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Poem 6, whole, holiness

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It isn’t the first time
It was the second night
It is not the same.

The waves are beautiful women who have origami hair

The first rule of God is in the way you are,
The rule is in the way.
It is the way you are.
The more you know what to expect then you are already done for.

We need to get married in the way
We need to work for a little more than just the way home
We are called to make the person whole
By celebrating the holiness that is already there.

All things work together for the same thing.
All rights reserved,
All things considered.

(all the numbered poems are constructed on a Kindle Fire, heavily relying on the predictive text feature)

Sestina – gate

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Across the green expanse I see the sheep.
They have spent so many seasons here, young and old.
Their home is this valley,
their world is the sky, the grass, the dung.
They share their home with a lone pale horse
who only wants to go back east.

One day he’ll remember what East
he meant. There is no use in asking the sheep,
for this pale riderless horse.
He can’t even recall his home, he’s so old,
and all he remembers now is the dung
that covers the valley.

The animals spend most of their lives in this valley,
or at least all of it up to now, before they head east.
If they noticed how much dung
they had created they’d realize that sheep
don’t ever get this old
and their only companion is this horse.

Why is there only one horse
living in this valley,
growing old,
never making it back east?
He is starting to think he’s a sheep,
and he notices there is now less grass and more dung.

Every day there is more dung.
Every day the horse forgets more and more how to be a horse
and starts to become a sheep
mindlessly wandering this no-name valley
never making it back east.
Every day they just get old.

It is starting to feel like they have always been old
and their world has always been covered with dung.
Thinking this way, they will never get back east
and the horse
will die in this valley
along with these sheep.

They will get very old before they ever know the true nature of this horse.
Filled with dung, this valley
points towards the East but now there are only mindless sheep.

(I chose the sestina words from the names for various gates in Jerusalem.)

It isn’t here.

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It isn’t about the tree that Buddha sat under.
You won’t find enlightenment no matter how long you sit there.
Go find your own tree.
Or a rock.
Or an island
in the middle of a freeway.

The birthplace of Jesus shouldn’t be a pilgrimage site.
It isn’t the place. The place doesn’t matter.
That it happened is what matters.

Don’t charge admission to truth.
Don’t sell tickets to joy.

Where any enlightened person walked or lived or taught should be forgotten.
You can’t learn from ghosts in places.

Follow who they followed, back to the root.
Who is at the beginning?
Who is at the source?

You don’t have to go to the holy land.
Black Elk tells us that
the holy land is everywhere.

Right here, right where you are,
put a plaque. Memorialize it for future generations.

Have it say “I am here”

And then burn it down.

Poem 5, dance.

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Now I’m on the way.
The more I write, the clearer the picture.

For some reason God is real
And I no longer have any questions.

Maybe they do not mean to make us forget our birthright.
Maybe they are hungry people who don’t know themselves.

We are called to love.
We are called to make the world whole.

From the beginning there were many mistakes,
many missteps in the dance.
This is part of creation.
This is part of being human.

Let us hope that the same thing in the fire
that danced atop the disciple`s heads
is still with us now.

Otherwise we will have to walk barefoot
on hot coals
and dance this dance anew
faux pas and all.

It is time to begin again.
Let us hear the heartbeat of the universe.
Let us dance with God.

One and two and three, cha cha cha.
Spin and dip, cha cha cha.

Together, we will hold each other,
dancing this new dance,
this old dance, this eternal dance.

Time to take off your shoes.
This is holy ground.

Poem 4, antibody

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It isn’t alive, the old church.
Instead, silenced, and you are not happy.
We forget Samuel and the voice he heard.

Is church about green tea or coffee?
Or doughnuts, or potlucks?

Love your friends.
Love your enemies.

Because the way to heal them
is to get them drunk on love.

Just write, like your life depended on it.
Just speak, like nobody is listening.

Whoever fixed anything by complaining or judging?
Whoever repaired a house with a broken hammer?

We have buildings in our childhoods.
They are crumbling ruins.
We need reminders of the world, broken that it is.

We can’t escape from this world.
It is our calling.
We were made for this brokenness.
We were made for this joy.

You have to let a little bit of the brokenness, the disease of the world
get under your skin.
This is how the antibody works.

I think the way home is now.
It isn’t in the future.
Every moment is a choice
to be here, to be present
to the beauty and pain that is our world.

Every moment is a choice to love and serve God
with gladness, and singleness of heart,
rejoicing, even down to the grave.

Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.

Predictive text poem 3

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I’ve been studying for the ability to get to God,
and I found bridges.
I was going on a roundtrip.

We need reminders of God that are not allowed.
We need to work with God, not only mentally,
but the stone green expanse of the way home is now two miles away.

They are hungry.

Love everything that you can.
Look for the ability to work.
Like the world and the resulting behavior of God.

Yet that too is church.
Yes, there was always a chance of me getting in the way.
You’ll find me unwinding to be able to fill their mouths.

How many times did I grow from being suppressed?
I want to have that kind of relationship with God.
His sacrifice of himself is real.

We need reminders but it is harder than I thought.

