Effortlessly realizing that nothing good comes for free

Peeling back the silky mandala one gauzy layer at a time

Gazing back out through its crystalline structure from a central void

Then suddenly and necessarily, without any conscious effort

It is that first real time up, riding on that old bicycle

Always in that process of learning something new

not merely chattering to simply hide good silence

Taking pride and pleasure in the basics of life

Feeling the native wisdom of hot sweat and hard breathing

Studying deeply as well as reading widely

getting up before the sun

Knowing how to do things with the use of your own hands

Cooking food yourselves and sharing it at home

Watching the cycles of the moon, the sun and the seasons of the earth

Remaining simply aware of the subtle sounds of nature

Finding use for anger but not living driven blindly by rage

Sharing as much love in any way as often as you can

Traveling far but not forsaking the good home that you have made

Always being sure that you can still read and write

Respecting the old, repairing the broken, knowing the history

relaxing your entire body one part at a time

Understanding that you can’t be any happier than the saddest you have ever been

Making every single day a good day to die

Being honest and avoiding salesmanship

Knowing yourself and listening to others

Not letting their noise and confusion mask the vast emptiness

Seeking out the quiet places and letting them fill you up

Adjusting constantly and unconsciously to the eye of the storm

Effortlessly realizing that nothing good comes for free

NAN - Not A Number

 
    NAN – Not A Number: a purported numeric representation found invalid by any CPU

Face down with my eyes closed for a moment on a brilliant summer day

Switching my thoughts from dry and empty words to illustrative imaging

Arms outspread and feeling for earth’s smooth rotation underneath me

Smelling the moist brown sod beneath the green grass that’s tickling my nose

Ears pricked to catch the silence of our planet’s revolution about its star

Feeling the moon tracing around us, constantly changing her expression

Alert to the momentary minuscule changes in the output of our sun on my back

Aware of its rotational plane with respect to our own Milky Way

Observing as I move slowly upward and somewhere away from myself

Brain waves smoothing into that ancient, nearly-forgotten, frequency and rhythm

Relaxing, smoothing and soothing every part of my conscious anatomy

Anchoring at a center from which all things move away at the speed of light

NAN is not a number but it is the sum of all of my small experiences

My own unique personal version from one of the uncountable different infinities

Feeling my heart slowing as it nonetheless inexorably tolls my 3 billion allotted beats

Hearing an old German church bell again on that quiet Sunday morning in October

But, jet-lagged and sleep-deprived or fit and well-rested, my dust will be the same

Merging with smaller galaxies we encounter, on a route that seems to be directed

Tracing a path through the cosmos without conscious purpose and to no planned end

Aware of the bee as she buzzes about a neighbor of mine standing here in full flower

All that dry space between the raindrops

in the icy waters tumbling

          actually dancing in that shining spume

in the blowing hoarfrost crystals ignited by the wintry sun

          beckoning through their many prisms

part of the gentle sounds of spring creeks flowing

          splashing about upon their rocky floors

souls of patterns seen in far-off clouds

          also glinting from mosses, green upon the stones

neither evil spirit nor mythic god

igniting any reason for their invention

glimpsed while considering galactic clusters

          filling probabilistic emptiness within the atoms

inside the sound of wind and rain

glowing golden in the lion’s eye

neither possessed of emotion nor conscious intellect

          touching yet deeply and yielding wisdom

in the colors of the birds and the fish of the oceans

shining from her eyes without her even knowing

deeply moving yet quite untouched

          without a will but quietly consistent

unaware of the pulsing life force

          but part of the larger cosmic evolution

all that dry space between the raindrops

          mysterious force that builds up rivers

sense that makes the oceans restless

          unnecessary beauty of the morning

answer to all the orphan’s questions

          nameless void from which life briefly sparks

beautiful patterns left without any explanation

          tracings there as if something passed

things we finally learn we should have always searched for

          mystical back-drop, mute to all our wasted folly

what the children are afraid of

          why the old ones have no fear at last

riddle of the victim’s expression

          blur of twenty years sensed in a single instant

revealed in the short lives of crushed dragon flies

          meditated upon near one huge, decaying stump

on the golden line of sun reflected in a breaking swell

          of the snapping and the popping of our campfire burning

feeding the feeling arising when making music

          grateful use of ideas that arise unbidden

joy we take as children play with puppies

why we cook and sew, safe and warm at home

neither in the snow nor of the coldest winter

          sensed by the wolf and he begins to howl

all these tiny life forms dancing, fully animated within but a raindrop world

Just one snowflake swirling

Just one snowflake swirling during the height of the mighty storm

A single quark in an atom of a protein molecule on one cell in my brain

A single note in the chorus of the marsh as the sun grows warm again

Just one voice among the billions either dead, alive or as yet unborn

Just one moment, quite important, except light years away in any direction

The only tree in miles of forest where lightning chose to strike

Just one small planet of an average yellow star midway out in a common spiral galaxy

