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
