The Path

Plow your fields in the Unborn.

Release your hands from the plow.

Drop now the reins of the ox of mind.

Let the fields grow of themselves. 

There are no furrows within the fields.

Only places to endlessly cultivate. 

Atop the fields, clouds float,

Not clinging to the sky.

The sky is not attached to the clouds.

Its illimitable blue is a polished mirror.

A mirror that absorbs all objects

But reflects none.

Stare into it and you shall see

What you are, will be, and have always been. 

In these fields, it is easier to stomp the earth,

Planting seeds with the foot and miss the ground

Than to stare into this mirror of sky

And not see it.

 

A Visual Riddle

By Ramon Brooker

The ocean, the sky, the shore

Like a visual riddle, a rebus,

Suggest a word. 

But this picture, meant for the amusement of children,

Confounds.

These visual riddles are seen

And in their seen-ness

They are one

With the unseen

That is wordless.

 

A Sudden Breeze

Travelers Caught by a Sudden Breeze

By a sudden breeze

That enrings me like a small bell,

I am called

To receive a private, informal audience with the Moon

This night.

As my preceptor, she gazes at me

As I gaze at her,

Neither of us speaking-

Just a long hush between us.

We sit loosely cross-legged,

Experiencing completeness.

No thoughts come to either me or her

In the afternoon we share.

I have no questions.

She has no answers. 

Notes:  Shoken: a private audience with a Zen abbot or preceptor.

Agura: sitting in loose, cross-legged meditation.

Shore of the Beloved

Wind pours against your face.

It touches with two hands 

And brings it closer for a kiss.

This is the shore of the beloved.

Surf unrolls…

Here white suds search

The cream of dreams,

Reach their limen and return,

Bringing new hopes and visions

With every new wave.

Each rings hidden clocks in the rocks 

In swirling surf

That unscroll around your feet 

With the foam-born goddess.

Many hands twist within them

As do many within the sea

And within the wind

To tell time

From timelessness. 

Bitten Moon

 

 

Gnawed by ravenous winter,

A bitten moon 

Bleeds white

Into the snow.

Serrated wisps of clouds shred,

Clamping down hard like jaws 

Tearing thin, pale flesh.

Crying far into the sky,

Wolf-winds whine through the trees,

Their fangs of cold 

Striking and devouring everything

That is too alone.

 

Still, you trod on this night

Beneath this moon

Slowly eaten away 

Inside the freezing winter of time.

You have a home to journey towards. 

.

 

Vision at Sunset in the Oakland/Berkeley Hills

 

Like smoking thruribles pendulated 

By the ancient hands of patient priests,

Eucalyptus trees sway in the shifting fog, 

Wafting their incense of limbs and leaves 

Inside the church of hills.

Within the herd of flaming beams at sunset 

Goats feed on canticles of underbrush

Bleating, "Halleujah! Selah! Amen!",

The charisma of fiery winter clouds 

Enringing them in aureoles.

 

Moved by the scriptures of high winds,

The eucalyptus are etched by the hand of God upon the copper sky

And the Divine signatures of the boulevards and high-rises below,

A Passion stretched out on the crucifix

Of intersecting streets, their heavenly destination guaranteed,

Expand in the misty, theurgic distance

Of Divine Drama, salvaged.

Like probationers,

The hills and trees stand penitentially

In rigorous prayer and fasting, performing devotions,

Committed to the deliverance

Of their souls. 

 

All is Revealed.

 

The heavenly planes above

Are mere shadows of 

This world.

 

Balneum Mariae

 

Divine vapors steamily kiss the face

Of every amorous surface

From which God looks out upon you.

 

Surrounded in recurrences of water,

You are bathed in mysteries.

Sphinxes emerge from the mosaic

Of tiles swirling on the shower wall,

Encompassing you in the enigma 

Of your senses, riddling your mind

From nonage to senescence, night and day,

Their cordon extending along the avenue 

Of your mysterious destiny, 

And you bathe.... 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The nerves of body-mind opening at dawn,

Awakening to

The aura of white Egyptian roses 

Rising out of the desert, scattering their albescent sepals

In the rain that spills from your shower-head. 

And you sing, "O VITRIOL!" 

 "Visita Ineterioa Terrae Invenies Occultum Lapidem!"

Again, visit, visit

The interior

Of Earth

 

And purify, purify

Again, rectify and refine

That which is base within you and the world

And you will find

The Rock of Ages,

The Hidden Stone

That supports all Perfectly: 

The soul and body purified

In the Sea of Mary's Bath-

The Heat of Jesus

Nourished by Her Waters. 

Notes

Mariae Balneum, also known as Bain Marie, is a water bath or double boiler, a type of heated bath used in alchemy and to this day in science, industry and cooking to heat materials gently or to keep materials warm over a period of time. It literally means "Mary's Bath."

VITRIOL.  Visita Interiora Terrae Rectificando Invenies Occultum Lapidem: "Visit the Interior of the Earth and Rectify/Purify it to Find the Hidden Stone."   An alchemical motto.