EVEN THOUGH THE SNOW
Even though the snow is still on the trees
I can smell the flowers from here
Like a distant fragrance of light.
Everything is creatively radiant.
Everything is an unsanctified insight
into the nature of everything else.
Whatever exists.
Whatever has ceased to exist.
What has never existed
is me.
Either I’m all of that
as you are
and we’re all of each
or we’re altogether nothing.
We make paths for ourselves
out of what we’ve already experienced
but those roads are always behind us
like the wake of a lifeboat
like the light of a star
like the generations of those
who summon us to a seance in the future
like the ghosts of those who haven’t died yet
because time doesn’t run just one way
and the mindstream doesn’t follow its own flowing
anymore than water does
because wherever it’s going
it already is.
Even at the end of all roads.
In dangerous backalleys
and suicidal cul de sacs
life makes a way out of no way.
It never looks back.
It never looks forward.
It doesn’t turn time into a schedule.
It doesn’t come early.
It doesn’t come late.
It isn’t full of hellos and farewells
because wherever it walks
it greets itself.
A bluejay turns upside down
to get at the seeds of the sunflower
with its face downturned in a crown of thorns
like a station of the cross
and a gust of stars flys off its wings
as if some stargazer
had just breathed out the Milky Way in
You want to know who you are.
You’re that.
You’re this.
You’re him.
You’re her.
You’re it.
Just stop looking at the world
as if it were inanimate
and you can breathe in
the same night the stars do
you can breathe in the space and the darkness
and the abysmal depths of time there is
in every moment
in every breath you take
and you can turn it all
including the exceptions
into a clear light
that illuminates its own shining
nur wa nur
light upon light
with awareness
with life
with the jewel of a hidden treasure
by which the world is known
to be wholly and solely
no less or more than each of us.
I see the dead leaves
still clustered
this deeply into winter
on the young maple tree
that hasn’t learned
that poems were meant to be scattered on the wind
or that there’s a voice in the burning bush
that’s her own
she hasn’t discovered yet
that’s as passionate and generous as the fire
she speaks through now to the stars
she aspires to.
Why go looking for symmetries of randomness
like jewels in a dark ore
when they’re right in your face like your eyes?
There’s no secret eclipse in the heart of the jewel
that’s as obvious as a morning like this.
There’s nothing to know.
There’s nothing not to know.
And the light seems so much like bliss
I doubt if there’s anywhere anyone can go
where the light can’t touch the dark spot in the heart of a fool.
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