago first put desire in my eyes to see this land as she discussed her trips back and forth from San Diego. Instead I studied all about its history and literature looking for the sights as others saw them.

Six years ago, my daughter was about to move to California, and being recently unemployed, I decided I should drive her there, and then I’d slowly circle myself home, visiting the natural wonders of America. And so it happened.

I wrote a poem while sitting on a great sequoia; took so many pictures in Yosemite they left me black and white; looked out upon Lake Tahoe’s mountain dark reflections; drove the lonesome road straight through the desert of Nevada; walked through sandstone Arches after crying at the marriage of the ground and sky in Canyonlands; looked out from Anasazi windows in the sacred vaults of Mesa Verde; never took a photo of an inexplicable white buffalo in Zuni; worshipped with the silent Acoma apparitions in Sky City; just missed a slow coyote on I-40 in New Mexico; touched the surface of the largest mass of turquoise ever while exploring Santa Fe; listened to the blessed myths of Taos Pueblo; found my way to Cripple Creek and finally the summit of Pike’s Peak from where I scouted over cornfields of Nebraska crossing Mississippi waters towards the east back home.

It was experience I cherish to this day. But still, it was the mere experience of a superficial world, infinite in its variety and wondrous in its manifest appearances, but nothing without the consciousness in which it’s seen.

This wordless Being is the only wonder of the universe. More to the point, it is the god in which that universe appears. It’s here and now, and everywhere I go, it is. Even nowhere. Omnipotens sempiterne Deus qui abundantia. This land is your land.

The Sermon on My Birthday

It was my birthday yesterday, commemorating this appearance of myself in its continuing transformative performance—

as a universal entity not knowing nodes aren't separate networks. 

We know beneath the surface is an energetic field of sub-atomic spontaneity.

We know that it’s impossible to see the space between the mother and her child in which a separate consciousness is born.

We know that nothing is an island and the butterfly that flaps its wings becomes the eye of hurricanes.

It’s elementary education most of us received some years ago.

And yet we play this game of long division to the point of wondering why this world is so divided, full of suffering and violence.

Spontaneous, unborn, holistic, we pretend we’re something other.

Happy birthday to this grand illusion.

A Sermon on the Sunset

At last, the sun will set a minute later on this evening. 

It’s not the solstice yet, and daylight lessens still 

because the sunrise still is later too, 

but when the light is dim 

we tend to grab at what we can. 

Such is the way of the world. 

Unmindful of what we really are, 

yet subliminally aware of what we are beyond appearances 

and its precipitous diminishment within the mind, 

we blindly latch upon whatever object, 

physical or conceptually otherwise, 

that helps to fill the gap we intuitively know exists. 

It never works, of course, 

because the gap is both an infinite one 

and nonexistent on the very same occasion. 

Similarly, the sun is never really setting. 

Its light is ever-present, omnipotent and diamond bright. 

It’s just the world that’s in the way.

A Canticle for The Experiential

If it’s not experiential, it’s a borrowed belief.

Beliefs may be borrowed for a limited time on faith.

If a belief is not confirmed by one’s experience, return it.

If a belief is confirmed by one’s experience, burn it.

There’s no scientific data supporting

the almost pre-Copernican-like belief

that consciousness is

an epiphenomenon of the brain.

Simple awareness sees

that the entire universe is,

including all scientific data,

in, of, and by consciousness.

Any belief indicating

consciousness is an epiphenomenon

need never have been borrowed—

at least the sun appears to circle the earth.

But the earth circles the sun.

And the sun appears in consciousness.

And consciousness is witnessed by

this reflection of awareness.

Hail Goddess

The flower doesn’t grow itself. 

It takes a seed to raise the stem. 

Without the sovereign ground, 

how would the root appear? 

Water, water, everywhere, 

and who will taste its truth? 

Sunshine is our superwoman, 

fear our only kryptonite. 

All history belongs to her 

despite a battle’s latest lie. 

She’ll always win the war 

because she never has to fight. 

Hail Mary! Hail Parvati! 

All are always hailing love! 

Every flower in the floral 

circle of this wondrous world 

is singing in her laurels.