“White noise” is “a random signal with a constant power spectral density,” says Google. “Such a signal is heard as a hissing sound, resembling the ‘sh’ sound in ‘ash’. In music and acoustics, the term ‘white noise’ may be used for any signal that has a similar hissing sound.” After chemo and radiation my oncologist asked if I heard a hissing sound in my ears. I said no, having always thought of it as the Music of the Spheres. It’s the background silence that is pure, whose purity is expressed as a “hissing sound.” Not of snakes, but of bliss. Or the whoosh of the sacred perveyors of bliss. And in the Unseen Next World that’s an inconceivable state, herein called “silvery.” Take one step forward / it all turns to light // But to pour from one bottle to another / step back // At just the right balance / it pours itself…
Poem Selection from White Noise in This World Silver in the Next
In Every Breath
In every breath
a face opens up
of such purity
whose radiance is
cornfields at their peak
moment of harvest
God’s Face which is
no face we associate with
faces
coming over the hill at us
wherever and whenever
we happen to be
and overwhelmingly familiar
when we’re
original emptiness
a worthy state for
contemplating God’s works
inside and outside us
as has often been
iterated
But truly
the pigeon is a perfect
work of God
the fly a famous
confabulation that
we can’t duplicate no
matter how hard
we try
And then there’s air
itself and
churning seas
entering rainbow land and
coming out the other side
as fresh as a Spring shower
and the sparkle of the
freshly sprinkled
God’s Face
Whose navigational pull
ordains the
saintly in us
a ladder of alchemical
gold with many rungs
that become one when
our heart’s breaths
extend over canyons and
thoughts themselves
spark
ablaze with the
possibility of
vastness
Each gnat a
prince among gnats
Each bird the hoopoe of
Solomon
Each blink of our
eyes the man of Allah
who could transport
Bilqis’ throne in a
wink
then bring it
home again
5/3/15 (from White Noise in This World Silver in the Next)