One billion years of geological change witnessed by absolutely nothing

Colorful patterns emitting subconscious messages from the wing of a butterfly

Just one boy notices for the briefest moment as she alights just one time

Just a ripple of the many on a single lake when the breeze comes up one day

One mossy, glacially-striated granite boulder in that vast northern woods

An eye falls upon a single pebble among hundreds of thousands strewn about

Just one neuron fires in the hiker and no conscious thought emerges

Just one photon emitted long ago speeds past a blue-green cloud-rippled paradise

A billion cries for food and shelter turn into white background noise

Water dripping from the glacier has not yet become the river we will experience

Just one small flame from the roaring bonfire rends a single word of my book

Just one dream may fuel a people’s imagination for entire generations

A single skeleton encased in stone gives rise to a moment’s pause

Just one instant in the implacable present, so quickly gone despite my many efforts

Narrow beam of reason disappears in a fog of ignorance and superstition

The pallid sun of December briefly lights the room and then the long night falls

Just one more acre cleared will help to feed us and cannot do much harm

Just one life condemned to ignorance, hunger and filth cannot sway our faith

Just one salty teardrop falls drying in that hot, red desert sand

A single prayer cast outward into the twinkling black of the celestial firmament

Just one more futile gesture in a city fueled by desperate need

Just one more forgotten moment in a string of days from many years, now all long gone by

A single-celled creature living large in one drop of greenish pond water

The very first fat raindrop lost in the dust raised by its approaching storm

Just one life form based on carbon given over to a moment’s passion

Just one light ray refracted through one water molecule in a rainbow

The last waking thought in a meditation that morphs slowly into restful sleep

A single simple stone among all the rest in a long and winding gravel road

Just one shortest riff of the sound of a creek roaring in the Spring

Just one more filthy refugee trudging amid the sighing, shuffling pilgrims

The anonymous steer in the slaughter house with brown eyes so very full of soul

Simple problem that unravels systems far beyond its own importance

Just one second before the explosion and things remain quite ordinary

Just one more drink should solve the problems plaguing me like biting flies

A single golden leaf spins ground-ward on a still and sunny autumn day

A child alone whimpering in a cold building with shining antiseptic floors

Just one more winter comber slams itself upon the ancient rocky shore

Just one more bitter pill to swallow in a lifetime of mental self-medication

One and only one inattention brings on death in a quick, but casual, fashion

Just one happy smile can lift the gloom that settled in like some densest fog

The faintest chance of one small victory vies evenly with the certainty of death

A single light after miles of driving may seem either lonely or inviting

Just one brief thought spreading out from but a single soul among the billions

Just one day in an era of an epoch on a short-lived, but fortunate, planet

Just one more Monday arrives too quickly as yet another weekend fades away

Just one song in the misty pre-dawn stillness begins the entire avian chorus

In a single flash of insight an old problem is finally solved, for once and for all

Unrecorded Sunsets

butterflies fluttering through this thick green august haze

and the universe quietly expands away forever, at light speed, in all directions

ancient dragon flies mating on the wing whirling in a gentle breeze

unaware there will be no skies nor even any stars before they could know it

the sun slowly melting the sky red as it sets in the west

how long will that starlight travel on after that one star is gone?

the clouds building up again in their fantastic formulations

how many of the infinite sunsets every day go simply unrecorded?

although life may be evolving from quite simple to more complex,

it seems that cosmic entropy will always be increasing

our naked toes wiggling delightfully in the cool, moist grass of june

so, where then are our memories when matter's density approaches zero?

the present exploding all around and directly into our senses

always faintly echoed off that backdrop we have merey labeled as the eternal void

the mountains lifting high enough to support fantastic snow in summer

someday the planet must be covered uniformly, once again, by the sea

birds calling and their songs replay inside our heads as we are walking

so much more than they had to be, simply to survive just to procreate

the tiny streams endlessly improvising infinite fractal solos upon a single theme

how can those beautiful tinklings have meaning only in our minds?

wildflowers showing different lovely patterns in the spectrum of the infrared

layers of beauty that only insect eyes could naturally appreciate

finding rich evidence for biological progression throughout the long millennia

we can only wonder if the life force itself is somehow self-aware

the restless sea always bringing slightly different waves to the shore

it may be a random pattern, but really, it is not so simple

the sunshine, the clouds, the insects and the plants create a sustaining expectation

