BUDDHA SONGS
To gaze into an empty room
is not becoming Buddha.To feed a starving lion, Buddha
gave up one of his precious lives.As a rabbit, as food,
he leapt in the fire.We're paired to help,
like hands, like feet.To gaze into an empty room
is not becoming Buddha.*
What's loveable about a hum?
Needlessness. It stops, or continues.Our shadows lie
on a moving stream.Beautiful...to be beautiful
is all we need to offer each other.This my cat knows,
and my trees.
WITHIN ANOTHER LIFE
Those whose days were grudging or confused
may come back trapped within another life
as a boulder, or a pane of glass,
or a door that suffers every time it's slammed.
If I return a boulder, love, some summer day
come sit by me and contemplate these horses and these hills.
And if a windowpane, gaze through to see
the meadow on our walks where the brown geese strut.
And if I am a door, come home through me,
be sure I'll keep you safe.
And if a knotted, twisted rope,
from long self-clenching and complexity,
oh love, unbind, unbraid me then
until I flow again like windswept hair.
WHITEWATER VISION
Like everyone else I've served my time
lying under the weight of a mountain,
breathing stones...yet always my blood,
like leveling water, knows where it's wanted.
Once I had a whitewater vision:
beneath the rage of the rapids I sensed
the undersound to the river's sound...
indistinguishable from silence.
Who am I? Not a solving...a seeing.
I view the storm through eyes of calm.
I speak to say
where the silence is.
On days when it seems the food for the journey
is clay, not bread, and the spirit famished,
as dusk transfigures everything
I pause, near silence: listening.
LOOKING AT A LIZARD
My only purpose this moment
is looking at a lizard.
Does he know he's not alone?
He breathes with tiny push-ups,
his skin all hairline caverns
soaking up the sun.
I doubt, alive, I'm liable to get
closer to timelessness than this,
looking at a little lizard breathing.
WHAT BREATHES US
Regards to the day, the great long day
that can't be hoarded, good or ill.
What breathes us likely means us well.
We rise up from an earthly root
to seek the blossom of the heart.
What breathes us likely means us well.
We are a voice impelled to tell
where the joining of sound and silence is.
We are the tides, and their witnesses.
What breathes us likely means us well.-Barry Spacks