Awaiting this

Wave the hand of consciousness
to reveal what lies beneath the mist of thinking.
That realm of obscurity,
where faith is a wick;
knowledge, its wax; and the Beloved,
the igniting breath.

We read the words and seek their meaning,
like waist deep anglers on silent morning ponds,
hawks orbit high above the prairie floor.
They see the meaning beneath the water’s surface,
slender secrets hiding in grass blades.
Those who see, see.

Awaiting this. With each trudging thought,
the moment was released gently to the wind
and softly on the farthest forming wave.
And every dawn thereafter he patiently waits
for the return, never knowing
which of the endless waves might deliver.

And each day at dusk
she waits serenely for arrival
in the rustling of the forest canopy
not knowing that somewhere
in the verdant everywhere,
could be this one
silent
leaf.

 

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Sound and No Sound of Waves

Slashes of pale
blue behind clouds.
While, wind and tide repeat the pattern
of things bumping into one another.
A metronome, all ticking without end.
Who can fathom where it began.

I thought last night,
ocean waves combine
in sound and no sound,
they comprise,
tides, to meditate and listen
for the silence in the crashes.

Purling crests in sweet diminuendo
rolling toward waiting shores,
collapsing in a crescendo
of midnight murmurs, only heard
by being there beside them.

And while I am not
there, I hear the marching echelons.
I hear my soul in harmony
with a distant melody.
There is always music rising from
white caps on the sea.

I can be distant
and I can be near all at once.
This is how we listen to music
and the interwoven
sound and no sound of the waves.
You understand.

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Show Me Your Face

Of all the eyes I’ve gazed into,
each pair was a lens that converged
the same single light from so far within them;
In my squinting quest,
they must have thought me mad.
But is was only in Your eyes
that I beheld the reflection of my own depth.
This was how I knew.

I imagined You
in her breath,
in his hand clasped on my shoulder.
What You saw as my loving eyes upon another,
was only a request
to show me Your face,
show me Your face again.

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The Absence


Part I – The Absence

In the silent strike of her haunting hours
she slowly stirs, wakes, and sways
from a drunken fog
to awoken dreaming
He beckons across a midnight lake
and says,
“Come beloved, wash the confusion
from your heart…”
I wrestle in the skin of intimate thoughts
as if to fulfill something so carnal and desirous,
’tis just the journey toward a long sohbet.
I do not like this absence,
if even a brief breath
in the suffocating density.
But what do I deserve in partings stead?
Of what presence am I worthy?
I’ve turned to some unseen and unheard relief
in the direction of the Divine and
the Divine turns me right back to me.

Part II – The Talk

Ah, to talk
and forget our feet
and the path we walk
and the sound of earth
crunching below the soles of our shoes.
To strip the mind of formulations
and gears and clinks
of cogs and to just eschew
all but this deep listening
in floating sounds that resemble words
and sentences that, like music, slip
through the lingering pauses of quiet lips.
To recite with wild gestures and
where birds listen, then
in chorus join.
To release, to understand
and so doing,
realize our existence.

Part III – The Walk

To amble and never stop
for long enough
to know where we are
or not
and thus,
to get lost and leave little time
to return home before darkness.
And that feeling we find
of “My God what have we done,”
and to feel fear for wandering too far
only to realize then
the comfort of having this friend
by our side; one whose hand
never lets go,
who pulls when we hesitate and
grips tighter when in doubt.
This on a fall day with you.
We walk and talk, I am
with you, even when without.

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The Aperture


I’ve surveyed the heavens for immeasurable treasure
well beyond reaches of mankind’s endeavors.

The quest is tricked by our limited views
of mysteries disguised as discovery’s clues.

We artists create what we seek to reveal
as our hearts alchemically turn dreams into real.

Scouts of awareness on the paths toward tomorrow
dispelling the memories of yesterday’s sorrow.

Lo’ we are the brushes for God’s great portraits,
dipped in the paints of each others’ rich palettes.

The dusk sky is spotted with lanterns and crescents
and here my essence of being seeks a being of essence.

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Out There

Out there,
just over the bruised horizon
is another year disappearing.
Out there on the western edge of remembrance,
something is always disappearing.
I look into this seascape with a forlorn feeling
and yet an enigmatic foretelling.
The curl and crash
of this wave is not the last,
nor the next;
no, many a million ages’ crest
has rushed and collapsed
here on these shores. I’ve memories
to be made and forgotten
of boundless encounters.
I close my eyes
against these night fallen skies.
Our cold gray clouds darken
and weary lids drop.
Another wave,
another deepening shade
and we shutdown. I know.
I know tomorrow will be the beginning
of forever…again.

