(Gravity In Its Absoluteness)

Gravity in its absoluteness

Takes hold of even the smallest thing

And draws it toward the sudden center of the world

Each thing

Is held in place like stone whose mass

Kisses the earth, 

Seeking to cling to something larger than itself.

Only we, in our pretension, keep moving

After some idle freedom.

Surrender to the weight of reality,

To Earth’s knowing

Untie the knot

Raveled with every step in all our confusion.

As children of Earth we begin again

Our lesson to understand

The power of stillness

And not to move so much.

Things teach us to fall like a stone

And come to rest.

Even a young bird must fall before it can fly,
For all things want to take wing
And all things, disquiet, want to find rest.
Yet motion and stillness, stillness and motion
Are ultimately one substance.

The Face Of The Storm

In the face of the storm you do not hesitate

You have observed it mounting on the horizon.

It comes for you now.

The force of this storm that sends the trees fleeing

Down the avenues that recklessly diverge in the wind,

The wind that one names “God”,

Which is the name of everything.
The wind of non-condition

In which everything is engulfed and extinguished,

The darkness across the vast plain of  night,

Starless and moonless. 

In the face of this storm you do not hesitate
For yours is the face in the storm. 

You calmly enter it just as it reaches you

Centered in the thought of no-thought,

Aware that all things are of the substance of this wind,

Neither this nor that.

There is one visage in the clouds,

God and yours.

Your blood sinks back into its source,

Everything.  

This wind sweeps the world from your senses

That scatter like withered leaves taking to the eight directions.

Sky Mining

Listen, you to whom weariness and frantic confusion came

Listen, lest you want to forget the pain and agony that made you 

Who you are now.

You suffered to receive God because you dared to be more

But what you longed for- God's glory and power- never came, 

Yet suffering enriched you

The way many a miner for gold 

Has suffered agony in the wilderness

To find a little, and gold you did find, 

But it wasn’t the treasure you thought it would be.   

Rather, you learned patience and discipline

And how to suffer, suffer, and suffer, 

Because you had no choice but to suffer

In the wilderness where you had ravaged the depths,

Never once giving up digging.

How different it is now from when you were young

When your teeth chattered with aspiration

As you stared into the sky mining for God.

All of those treasures will be brought forth into full day

By the silence of stone that rests beneath the sky, exhausted

When you finally vanish from the Earth

And now your great desire is to savor this honey of peace, 

This little gold you found.  It’s not the power and the glory 

That you longed for as a youngster, but at least 

You don’t suffer for those two anymore.

Though you learned that your will can’t save you

You are able to the hear the whispers of God

Running through your veins like gold.

You thought when you were younger

That it would be the sound of singing 

And a loud, triumphant voice over the crowd that you would hear,

But now you know that it is like

The murmur of dark mountains in the distance

Where you hear the hints

Of where that vast treasure of gold is buried.

You knew since you were a child that it was more than a rumor

That this gold existed, and you await the day 
That you know must come
When it is finally revealed