Poetry is the only language that I can speak when something meaningful needs to be expressed, reaching beyond the flickering truisms of the moment that tend to turn into ‘un-truisms’ in the next—and definitely into untruth when the context changes, or a different individual is addressed. Poetry is more flexible and therefore: more durable; also more adaptable than truisms, which as a rule are always turning trite.
Poetry resembles the pointing out instructions by a genuine vajrayana guru manifesting in the form of symbols and symbolic action. We can remember and come back to them, and whenever we do with an open heart and mind, they reveal some new aspect of what is waiting for us to discover and embody.
The short poem below was written recently. Those who know me also know who inspired it. In a way it is a very personal expression, so deeply personal that it reveals transpersonal shades of truth. Which is why it is shared here.
She Is Sleeping
Sleep enters her eyes
self-luminous shine
in this moonless night
her face relaxes
into a smile
still here yet gone
gone nowhere but
in this moonless night
her face relaxes
into a smile
still here yet gone
gone nowhere but
to what is being given
giving itself
to continue
unbroken by birth &
forever beyond
what they construe
as series of beginnings
& endings
I can hear the rain falling
& the jungle thicken
greener than green
as she keeps breathing
& she smiles
in her sleep so deep