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Company on the Path

Rumi warned to never travel alone on the path. Yet I look around and find great and silent company everywhere. Still something is missing. Jami said “if you have never trodden the path of love, go away and fall in love and then come back and see us [for guidance]…” I’ve fallen clear through love, from its eyes to the bottom of its feet. Others spoke of a pain in the heart of yearning for God… I can scarcely distinguish love from God, lover from beloved. I am flirting with the eyes to a door, imagining myself on one side, but where I belong being on both sides and in between. Perhaps I am the reflection and every door a mirror. I’m lost to my world, it’s flavorless, even the chores before me remain meaningful. While lost at home, I’m home in ways I cannot adequately describe – strangely at peace with this being lost and something tells me there is a danger in this.

I read and words pour into my heart, which is always a size larger than what there is to be read. Each book ends like a first glass of wine – I’m not drunk or dizzy… Just warm and quiet. I speak when I need to, eat when I need to, exercise when I need to… I’m taking care of two of me. All that can be said has been said, the words are a flock of birds, shifting this way and that. Pretty patterns in murmuration formed by elation as their purpose.

“Know that whenever something permeates another it is assumed into the other.” (Al-Arabi) If the composite is to suffer, that of which it is comprised suffers. The grass eaten by the cow, becomes as much of the cow as the cow becomes the grass.

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Keystone

Thou art the Keystone in love’s majestic archway
Ne’er having to duck my head, here unafraid
I walk through You, I walk beneath You,
whilst to my own wayfaring heart I bow and pray.

Before Your door standing, all senses blend
Stacked blocks of confusion and clarity bend
up the sides of the jamb toward the center they’ll meet.
Here, the Sufis’ tattered fabrics interlock and mend.

One is cautioned to not make sense of perfection
Nor linger idly, unguided, at the intersection
Of these matters of mind and spirit and soul
For each becomes indistinct in their divine connections.

Thou art the seamless blanket of evening snow
Such depths which no traces of angles show
Beneath that, You are hidden colors and shades,
A sinuous surface of a boundless white glow.

A fair curving visage on a path narrow and straight
Yet I, the broken bristle left in this finished portrait
Tis’ Thine infinite tapestry of fine threaded similes
that I’d need a thousand more lifetimes to articulate.

Temptation stirs lips, alight at passion’s precipice
Where lovers leap from the threshold to the Beloved’s kiss
Lo, the Quran was not revealed to convey God’s love,
But to protect us from that love’s pure and blinding bliss.

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The Old Sea Dog


On winter’s eastern seaboard haunts
Spirits bled from the seams of the heart
Beneath the torpor of a glaucous sky
We soak and settle in sobering eyes.
One writes, one waits,
Both writhe through relentless change
One cannot forsake his youth
The other grays with ageless truth.

We cook and then in hunger wait,
Our efforts, garnish for an empty plate
we walk toward the east, yet speak of the west,
The host is served by the love of the guest.
The shrill laughter of our children drifts
into the rafters of nostalgic mist
Up there, undreamt dreams collect in clouds,
Hidden behind pale pleats of a vaporous shroud
The roots of hope weep for everyone
While its flowers burn off into a merciful sun

Visages of former lovers float
Landing as raindrops onto overcoats,
Let her evaporate, brush him away,
You may remain, but they can’t stay
There’s no way back to memories
Those leaves long fallen from the trees
In the palette of illusion, your canvas drowns
It is the quiet reed that makes a sound.

God’s faithful canine springs forth upon command
“Flush ’em out boy! Send what flew fleeing from the sand.”

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In the Hidden Wood

I thought to myself, “I have a haunting feeling
I’ll be passing this way again.”

But what if I were to take a different path
to get here and then from here onward,
yet another. Could you be with me?

Sometimes not a thing moves. The winter breeze is
dead still
and the sun drenched rain drops on the pine boughs
are suspended in the silent cold.
An imperceptible slipping of the sky
makes the earth seem
like a dull colored rock
in the slow rolling river
of passing time.

The soldiering minds of the businessmen
are far off in concrete cartons
and I am supposed to be there.
But instead I’m hidden in the woods
with poets and muses.
I listen for you among the voices of
the lovers in the woods. I watch
along the edge of where the fire light can reach
to see your colors appear
in the flickering amber.

If you cannot be where I am now, then
I shall imagine myself in another place
and another time
where you can be.
And so we play out the fantasy
with such intricacy and passion until
we turn catatonic; and slide
into the frozen scenery.

I relive the decades and rewalk the path
with you, a familiar stranger,
by my side. I did not know of you then,
but I think you were walking toward a fire
in the clearing. I might have seen you.

You were thinking, “I have a feeling
I’ve passed this way before.”

And the poets in the woods sing,
“How many journeys more
will our unfinished stories endure?
Could these limbs ever stir again?
Our last night of remembering,
come beloved and be the wind.”

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