“Snow”
Snow on the high peaks.

Mist in the valley.

Birdsong dissolving in
darkness.

I alone by the fire
with my invisible.

“The Solitary Ecstatic”
Don’t surrender your loneliness
so quickly.
~ Hafiz

Hafiz, do you know what it is
to be utterly, totally alone?

To be visited again and again
by those elements
that some call God
and still no friend
to share with, tell what is happening??

No one near
to hear your story
extend a welcoming hand?

Sometimes even God
is not enough.
Sometimes the loneliness
and something called rapture
are all you have.

“Bodhidharma”
They gave me a name
I did not understand.

It was that of a great figure,
someone written about in books,
known to history.
He was the one
who carried the dharma
to other countries,
made them his.

Sometimes I wonder
if I could be he,
shrunken and circumscribed,
struggling to remember,
to fulfill.

What if I were that one,
come back again,
trying to recall?
What would I do then?

“Our Beginning”
It is never easy,
this moving ahead,
this coming to the place
where you and the Other
are one.

You have come here
in the way
that you are.

You will leave
much the same,
not wearing wigs
and false robes,
nor assuming the guise
of all your past accomplishments
but rather in the primal innocence
of what has always been you,
the hallmark
of your special being,
even as now
the wind speaks its secrets,
howling down the mountain
passes,
the rain making its way
into our hearts,
as we strain
to grasp
what is being said,
to hear the message
hidden in the
tight bud unfolding,
the cloud passing overhead
into the violet sun,
all fading in silence
and somewhere a whisper:

This is your beloved
arriving to embrace you
in a final recognition.
Be silent and attend.