I Don't Wish To Serve

I Don't Wish To Serve

I don’t wish to serve you

I want my hands

And heart unbound

So that I may wrap

My arms around you

At any moment

Exactly when you need it

I don’t wish to serve

The ideas you have

About me

For they are inevitably

Untrue

I want to remain free

So that I may grow

Toward the sun

Unhindered

I don’t wish to serve you

I want to employ my strength

Not in the construction of

Your reflections

But

In weaving the invisible

Web of love

So that all creatures may

Seek comfort

And shelter

From the storm

Of selfishness

That blows like a hurricane

Through the space between threads

 

Despair

 

Despair

Despair isn’t useless

Not just a yoke

Forged in cosmic flame

To weigh you down

It is not a sign of your

Incompetence

Or imminent

Defeat

In this soul struggle

Wrestling match

You’ve found yourself in

No

Despair

Can mean many things

A way finder

Beckoning you back 

Because you’ve lost your way

A strong, hard shot of despair

Crawling into your limbs

Is a powerful tonic

Slowing momentum

Till time crawls

And the empty days

Provide room

For invisible servants

To sweep out

The trash

It’s not pointless

Or perhaps better stated

Despair has as much weight as joy

Nothing more

Both are buoys

You cling to

In the roiling sea

When you should

Let go

And allow yourself to drown

To sink

Into the stillness

That has been waiting for you

 

A Life Of Magic

A Life Of Magic

 

I sit beneath vaulting curves of wood

Snake forms spiraling into the sky

With a million flags of green

Sprouted in complete surrender

A breeze comes

And I can hear the movement

Of the sky

And in this moment doubt erupts

Who am I to feel this way?

Where are my credentials?

Where is the proof?

My heart dips

In the trough of emotion

I stare out from the bottom

And suddenly I catch a swell

My heart leaps to crest and

I spring up to capture the

Hawk feather tumbling by

I hold it

And feel no need for faith

I carry the feather with me

As a beautiful mark in time

When I swam in alignment

Later

A little girl on a red tricycle

Looks through her golden locks

At the feather in my hand

She squints at the sun

And says, “Can I have it?”

I place the feather in

Her little hand

And she smiles

“It’s a magic feather,” I say

“Take good care of it”

Lessons can grow roots from tests

No matter pass or fail

These roots will go deep

If I take care of them

Magic

Exists only in relationship

Alone

It can’t survive the elements

We must give it shelter

In the warmth of our near bodies

Fire Tender

 

Fire Tender

I caught a glimpse of fire and reached out and took an ember and held it close to my heart. I want to be a fire tender, to help the flame pass through the ages, to be a small hand this fire passed through but for an instant.

Offering

 Offering

I made a furrow in the dirt with the tip of my finger and gave you an offering of tobacco. I asked if I could spend some time with you and you said yes without hesitation. I could tell you thought this request strange, as the birds never felt the need to ask.

I settled my back against your trunk, Grandfather, wise with the passing of time, your skin wrinkled and grey like an elephant’s. I took in your oak strength, exchanged breath with you in symbiotic communion, our most ancient vow, our deepest entanglement. I opened my heart because I knew you would accept anything I offered. It is not in your nature to deny. I pleaded for your wisdom and guidance. What should I do? How should I proceed? I stared into your beautiful canopy of sinuous branches, rippling like snakes frozen in time. Your net of verdant spring leaves ensnared my eyes and you spoke into my rapt attention.

You want to know, you want to be sure and have your guarantees but the heart’s path is not one of surety. See how my limbs curve toward the sun, molded by the seasons? I could not know what was to come, drought, storm or sun. I took what came and grew according to my nature. The path of the heart is like a strong wind. You do not fully know your heart yet. You have stepped into the current’s edge where you feel slight breezes and occasional gusts. Go deeper into the wind, follow your intuition, go where the air quickens, ever go towards that, using all your body to feel the source. One day you will enter the mighty flow, the main artery of wind and you will unfurl your heart and use it as a sail and you will not travel according to plan nor to a set of coordinates but according to a higher plan that has already been laid out for you, the magnetic north of your being. Do not seek the knowable way. Do not seek the safety of the clear path. If you can see the result and work towards the result than you are already at the end and there can be no journey. There will only be the passage of time. Be afraid and go with your heart, cling to it as your center for where it leads is where you are meant to be.

The net released, vision faded and I traced your skin with the swirls of my fingertips and gave thanks.

Wild Beast

Wild Beast

You’re being stalked by a wild beast

If you stop and listen in the stillness

You can hear it sniffing the air

For your scent

When this beast catches your essence on the wind

Mingled with moss and trees

And the feathers of birds

It knows it will surely devour you

Don’t fight the inevitable

If you keep running

And trying to lose yourself in images

And the flickering desires they kindle within

You’ll only make it worse

The beast will flay you with such exquisite mastery

You won’t even feel it

And one day you’ll wake up and realize

You have no skin

And you’ll wonder how you managed to continue

Perhaps the heart isn’t subject to gravity

And it just keeps going in the direction it was set

The spirit is a master oarsman

Change direction

Get it over with

Follow the musty scent and low growl and

Throw yourself at your doom

Be torn to shreds by its great claws

Listen to the wisdom of its roar as you suffer

The ancient pains of dismemberment

And know it is your mind that cares

When it’s all over and the beast has done its work

Ask yourself

How can it be that I am still here?

