Anam Cara

That brightens constantly with new promise.

FOR A PARENT ON THE DEATH OF A CHILD

No one knows the wonder

Your child awoke in you,

Your heart a perfect cradle

To hold its presence.

Inside and outside became one

As new waves of love

Kept surprising your soul.

Now you sit bereft

Inside a nightmare,

Your eyes numbed

By the sight of a grave

No parent should ever see.

You will wear this absence

Like a secret locket,

Always wondering why

Such a new soul

Was taken home so soon.

Let the silent tears flow

And when your eyes clear

Perhaps you will glimpse

How your eternal child

Has become the unseen angel

Who parents your heart

And persuades the moon

To send new gifts ashore.

FOR OLD AGE

May the light of your soul mind you.

May all your worry and anxiousness about your age

Be transfigured.

May you be given wisdom for the eyes of your soul

To see this as a time of gracious harvesting.

May you have the passion to heal what has hurt you,

And allow it to come closer and become one with you.

May you have great dignity,

Sense how free you are;

Above all, may you be given the wonderful gift

Of meeting the eternal light that is within you.

May you be blessed;

And may you find a wonderful love

In your self for your self.

FOR DEATH

From the moment you were born,

Your death has walked beside you.

Though it seldom shows its face,

You still feel its empty touch

When fear invades your life,

Or what you love is lost

Or inner damage is incurred.

Yet when destiny draws you

Into these spaces of poverty,

And your heart stays generous

Until some door opens into the light,

You are quietly befriending your death;

So that you will have no need to fear

When your time comes to turn and leave.

That the silent presence of your death

Would call your life to attention,

Wake you up to how scarce your time is

And to the urgency to become free

And equal to the call of your destiny.

That you would gather yourself

And decide carefully

How you now can live

The life you would love

To look back on

From your deathbed.

TO LEARN FROM ANIMAL BEING

Nearer to the earth’s heart,

Deeper within its silence:

Animals know this world

In a way we never will.

We who are ever

Distanced and distracted

By the parade of bright

Windows thought opens:

Their seamless presence

Is not fractured thus.

Stranded between time

Gone and time emerging,

We manage seldom

To be where we are:

Whereas they are always

Looking out from

The here and now.

May we learn to return

And rest in the beauty

Of animal being,

Learn to lean low,

Leave our locked minds,

And with freed senses

Feel the earth

Breathing with us.

May we enter

Into lightness of spirit,

And slip frequently into

The feel of the wild.

Let the clear silence

Of our animal being

Cleanse our hearts

Of corrosive words.

May we learn to walk

Upon the earth

With all their confidence

And clear-eyed stillness

So that our minds

Might be baptized

In the name of the wind

And the light and the rain.

IN PRAISE OF WATER

Let us bless the grace of water:

The imagination of the primeval ocean

Where the first forms of life stirred

And emerged to dress the vacant earth

With warm quilts of color.

The well whose liquid root worked

Through the long night of clay,

Trusting ahead of itself openings

That would yet yield to its yearning

Until at last it arises in the desire of light

To discover the pure quiver of itself

Flowing crystal clear and free

Through delighted emptiness.

The courage of a river to continue belief

In the slow fall of ground,

Always falling farther

Toward the unseen ocean.

The river does what words would love,

Keeping its appearance

By insisting on disappearance;

Its only life surrendered

To the event of pilgrimage,

Carrying the origin to the end,

Seldom pushing or straining,

Keeping itself to itself

Everywhere all along its flow,

All at one with its sinuous mind,

An utter rhythm, never awkward,

It continues to swirl

Through all unlikeness,

With elegance:

A ceaseless traverse of presence

Soothing on each side

The stilled fields,

Sounding out its journey,

Raising up a buried music

Where the silence of time

Becomes almost audible.

Tides stirred by the eros of the moon

Draw from that permanent restlessness

Perfect waves that languidly rise

And pleat in gradual forms of aquamarine

To offer every last tear of delight

At the altar of stillness inland.

And the rain in the night, driven

By the loneliness of the wind

To perforate the darkness,

As though some air pocket might open

To release the perfume of the lost day

And salvage some memory

From its forsaken turbulence

And drop its weight of longing

Into the earth, and anchor.

Let us bless the humility of water,

Always willing to take the shape

Of whatever otherness holds it,

The buoyancy of water

Stronger than the deadening,

Downward drag of gravity,

The innocence of water,

Flowing forth, without thought

Of what awaits it,

The refreshment of water,

Dissolving the crystals of thirst.

Water: voice of grief,

Cry of love,

In the flowing tear.

Water: vehicle and idiom

Of all the inner voyaging

That keeps us alive.

Blessed be water,

Our first mother.

4                   Homecomings