In silence, the tree

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In silence, the tree.
Sitting under a tree, so often, alone.
Alone, but with God.
My abandonment by my parents made me
seek my true Parent, my Source,
my beginning and my end.
Where I came from, and where I will go.

In death, the tree
still. A place of silence for mourners.
Grown from an acorn in the hand,
nourished by the ashes of bones.
Live giving energy from the litter of leaves,
life from death.

The tree of silence,
the tree I walked so fast to I thought
my lungs would burst.
To sit under, alone
when my parents were again
arguing. Unreasonable. Unlistening.

Under that tree I knew God was listening.

It isn’t our tree. It isn’t a shrine.
It isn’t the bodhi tree of the Buddha,
sat under by bored and scowling monks,
waiting, waiting, waiting.
It isn’t the tree in the garden,
the tree of temptation.
Who would put poisoned candy
within reach of children anyway?
(Is that the truth of Sleeping Beauty?)

It is the tree of Zacchaeus,
desiring to see the Lord,
stunned that he was noticed
and singled out.

It is the tree in a flood,
a place of refuge, a sure point.
It is the tree of the cross.

I sit at the base, alone
yet surrounded by then and now and
future, of past and far away
witnesses to the
Glory that is God.

It is the tree in the backyard
At the group home –
I didn’t know where I was.
I didn’t know who those people were.
I didn’t know how to get home.
But I knew that tree was safe.

The light was bright on my
pale skin, but I knew the leaves
would protect me.
Natural sunscreen, that green shade.

How frightened I was by that rope,
frayed, high up
like a snake, a lariat, a noose.
The electric fear even now
lets me know
I am safe.

My fear of death, of
harm to myself at my own hand
is so great I feel a charge,
a shock, a jolt.
That knife laid out on the counter is a sign.
My fear of it lets me know that I’m safe.

God is stronger than my weakness,
And God needs my weakness to
get in.

Epthatha.

(I was at a retreat on 4-6-13 and we were told to sit in silence and think about something that was big that happened to us for 20 minutes. We were to try to remember the sensations of being there. I thought I was going to think about when my parents died, but the image of me sitting under a tree came to me. I decided to go with it, and I thought about all the times I had sat under a tree. There are a lot. And I thought about what that meant. I spent a lot of time alone as a child. I’m coming to understand that. I’m beginning to process that. I think the abandonment by my parents caused me to seek God.)

Yoga Sestina

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Stuck in the center of your garden is a wooden staff.
Perched nearby in the shade is a mossy stone frog.
His head is shaped like a neat triangle
and the afternoon brings a visiting pigeon.
Open the rain slicked wooden gate
to the garden and in will stride a warrior.

Your stone faced warrior
needs no weapons, no staff
to open her heart`s gate.
Within her rests a frog
that can fly higher than any pigeon
found in any city triangle.

Who needs city squares when you have a triangle?
Three equal sides is enough for a warrior
who does battle with slate grey pigeons
and wields a pen like a staff.
That ancient forgotten stone frog
will soon be hopping out of that torii gate.

Sometimes it isn’t a doorway so much as a gate
that is shaped with three sides, a square triangle.
Through it can stride a monk, a poet, or a frog.
It is much harder if you are a warrior. 
Sometimes you get tripped by your staff.
Drop it and fly free like a pigeon.

Nothing is freer than a pigeon.
They can roost on any gate.
They work for nobody, they are not staff
in any business triangle.
Strutting their freedom, they are Zen warriors
and are rarely eaten, unlike the frog.

Fancy restaurants serve frog.
Only desperate people eat pigeon.
You are that warrior.
You are standing at the gate.
Within this holy triangle
lies the secret of the staff.

Frog, you are standing before a gate. 

Like a pigeon, you are above any trinity, any triangle.

You are awake, warrior, where is your staff?

Sestina – Stone

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The waves of time beat against the stone.
If only we too were like the fish
who lunges against the striving green
waves like they are a sea of stars.
Oh, my dear, if only you too could see that light
and let it unlock you like a key.

There is a house that has no key.
The doors are all made of stone.
I don’t know how the rooms are full of light
when the windows are filled with painted fish
and the ceilings are devoid of stars.
When will we feel free to run into the green?

The wilderness is in the village green.
The center holds the key.
When will we see within our own centers the compass star?
There is a wilderness there too, in the stone
in our hearts that we sit on to look up at the fish
painted in the sky with heavenly light.

Follow that light.
It leads you into the leafy green
wilderness filled with silvery fish
who hold the key
that will unlock your heart’s stone
doorway, transforming you into a star.

You are a star.
Within you shines the eternal light
that poets and artists, stone
drunk on wild aromatic green
incense think to unlock with that key,
not seeing that water is unknown to the fish.

Water is so much part of the life of a fish
That she can’t even see above her the star.
Within the wilderness of her heart lies the key
that will unlock her inner light,
spilling like fresh, life-giving green
onto the altar of stone.

Fish, you have within you a light
that is brighter than a star, and filled with a life so green
it is the key to any door made of stone.