Secret Society

When you daydreamed
that Spark of
desire to Create
that Beauty of a
Thing You’d offer
Us, as a
Gift wrapped in
Your flesh and bone,

when that Spark
burst into Light,
You carefully
hid it from
curious eyes,
imagining that
You alone
would labor with
Love,

to handcraft it
into Something
We would receive
with as much
fervor as You
breathed into it.

That You imagined
You were hiding
Love’s Labor
is a fountain
of mirth,

where Love has
a million
marvelling Minions,
call them
Angels or
Beings of Light,
hiding in
plain sight
as Your neighbors,

a Secret Society of
Your Fellow Creators,
with lifetimes
spent
admiring
Your Work.

(Photo by Zaur Giyasov; UnSplash)

 

The Soul of a Rose

Imagine You plucked
The Perfect Rose,
the color of
a rare
petit syrah,

to preside over
the table
presenting The Dinner
marking a Decade of
The Perfect Love.

Moments before
Your Lover arrives,
You notice
The Rose
bears the marks of
a hungry insect
on several of its
perfect leaves,
and on its
perfect petals
the scuffings of
a buzzing bee, or
a hovering hummingbird.

Aghast,
you spy the sticky
trail of a snail,
where no snail
ought to be.

Too late!
Your Lover is here,
and buries the
tip of her nose
amid the
marks and scuffings,

declaring
She loves The Rose
nearly as much as
She loves You.

Imagine
You and I
agree to see
our everlasting Souls
to be as
Perfect as that
Perfect Rose.

(Photo by Engin Akyurt; UnSplash)

 

Meditation

When it comes to
Meditation,
I’m a Neophyte of
the rankest order.

My half-lotus
is both legs
on an ottoman,
leaned back
on the couch,
covered with
my comfy comforter.

This morning
my head was a
spinning
Black Hole,

whirling thoughts
of a Life
only half-lived,
all that early promise
dwindled away in a
spiraling downdraft of
lifelong Laziness and
creeping age.

Then a Messenger appeared,
as a Thought.

“Perish the Thought,”
“Just let it go.”
Or so I’d been told.

But this Thought
carried a Torch,
a Light Beam:

“Wait!”
It said,
grinning from
ear-to-ear.

“Yes, let Us go,
but before You do,
please hold Us
for a moment,
pull Us close,
especially
The Worst of Us.
Look Us in the eyes.

Give Us a hug.
Then let Us go.”

(Photo by Ulrich Derboven; UnSplash)

 

Incandescence

To what robed
being,
to what impaneled
jury,
have You assigned
Your case?

Or, perhaps
You are accustomed
to being
Judge and Jury,

because You imagine
that Judgment and Sentence
are conditions of
Your right to
Be You.

Every action
or inaction
set for trial
by that fabled
Jury of your Peers,
real or conjured,

presided over
by the imagined
Judge of Your
peculiar choosing,

divine or
fashioned of
slippery
Universal Laws,
who or which
may choose to
ignore Your
carefully crafted
pleadings.

But what if
one day
You Awaken
to be greeted by
The Light
of a starbright
Revelation
that reveals

Your Soul
has always been
Incandescent
and
The Verdict
on You
has always been

Not Guilty.

(Photo by Korng Sok; UnSplash)

 

Imagination

What if this
mindbender of
a daydream
is meant to be
an Adventure
of cosmicomic
experiences,

played out from
the Imagination of
The Maker of
All That Is
inhabited by
a beloved
multitude of
Light Beings

formed of the
transcendent
ever-living
never-ending
tissue of that same
Imagination?

What if those
Adventures
are meant to
entertain and
illuminate and
thrill and chill and
elucidate, and
above all to
expand and beautify
The Maker’s Imagination with
Love and Light
and Laughter?

But we decided
it all must be
taken seriously.

How’s that
workin’ for us?

