Stopping time

Sometimes it happens, probably more often than we
think.
When we feel, that's more to the point.
I've watched it, compassion, companionship,
care and more,
coursing out, because the want of it
wells out, and there's no stopping it.

I'm not sure about time. We invented it
some cycles ago. It's a sure measure, yes,
but bodies say something else.

It's odd that a lightning touch
torches everything it strikes,
firing every surface it feels,
in it's fierce finding of
ourselves.

Some time ago we knew what might have been,
and in those moments we thought of
love.

That word turns into
windswept ways, seething in the
Cape southwester,
curling into growing waves that
crash against a daring walk along
the breaking water.

When you stop time,
you know more,
and the ocean agrees,
arguing aimlessly as it moves
incessantly.

When fear dies

There's something in the body you come to trust, eventually,
or not at all.
The timing is interesting, because crisis is what's at stake,
and too early or too late makes you miss the
merry-go-round,
and you might bump your
nose.

Let the people with whom you can be sincere be your
lighthouse, no matter who they are.

And let all you love take in all you are,
so that return will be
complete.

Uniqueness matters less than
music of communication.
When you hear that, and know unbearable vastness of which
you are part,
you sing,
even though your heart hasn't practiced, and your mouth hasn't
kissed.

I wish that our human dust would wake,
at last,
and realize something about the star-fire that
stares us in and from the face, while we're polite about
not noticing it.

Can star-fire die? Has anyone noticed that absolutely everything
is on fire
once you brush the wind's dust from your eyes,
and earth's seduction whispers things you look away from,
momentarily, to gaze at galaxies furious at your
indifference?

We call it beauty, but I think in another galactic language,
fear's removed for the sake of a
quicker
conversation.

The Cosmos Whisperer

When that flicker of forgetting comes across the
face of knowing,
and caverns of cosmos open up,
one to another,
I'm scared in the body but not in the soul.
 The caves of connection
cross too quickly for comprehension.

I've lived a very small life,
and this body wishes to be known,
yet the trying is so utterly
incomplete.

I have none of the assurance that other
bodies seem to know, and follow.

I've covered and copied much,
and called it learning. But lately the
cosmos whisperer has leant my way and
offered me paths I've never taken.
Maybe it's too late, perhaps the time for a story
has passed.

Yet the sea says something in the waterman of me,
and the sky knows the wind's answer,
and something in the dawn gold
gleams anticipation.

Tomorrow I'll take my warrior boat and listen.
I am already told I'll never come back but to the
ones I love.

That's difficult, almost impossible:
how do you know who you love unless you know
how to listen to
the cosmos whisperer?

I see there are many shades of light that declare,
and I hear the sky say water in many forms.

I've also heard of small winds whispering from
the mirror. Everything opens
should you want to enter.

Bridge to water.

To connect one point to another,
like love, or connection,
someone has to walk on.

Someone has to cross the gap,
maybe walk on water,
in storms,
and still know quietness of
better depths.

When you come to the end of what you know
and the next feeling offers nothing but
uncertainty,
common sense and caution would want to make you
wait and see.
Stepping out could drown you.

I am no declarer of triumphant miracles:
I have never walked on chemistry that wouldn't
bear my weight and the muscles of my back
beat no wings,
and when I am angry my words
will make themselves known.

So is my bridge to water,
or to a particular point
that another might describe?

I have come to the end of my pier,
and jettison weight that would hold back.

I have no intention of swimming through this
winter of wet ideas.

I've walked through the forest to reach this place.
The water seems deep, from where I stand:
my obedient cells are ready to escape and cross
to another space where I shall re-learn
the old things that are the stones of bridges
against which water taps and laps
its blind way, passing beneath the arch that
covers the bright flow from the night's stars.

I know that my held-out hand
is not alone. The bridge that I wonder about
was built long ago.

Where God is

Don't talk about God.
If you're in the western world and you are of that
old class, still dealing with dogma and doctrine,
let me tell you,
it's over.

I'm quite prepared to speak for
all time.
It's over.

It's better to be real than right,
and every night terrifies me with new messages.

There are many stories,
and in how many of them am I?

And then there's the crucial one,
of the cross before which
all must come.

Well, I've waited there all  my life,
seriously looking for something real.

Let me tell you something:
you will find a voice of which
you could not dream.

Don't talk to me of God,
and about being right.

I have never been right,
nothing in my childhood knew about
right.

I am sorry for being right
every time I thought I was.

It's like springtide, rising, real,
spreading over things you thought
you knew.

If you have an idea of
where God is,
have a look into your early years,
and what was spoken to you
and what you received so much that it
echoes always in your knowing soul.

That will sort out your knowing quickly
when the first leaf of real autumn
falls slowly onto the skin of the sunset
you've always watched.

There's something really wicked about
being alive.

That's where you might feel
something much too big to be known
nudging your door's doubt.

Decision

It's difficult not to get wet when you're in the path of
pouring water,
yet I've known someone who decided
against the
heart.
What a surprise this was.
To stand not against but up to
everything you know and have the strength to
sense what carries on beyond that
decision.
I know water, and have swum every current and cross
that flows.
Is our decision real?
If I don't see it in the water's way
how would I know?

This is something that stops and thinks at the tectonic
edge.
If we love, does fire just below
know?
From where is the fire?

I have searched everywhere and
found you
yet you have not wanted to be found.

Well, water will pour down,
perfecting you body, no matter how
ignorantly I seek your
heart.

But hear, or feel, for a moment
how the thunder of inescapability
roars into us.

When light sleeps

The cosmos is normally a tumultous place
full of furious exchange,
Stars are truthful,
perhaps galaxies are gracious.
One living planet promises
nothing.
I don't know if there's another one;
it's not likely.

I have the sense that fire in the belly of
our birth is merely a brief reminder of
moving memories.
Not of the sentimental kind, no;
the finger points always to somewhere
I dread. Again and again in dreams,
light wakens, and the body tries to sleep
with certainties that slope towards those really
awkward places.

I live in ships that try to sail, on planes circling
impossible landings, and in faces I know that have
forgotten me.

I should remember that sometimes
light sleeps.

I've walked often between midnight and morning.
What I've heard then tells me that sometmes
light sleeps.

And in the quietness of whispered messages in
mornings to come, there's a story of how
light sleeps.

It's not a secret, nothing ever is.
It's just that in the quietest earth of all,
in special places, one of which I know,
light sleeps.