I am no longer running because

I no longer have anything to protect

I am an empty vessel filled with bottomless love

Then you see the beast wears a mark

And this mark is your name

You come to understand this beast is your savior and ally

Because it only hungers for that which need not be

 

In Your Hands

In Your Hands

I placed myself in your hands
And didn’t even know it
Looking back
I realize
Your great hands rose up from the ground
And scooped me up
In your cornucopian fingers
Like a gardener does a small plant
Roots and earth and all

I walked a path
Through one of your untouched old places
The vibrations of trees pulsing in my chest
And rising up through my throat
The energy transformed by my being into song
I was so utterly taken
By the great woody beings
Who had stood through countless seasons
Over thousands of years
Adding ring upon ring of wisdom
To the great knobbed fingers

I, a mote to their sense of time
A passing shade flitting within their shadows
Found a quiet place and sat
And sang to you for love
And the woods bore witness
To the rushing of air
As I was swept up in your arms

Echoes

Echoes

We are all echoes, reverberations of a single Being. Everything we perceive is a reflection of a single unity. Imagine a swiftly flowing river of limitless depth, the surface entirely placid as there are no obstructions and no friction to disturb the surface. Now imagine a branch as it penetrates the surface of the water. The current now becomes apparent as the ripples radiate outward, the manifested energy’s properties dictated by the shape and position of the branch. This is you. You are not the branch. The branch is your ego, your error in perception. You are the water. Not a drop or a measure but all of it.

Edge The Brightblue Sky

Edge The Brightblue Sky

Standing at the edge the brightblue sky wanting to make its home within the confines of my skull a place to winter to echo all the stored birdsong bent across cranial walls I must leap am about to the intention proceeds the meaning once in air I will know what all that was about the shedding of old energy like stripping away the layers of a silent cocoon nothing around me freedom of unbound direction and I leave the sky behind because my home is not its home and it gives chase and my laughter is encapsulated within the great blue ocean a counterpoint to birds.

 

The Discarded University

The Discarded University

It is a human birthright to live in a state of connection and grace. We are born with an innate ability to communicate and receive messages from our Creator. Some call it the Great Spirit, God, Nature, Buddha-thought, Gaea, Pachamamma…this energy, this all knowing and all loving energy is called by many names but all cultures agree as to where this energy resides and this place is in nature, untouched by human hands. This is rather obvious. Prophets and sages and seekers do not go into the canyons of Manhattan to commune with their Maker, they go out to the wilds, the old places where canopies have overspread the plants beneath and provided the wisdom of shade for thousands of years. This is where a direct line of communication can be established, where messages can be received, if the instrument is ready and sensitive enough. Pachamamma communicates through Her children, through the other life forms we share this Earth with. She sends messages through the plants and whispers to us through the sighing of trees, through the wind in leaves. Those of us who live in cities have been almost entirely cut off from communicating with our Creator. She has no messengers to send. The imprint of the human mind is everywhere. Hard asphalt covers dirt, buildings made in the image of the human mind with all of its shortcomings and constraints, boxy, inelegant, wasteful, crowd upon the eye and fill it to brimming with half-truths and blatant lies. The city as designed for buying and selling, growing rampant with the fertilizer of ego and greed and dire misunderstanding. Pachamamma has been driven out by the hubris of the ego, the false state of the mind that mistakes creation for its own. There isn’t a one of us that doesn’t know there is something drastically wrong. Not one of us is free from the nagging feeling the world we live in is terribly and catastrophically out of balance. We don’t need to do most of what we are doing. We need alignment and healing, we need the loving song of our Mother to bring us back, to reawaken us to what we are. Sacred, holy creatures put here in the ocean of time to learn, to experience and take our place in the great construct that is the expression of the Creator, the web of life. We are here to learn a single lesson and this is all. And how are we to learn if we’ve discarded the university? We’ve surrounded ourselves with a leaded box and are cannibalizing one another with the nightmares we’ve come to believe are true. For many, nightmares have become their birthright. This is false. We need to go back to the old, powerful places, open our senses, let go our false desires and fears, generated by this one-sided construct of the mind and go back to the multifaceted and energetic construct which was made for us. Our home. Our true place. It fills me with a sadness too deep and too hurtful for words to think we can not receive the messages intended for us. There is much to be learned from the singing of birds and the harvesting of fruit. Our true text is the book of nature. Our cousins are the plants and in many ways our progenitors for without them there would be no oxygen to breathe. And what insanity that we cut the trees down for profit. Truly they are our lungs, we are utterly dependent upon them for breath…and we cut them down. What dangerous self-destruction. What is truly frightening is that the Creator, Pachamamma will not be put aside, will not lick Her wounds in the last untouched places, no, She will resort to other means of communication to get through to us. Disaster, flood, famine, pestilence, suffering and war…these are all the products of not being in alignment, of cutting ourselves off from our teacher and savior, cutting ourselves off from the energy that loves us absolutely and made us perfect.