The Path
You start early
you’re nobody’s fool
You set out on foot
no snow will stop you
Shapes in the mist
statues of warriors
Arms raised and weapons
You’re undaunted
no footprints before you
You make your way
Wolf howls echo
Breath becomes audible
suddenly interior
You’re walking inwardly
Sounds of footfalls
You’re in the immaterial
A realm opens before you
traversed by saints before you
Now the way is clearer
though deep obscurity reigns
A landscape becomes sharper
deep colors appear
Rich greens and bright blues
echoes resounding around you
A path like glass or amber
cuts through the night like a flare
The black background of space dazzles
with its uncanny plethora of stars
Your heart’s a steady beacon
your forehead’s an unwavering beam
It’s not where you’re going that’s wonderful
but the glory of where you are
No light can compare with this brilliance
nor description match its beauty
A magnificent wanderer’s become you
breathless in a place of wonder
Who’s coming towards you in silence?
Who are these walking with you?
It’s not that their faces are obscured
their sheer radiance is blinding
A voice is actually calling you
A sound of clopping horse hooves
You’re in a valley of light
Shapes of things are their meanings
speaking into the ears of your heart
suspended invisibly in space
in which knowledges are constantly pouring
inexpressible on human lips
understood in the land of this dwelling
before and after words are spoken
As the sky’s planets shimmer their rainbows
and swirl their borealis glows
The dimensions open even further
as if flowers bloomed backwards into being
Words are gone and
God’s Presence mingles
What was thought is true
His embrace surrounds you
The impalpable becomes palpable
the conceived inconceivable
Crows fly in a blue sky
Yellow fields roll forward
What’s before you is behind you
collapsing all around you
Who comes towards you is
for you alone
for your safe invitation
to leave it all behind you
each moment before you
from the tip of you to the soul of you
moving ever within you
each step ringing true
each gesture a worthy one
each silence a vocabulary
of unimpeachable significance
the air parting around you
The way forward abounding
nothing left of barriers
that really never existed
nothing left but to be
in the constant company
of companions of sublimity
as simple as a rooster
crowing the dawns awake
all life’s light converging
just as it’s dispersing
to its place of purest origin
in the golden curve of His Hands
suspended just as our hearts are
in this life-extinguishing air
our houses all dissolving
into their constituent atoms
our relationships all dissolving
into their innermost resonances
We’re going ahead now without them
their cloaks whirl away completely
It’s a sound of rushing water
over rocks made slippery by time
Who’s there can’t be named as alive
but never before as alive as now
This is what living was made for
this vivid incomparable sweetness
raining incessantly inside you
no further fire can extinguish it
imprinted as firmly on your heart
as when you were first conceived
This splendor more splendid than
silvery skies
stretched out on every horizon
this shapeless shape that awaits you
now that you’ve passed beyond
imprecation
to be called back to anything lesser
as indelible as your veins turned
inside-out in the next world
vividly present in this one
standing on the road you began on
even before you set out
morning birds in the silence
crickets quiet in daylight
Your sudden presence multiplied
into one beating heart in silence
not yours alone in time
but God’s invisibly
whispering
2/24/13 (from The Soul’s Home)
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