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DAWN PRAYER
I stood before my Lord at dawn
and for a moment I was a
fiery tropical lily, orange with
yellow spots, a
blue sky
in front of me,
I was a pane of glass with iridescent striations,
I was a symphony orchestra under water,
I became a long shadow cast in sand of a
city in ruins or an
oasis withered to stalks,
I was the expression on an old woman
watching her last grown son leave home,
for a moment I was goldfish in a
tank aboard a yacht bound for
China filled with
explosives,
I stood before my Lord at dawn
on the lip-edge of creation
and I became a canyon space full of early
fog, a panorama for clouds
to pass in,
shifting pastel shapes,
I prayed before God and
became a dark river with early morning
voices of men setting out in
canoes – echoes,
cries –
I became a space in which things happen,
I became a space where prayer happens.
3/6
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MAYBE
NOBODY'S REALLY HAPPY
Maybe nobody's really happy.
Maybe the King of Siam, seated on his ornate throne,
wishes he were a kid again
hiding in his mother's brocades.
Maybe everyone fears God's judgment, retribution like
hot ingots falling from an
open closet door,
ravenous eagles clawing their real way into our
bowels from a simple nightmare,
the unsettled feeling of accomplishments unaccomplished,
words misplaced, thoughts astray, feelings
overabundant or inappropriate.
The canopy of sky pulled down.
The earth with its aromatic verdure
rejecting us.
Even the saint in his sunlit room at
midnight wanting to be
more in the next world than
in this one, where the grass is
definitely and eternally greener.
Perhaps everyone wants to be in a warm bath of
infinite sorrow, then
kick a hole in its bottom and be
floating in a sky full of stars.
Maybe no one is really that happy for very long,
although at about six o'clock this afternoon,
a late May afternoon sunlight very
golden and glistening but
muted in the room,
as if in a
deep forest, the carpets and furniture alike
glowing in it, and after a day like a
real spring day after a long, hard winter,
air warm, doors open, having done most of the
things I wanted to do, fix the front
water-pipe that broke off in the blizzard from
frozen water inside, and I planted the
seven tomato plants given to me on Friday –
for a few moments I suddenly did feel
happy, buoyant, not depressed about my
job or financial worries, or
dying before I complete the
Great Work, whatever that is,
before reaching Allah, before
becoming in this world a pool of
genial quicksilver to reflect the
most light possible, turn my old familiar
shopworn
selves
inside-out indelibly and forever, to be
generous and benign, grandfatherly-grandmotherly,
open-hearted to all, thinking of
everyone before myself, illumined --
yet maybe no one is happy for long,
everyone wants to cry his or her eyes out,
shout into the nightmare, hold the edges as
hard as possible before they
crumble away, and we,
blown husks, crumble with them –
maybe everyone feels indefinite, ill-defined,
ambiguous, manic-depressive,
the great elk blanket of blue snow
covering our hearts like a season of privation
when it seems
even a tiny drop of true happiness in our cup
would quench our thirst forever.
5/5
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WHEN SOMEONE
When someone hasn't the usual impediments to
human existence: self-doubt, hesitance to
act directly, lack of a
radiant inner compass, irrational
fearfulness, inner agony about
innumerable things, actual
physical pain, a warped
ego,
and walks forward with faithful confidence,
moves with harmonic human grace,
we are exhilarated.
5/8
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FABLES WRITTEN DURING A
FLIGHT FROM CHICAGO TO PHILADELPHIA
1
A tree wanted to be a bird.
It stood in the forest and told all its neighbors
about its longing to fly.
The other trees just shook their leaves at him
derisively.
Whenever a bird landed on its branches it would
ask how it feels to fly.
It would tell the bird about its desire, but
birds don't have much time for lengthy
conversations.
Time passed the way time passes for trees.
Rings would be added around its central core.
Generations of squirrels and other small mammals
lived and died in its trunks and branches.
Insects mated on its
vertical and horizontal surfaces.
Seasons came and went.
Even as a very old tree it never gave up its
desire to be a bird.
Curiously, none of the birds in that forest
ever wanted to be a tree.
2
An ant struck out on its own and
decided to build a giant palace on a
rock.
It left the formic acid trail and
found a large rock next to a stream.
It had a beautiful view of the water on one
side and a gorge and hillside on the
other.
It was isolated without being desolate.
It got the early morning sun and was
shady in the heat of the afternoon.
At night he could sit on the rock in full view
of the moon.
It was perfect.
The ant accumulated building materials and
set to work.
Bits of gravel and shale, portions of
dry leaves, ends of twigs.
He built a beautiful palace and went into it
to try it out.
He pushed a few of the gravel grains around until he
had a perfect terrace for viewing the
landscape, or sitting out under the
stars in the moonlight.
The only thing he lacked was a queen.
But the view continues to excite him.
3
A flying saucer landed among some Australian
Aborigines, ones who had
refused levis and denim shirts and
continued to walk around in the pitiless sun
naked.
It seems they had been expecting it.
When the Martians slithered out of the saucer
the Aborigines entered into telepathic communication with them
as easily as a ray of sunlight enters a crevice.
They tossed off some humorous remarks,
joked around a little in little
haiku bursts, then went
into
deeper modes of thought.
Soon they were jointly appreciating circles and
triangles, luminous loops and the
rising and setting of worlds.
Around the campfire that night you could
hardly distinguish between the body-painted
Aborigines and their
body-painted guests.
Their song echoed in the dusty valley.
4
"There is never an empty space in the universe,"
the scholar thought, seated
among his books.
"Allah's secret voice permeates everywhere, leaving
no stone untuned, no tome
entombed, no tomb undone. No
stone unturned..."
He liked to string his thoughts out across a
little abyss of associations from time to time.
"There is never an empty space..."
He gazed into space for a moment, leaving his
thoughts blank, formless and
nameless.
There was no word for the state he was in.
In the space available to him there appeared
a tiny calligraphic figure, the
name of Allah in perfect delicate script.
Around it was a halo the color of ripe plum.
It shone as smooth as ivory. It
suddenly split apart and in a
split second the scholar found himself
among his books thinking
"There is never an empty space in the universe...
Allah's secret voice permeates everywhere..."
8/11
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