(Photo by Yiran Ding; UnSplash)

 

Maintenance

Your Life
has its tasks,
no doubt:
clean, fix, repair,
restore, rebuild,
re-do from scratch.

Let’s call it
Maintenance.

When You can
squeeze it in –
perhaps between
clean and rebuild –
You may Love to
Create

with brush or
carving knife,
Storyteller’s
pen or keyboard,
ballet slippers or
strings stretched taut
over frets or
keys in black and white,
velvet voice or
playwright’s
downstage dialogue.

Let’s call it
Creation.

What if You
came here
to Create
and You’ve been
sidetracked by
Maintenance?

Or, perhaps
You’ve learned to
turn Maintenance
into Art.

(Photo by Jan Kopriva; UnSplash)

 

The Mystery

Suppose You
spent years
assembling a Library,
built of Beliefs
from Advaita to
Zoroastrianism,

each volume
the apex of
Authority,
built of centuries
of careful
examination and assembly,
using only those pages
approved by
scholars and soothsayers
selected for their
Acumen of the Absolute.

What if You
had a dream
in which
an invisible hand
placed a single
Book
beneath Your pillow
as You slept,
and
in the morning,
when You
opened the Book,
it was Empty,

except for a single
instruction,
printed across
the inside cover,
which read:

“Close this book,
lay it flat in
the palm of
Your hand, and
raise it to
eye-level.

Look across it and
beyond.
Know that
Whatever You see
contains more
Mystery

than can ever be
known
by even the most
careful study
of every volume
in Your Library
of Beliefs.”

(Photo by Janko Ferlic; UnSplash)

 

Parking Lot Rhapsody

I just got back
from Church
on wheels,

where the choir
was a playlist of
Indie Rock,
“Slow Dances,” by the
beatific youngsters
who call themselves
Winnetka Bowling League,

every bit as holy as
a Tabernacle Choir
in a sanctified
House built of
polished pews and
soaring ceilings,

except now I’m
in the grocer’s,
where the aisles
teem with
glorified faces
glowing with
the image of
their Maker’s
adoring, soaring
Love of every
hair on their heads.
I try not to stare

but I’m astonished
that driving home
the only thing
in my heart is
a rhapsody that
began in the
parking lot
at Safeway.

(Photo by Renate Vanaga; UnSplash)

 

Conundrum

Does Your Cosmology
allow a Mystery,
a Conundrum
surrounding
the Origin of
All That Is?

Have You spun
a Story,
a Narrative,
with an Artisan
whose Art
is made of the same
immodest
Love
that forms
The Art of
every Artist
who daydreams
The Mystery into
What Is Real?

Consider this:

Does the Artist
imagine Her Art
to Be an Object
to invite
Judgment?

Does the Artist
conjure His Art
to Be the Subject of
Penalty?

Or does Our
Cosmic Artist
forever expand the
Eternal Affection and
Infinite Curiosity

that Loved
Their Art into
Being from
The Beginning?

(Photo by Melissa Mjoen; UnSplash)

 

Bamboozled

It’s likely
You’ve been bamboozled,
though it’s likely
the con artists
were well-intentioned.

They imagined You
to be a
blank canvas,

yearning to be
painted upon,

the galleries of
Your mind
and heart
hung with canvases
brushed with
the strokes of
others skilled for
such purposes.

If they,
and later,
You,
chose wisely,
perhaps the
inner galleries
are filled
with masterpieces,

especially if You
dedicated the fruits of
Your own work
to the hiring of
Masters.

But now You’ve
grown weary of
searching for Masters,
perhaps Your pockets
are empty.

What if You
dreamed
that You awakened,

and Your hands
were alive with
a Master’s touch,

that was there
all along,
waiting for You to
feel it?

Now You can paint
Your Masterpiece,

even if You’ve only
a handful of days
left to do it.

Wake up!
You’ve always been
the Master
You were
looking for.

(Photo by Filippo Andolfatto; UnSplash)