Abyss of Wisdom

Awe deprivation is a thing

Now, in this era of calling

Some things a thing and calling out

Other things that are not a thing.

You’re always almost there, aren’t you?

Core behaviors change so little,

Especially in the mean, yet

You’re prone to believe there’s something

You lost, and if you get it back,

If you could only get it back,

Things would get much better again.

Awe. A sense of the mystical.

Prelapsarian harmony.

There’s always something wrong with now,

And it’s always something missing,

One of those things that is a thing,

That if you could only get back

You could restore yourselves with it.

There are no boundaries. The world

Is one. The universe is love,

And this abyss is bottomless.

In This Manner

The shadow of a single cloud
Flows like black smoke over the slope
Of brownish-green and ochre oaks.

The wind is just that strong today.
Two men in a metal rowboat,
Both bundled in hooded parkas,

Drift, fishing, around the low pond,
And the whole scene reads like some kind
Of westernized reenactment

Of the nostalgic Chinese scrolls
Depicting a lone fisherman
In inks outlining the season,

Most often winter or autumn,
As it is here, now, and never
Will be in this manner again.

Talk about a Dragon

If you can get used to it—
Enough so you can savor
The details without losing

Some marvel at the weirdness
Of being unknown, alone,
Unseen in what you’re doing—

Anonymity is fine
To the point of exquisite,
Any hours spent in your head

When no one cares where you are,
What you’re doing or thinking,
An empty space late at night

Or early in the morning,
Or both. Whatever nothing
Much you can get to yourself

To get yourself to that place
Where you may notice something
No one is sharing with you,

Like the strange phenomenon
Similar to shooting stars,
But slower and more local

Confined to one nearby cliff
In the small hours of clear nights,
Long streaks of light from the sky,

Reddish, smeared, like burning chalk,
Vertical above the cliff,
Silent and gone. There you are.

Heaven Alone

One of the Lowells suggested
God could be had for the asking.
It was meant as wise piety,
But it seems a little cheeky.

Who’s ever gotten God for free?
It’s true God isn’t fungible,
Doesn’t come with any price tag.
But God’s not some pledge you can have.

God’s a potent, dangerous ghost,
One of the most poisonous words
Ever invented, a weapon,
A licked blade, a gun, a potion.

Creating God was like minting
One coin worth Earth’s whole treasury
And then borrowing against it.
Since no one could have dispensed it,

No one ever had to produce
Proof it was in one’s possession.
God’s name gave claim and counterclaim,
Freely attempted, paid in pain.

While God stays in Heaven alone
Slowly leaking radiation,
Let other words get some business.
Honest debts need real forgiveness.