THINGS I CARED ABOUT YESTERDAY

THINGS I CARED ABOUT YESTERDAY

 

Things I cared about yesterday

don’t care for me today

in the same way they never did

but that’s okay

it’s probably better this way.

People come and go like themes and topics

that have talked themselves out of their solitude for awhile.

Who can blame them

when the narrative finally takes its own advice

and puts its tail in its mouth

and tries to finds its way back

to the headwaters of the truth

by trying to flow back up the mountain

like a snake that finds everywhere it goes

is the path it didn’t take.

Take nothing from nothing.

It’s still nothing.

I don’t see what we ever had

that was ever anything to lose.

Free to choose.

But then if you really were

as free as all that

you’d have to choose to choose to choose to choose

in a long hall of inter-reflecting mirrors

with thousands of eyes and mouths and ears

with something to see and say and hear all at once

and you’d go mad.

You’d be paralyzed.

You couldn’t keep up with appearances.

Lucky for us things move on of their own accord

without meaning anything in the way they do

however we interpret events

like fish trying to find a definition for water

when they’re it.

Solitude’s a small human matter

compared to the vast impersonal loneliness of death.

A little fire to warm a night on earth

as if thousands of ghosts were summoned

to every breath we take

to tell sad stories to the stars

in a language of smoke

that was already dead before they spoke.

Scars in the fire.

Cracks in the heartwood.

And it’s important to see things

from the star’s point of view as well.

Even when the phoenix

rises from the ashes in the urn of its heart

and spreads its wings like flames through a forest 

to renew the mindscape with seedlings

at that distance

it’s still just a firefly of existence

compared to the creative cremation of the universe.

Even if you were to rise up out of the oceans

like the peaks and pinnacles

of the Himalayas and Rockies of thought

the higher you climb

the deeper the dark valleys of the emotions

you’re trying to transcend.

One mile east is one mile west

so no one needs to ask for directions

when you can take all roads at once

that lead everywhere

you already are

by walking one road well.

Ask any star.

There’s no highway to heaven.

There’s no lowroad to hell.

The thing about light

is that’s it’s invisible

until it falls on someone’s face

and opens their eyes like loveletters

from a stranger with a passion for clarity.

There’s a lie in the heart of the truth

that is the truth in the heart of the lie.

The first is insight.

The second’s compassion.

You need both to see right.

To the stars

it’s darker by day

than it is by night.

And deeper than the white

there’s a black mirror 

that reflects being with a mind

that doesn’t bind the stars to the their light

or the blind to their lack of seeing

or leave any traces of the lunar birds

that silver the words

we mistake for the meaning of water

but frees up a huge space

for things to come and go

as if the true face of time

were an insight

into this moment now on earth

lightyears beyond

anything that could be measured in mirrors.

No birth.

No death.

Nothing appears or disappears.

Nothing of worth.

Nothing discounted.

You walk barefoot to enlightenment

across a burning bridge of stars

with the shoes of delusion in your hand

like intimate things you ignorantly understand

have no place in the house of the spirit

that demands you take your homely self off to enter

without tracking the world in like starmud.

You get to the other side.

You step inside

only to discover

that life’s a river with only one bank

and you’re not even standing on that.

You meet the Buddha.

He squats on his tatami mat

like a tree frog on a waterlily pad.

Free of violence like yesterday’s news

he sits in silence

without changing his position or views

about not having any.

You see the one in the many

and the many in the one advaitistically

like a mantra meant to put both your feet

into the same shoe

like a mouth

as you tuck your bruised heels into a full lotus

and sit like a rock in the road.

You’re just another lump on the log

but you keep thinking

if you can’t be a frog

maybe you can make it as a toad

if you try hard enough.

And then it comes to you

like a whisper of dirt between your toes

a soiled parenthesis of earth

slipped under your fingernails

like a black sail on the horizon

take delusion from delusion it’s still delusion

and all you’ve been doing

is trying to wash mud and water off

with water and mud

blood with blood

and there was never anything false or foul

about anything in the first place.

And you slip the duality of your feet back

into the infinite spaces of your newborn well-worn shoes

and the Buddha walks a mile with you back to your place

like the shadow of something greater than light

older than clarity

and deeper than the night

that summons the stars out of its dark abundance

to flesh out its insight

into the nature of itself

with your life and light.

And it whispers you into its own ear

and pours itself out

like a great ocean of awareness

into the tiny mooncup of every tear

it takes to squeeze a tide and an atmosphere

out of you like a pet rock

and smears the mirror like the Milky Way

or the silver trail of a garden snail

or warm breath on a cold windowpane

where someone is writing a name in their solitude

like a secret that can’t be told to anyone

without waking them up

from a long dark sleep

in a world of their own

to someone they already know

is no stranger to what they dream of

when they’re alone.              

Things that are rooted in heaven

have their feet in the stars

and their head on the ground.

Cataracts in the eye.

Flowers in the sky.

There’s no need to go barefoot.

There’s no need to undermine

the foundation stones

of this house of flesh and blood.

There’s no need to sweep

autumns of spiritual junkmail

off your stairs

like the dry leaves

of the deciduous myths behind the stars.

They know what season it is

and time doesn’t stop

to ask the calendar for advice

on how to get to where it’s going.

The full moon is full to overflowing

and the harvest isn’t late.

There are no secrets

in a secret garden

that’s got a sundial for a gate.

The flowers opened up

like New England asters

with nothing to confess

long before you stopped to interrogate them

like the willing accomplices of an emptiness

that talks in its sleep to the stars

about cosmic wounds with earthly scars

that make it all real.

The effect has a feel for the cause

with blood on its claws

and the healers keep the pain at bay

by killing you deeper into life

than the infinite spaces

the stars plunge through

like agonies of light

on the edge of a knife

that cuts through you

like the crescent moon

through the heart of a hill

on the horizon of a distant sacrifice

to a god that’s never even heard of us

and doesn’t know what it is we’re asking for

that could impossibly be missing.

 

PATRICK WHITE