I SEE MYSELF HAPPENING

I SEE MYSELF HAPPENING

I see myself happening

in the flight of a bird across the moon,

in the appearance of the leaves

and the leftover flowers

that have gone on blooming

in the corner of the yard

longer than anyone ever thought

and in the light of the star

through the branches of a tree

that’s rooted in me like an emotion

that’s grown beyond its rings.

For a moment the moon

holds the spring leaves up before her

like the cards of a new hand

to make sails and water of their shadows

and I am all arrivals and tides and departures,

the skeleton of a battered ark

scuttled in the mountains of the moon

after the flood receded

and everything was land

and I was the two of every kind

that disembarked like a mind

to elaborate itself through a bloodline

that wound many threads

into one strong rope

that might bind me like a spinal cord

to a place in an empty lifeboat.

We all have our protean myths of origin.

The wounded lies we use to exempt

our intimate extinctions

from the obvious suicides

who trusted death not to judge.

One voice says it’s merely a witness

while another tries to interpret

the meaning of the life that’s going on

without consultation

and another scoffs at them all

as if bitterness could save you from being a fool.

And tired of having my teachers

interrupt my truancy

with rational voices

that always knew better,

I suspended the school

with an unfinished loveletter

that got things off my chest

like baby crows in a nest.

No rule, no fool. And now I’m free

to taste the moon for myself

and know it tastes like scars.

And there are commotions of life in the grass

that don’t violate

the incredible privacy of creation

by trying to assert what they are

to the secret that gave them birth.

What child was ever of no worth

in the scales of a grieving mother?

The moment you affirm you exist, you don’t;

and denying you do won’t do either.

In a single scale of the fish,

the whole ocean

and in a feather, the sky.

Sometimes reality hangs

like a tear from an eyelash

or a drop of water from the tip of your nose,

reflecting the entirety of the world

and sometimes it’s a grain of dust

that humbles the mountains.

The moment you go looking

for the meaning of things

you pry the jewel out of the ring

and all that’s left is the eye-socket

of a skull full of fire ants.

No exit, no entrance,

no inside, no out,

isn’t it obvious by now

there’s no theshold, no door,

no far shore

no road to follow or not

no passage to anywhere

no aspiration or desire

no sage or liar

no mirage on the moon

or shadow born again

in the fires of the sun at midnight

pouring itself into forms

to ensnare you like love and war?

There’s no need to air

your private or public ordeals.

Just realize your formlessness,

your lack of beginnings and ends.

Mind is space. What’s to liberate?

Nothing gained, nothing lost,

nothing large or small,

nothing wounded or healed,

full or empty, bound or free,

and yet nothing is ever missing

because time and mind and space

are three echoes of you in the same empty well.

Why struggle exhaustively

like a wave that takes up arms

against the sea

or a light at odds with its lamp,

a flame that sobs in the ashes of its fire,

or a breath that holds itself aloof from the wind

stringing yourself out like beads

along the spinal thread

of your hydra-headed rosary,

trying to pry the pearl of the moon

out of every drop of water

that falls from the tip of your tongue?

If you think your life was attained at birth

then surely you will lose it when you die,

but when you realize

that origins and ends

are both eyes

of the one seeing,

the same breath

on the threshold of now

without an eyelash in between

like the moon on water,

everything you’ve ever looked for

asks you

where you have been,

and what, if anything,

among the inexhaustible answers

you might possibly mean.

You’ll finally realize

though you’ve looked everywhere

on worlds as numerous as grains of sand

and plunged through the darkness

like the only fish in an infinite, eyeless sea,

and cobbled the road

you hoped would lead you home

with the prophetic skulls

of all your past lives,

and pondered your purposeless beginning

like a funeral bell that never knew you well,

the source of the mind you look for

is as close as the lamp in your hand

and everywhere your eyes inspire the light to dare,

you see the black squirrel in the blue patch of grape hyacinth

watching you watching it

and thought-years beyond the exhibits of meaning,

you understand.

PATRICK WHITE