The Buddha's last Instruction - April 5, 2010

"Make of yourself a light,"
said the Buddha

before he died...

No doubt he thought of everything

than had happened in his difficult life.

And then I feel the sun itself

as it blazed over the hills,

like a million flowers on fire-

clearly I'm not needed,

yet I feel myself turning

into something of inexplicable value.

Slowly , beneath the branches,

he raised his head.

He looked into the faces of that frightened crowd.

The face of Buddha is like the sun that moves across the sky. Both help us in our primate minds know our inherent worth and dignity, know that it matters what we do, and known that it is a blessing we were born. You also tell us as you rise above the horizon that we are not needed. How scary is that! Yet, dear, Sun, you turn us into something of inexplicable value, and if we dance as well as we are able with you, we can more greatly reflect the light that is the divine in all existence.

If you were dying and a crowd gathered around, what would you say to them?

Crossing the Swamp – March 9, 2010

Here is the endless
Wet thick
Cosmos, the center
Of everything - …
…I feel
Not wet so much as painted and glittered
With the fat grassy
Mires, the rich
And succulent marrows
Of earth – a poor
Dry stick given
One more chance by the whims
Of swamp water- a bough
That still, after all these years,
Could take root,
Sprout, branch out, bud-
Make of its life a breathing
Palace of leaves.

I imagine myself a dry stick picked up, somewhat rotting from the swamp floor, and Life uses me to stir the soup of existence. I am covered in creative goo, and not the entirety of the simmering creativity, but a conductor that makes eddies that shake and bake the new worlds into being. I am one star in a galaxy of billions, in a universe of billion of galaxies. My weight and gravity and fire are immense, and add to the swirl and movement of galaxies, but are nothing, nothing compared to the universe. However, in my little solar system, I can perhaps give light to the worlds that rotate around me, breathing palaces of multispecies encounters.

Skunk Cabbage - March 5, 2010

...you come, dreaming of ferns and flowers

and new leaves unfolding

upon the brash

turnip-hearted skunk cabbage...

...Your kneel beside it. The smell

is lurid and flows in the most

unabashed way...

...but these are the woods you love,

where the secret name

of every death is life again -a miracle...

...What blazes the trail is not necessarily pretty.

The skunk cabbage is a powerful harbinger of the delicate flowers to come, and in the liminal time of winter to spring it shows it's power to turn death into life. Out of the muck of pond's edge, before flowers, before fruit, before harvest, comes what is not always pretty.

Our lives are not always pretty, and are as powerful and smelly as cabbage root. We are life bursting forth, rising out of the slime of existence. We belong to earth and all her magnificence, and there is peace in this knowing.