another almost-grasped sunset passes us by, perhaps pregnantly, once again

When Thoughts have lost their words

I am only breathing

          Breathing deeply, very slowly

All the noise seems safely, very safely, far away

          Letting go of everything, everywhere, all at once

It is simple breathing, as the hurried world rushes past

          Softly breathing here, quietly, just behind my eyes

I am only breathing

          Slowly, slowly filling with a mild sense of calmness

Each inhalation brings a bit of cosmic background peace

          Each exhalation, part of that deep relieving sigh

There is nothing more required

          Thoughts have lost their words

I am only breathing

          Delicate and subtle but somehow very vast

A warm glow suffusing from somewhere deep within

          When I am filled inside, I see that it surrounds

A center spreading outward, smoothing angry tides

          A calm that reaches well down into my autonomic side

Warmth and tranquility spreads from my soles to my scalp

          A phrase repeated as I respire nurtures every cell

For I am only breathing

          Innocent and fragile, feeding inner strength

The restful hum of the quiet mind comes to the fore

          My gratitude is mixed with a faint sense of relief

Moving smoothly now in time, no longer young or old

          Sometimes even floating skyward in our blue atmosphere

I am only breathing

          But my brain is producing, a set of characteristic waves

I warm each and every ache and pain and relax all of my old wounds

          with that calming flow of radiant energy from the center

Increasingly I am absent in the middle of my breaths

          Then slowly come the images at the edge of sleep

I am only breathing

          The adrenaline ceases running and my vital signs slow down

I clear aside my worries and anxieties, the fears and the doubts

          I am safe somewhere inside the instant between each calming breath

I let go of time as I did while floating in my mother’s womb

          Bird calls and breezes can now become part of me

I am only breathing

          Briefly, I am not driven by empty hunger and undirected restlessness

Random thoughts of pressing issues slowly decrease in frequency

          During some intervals I am broadcasting my most harmonic waves

I am quietly filled with a subtle ether, quite dilute and very mild

          Seconds change to minutes in the rhythms of the houseplants

I am only breathing

          Yet it frees the quiet joy at the privilege of simply being

Wisdom In Small Waters

In the mossy rocks along the bottom of a stream that we watch gently glide

There is another world than the one from which we stand upon this bank

Down in the depths where light fades to only green and blue

The stones hold cold secrets left them by the melting snows

Underneath the surface, currents come and go with the seasons

Just as the sound of running water is different through the ice

The streams where we waded as children were old long before our time

They had polished many pebbles and undercut their green and spongy banks

In the deep pools where eddies ripple, the stream still pauses to reflect

In the weedy backwaters, the overflow irrigates wherever it collects

Behind the beaver dams tiny reservoirs are managed yet today

The wetlands hold the moisture until they freeze thru once again

This small creek spins different versions of its many tales, all at once

The wind strokes the grasses that thrive in the moist soil by the water

People come and go but the water keeps rolling on from somewhere

Behind a resting boulder the large trout fans in its soothing eddy

Though moving in many directions all the water still ends up together

Tiny wavelets lap the shore in a diorama of the entire cosmos

In the shade of a tree on the bank it is cool on the hottest summer day

Though restless and ever-changing that brook is clearly timeless

Passing over rocks it is smoothing, the water takes a deep and cleansing breath

It gurgles happily like a long and purring cat twisting on its back

Sometimes in spring, between its slurping, you can hear it knocking stones

Such small waters might bring a short and unaccustomed peace to a wandering folk

Small Prophet – The Garter Snake’s Tale

    This, from 'Lives of the Reptilian Saints’

I saw a slender garter snake resting near the road

I wanted to believe he had made that journey safely,

all the way from the other side

I was so amazed that he was even still alive

Something of a miracle with the way this traffic flies

Something of an accident or maybe, a not so simple, random magic chaos

Now he’s left free to disappear forever, down into the weeds

Just a chance encounter with another world that’s disappearing,

just a glimpse of things as they’d always been: Living and not building

Surviving not creating, adapting not administering, belly to the earth,

moist tongue probing ever so gently into that warm summer air,

Not driving behind dark glasses with the tinted windows all wound up

And as I savored those delicate, mottled stripes

the wonder overwhelming,

I finally saw that he had shown me, that I had, indeed, lost my way.

Echoes sweep right on through me

The calls of the crows feel as if they are moving through me from side to side

Coming back, I notice that my last thoughts had arisen from a different place

Fading in and out with a quiet mantra and warm sun upon my feet

Echoes sweep right on through me, feeling like peaceful, rolling waves

As my consciousness erodes, another state of being fills my brain again

Sometimes a twitch or spasm joins these two worlds for just a moment

At some invisible boundary I pass from not really thinking to not quite dreaming

With luck I move between them enjoying a state of grace, for minutes at a time

For then, with tension and worry pushed beyond arms length, there is no fear

Even the most awful circumstances are factored, reduced and abstracted

Almost sleeping, and not really awake, ebbing and flowing between their two shores

Moving back and forth between breath control and autonomic respirations

Pushing off and letting go, to drift out in some slow and gentle current

Bumping back to shore to hazily and briefly note the things I felt and saw

Like the cat that purrs at intervals before falling deep into kicking dreams

Gnawing anxiety and even pain are somehow isolated and left behind

There comes a disconnect that surprises and cannot be controlled

Looking back, one never sees exactly where the paths diverged

Sounds I Should Have Heard

I heard that temple gong, amid their padding footfalls upon polished stone and old wood

I listened as the peaceful church bells tolled out once more with the coming of the evening

The mystic loon calls carried from far out across the lake, honoring that long June twilight

Their meditative chanting briefly revealed a place where I had always hoped to remain

An eagle cried out from impossibly far above my thoughts in that deep blue mountain sky

The wind spoke through the pines and then went off, sighing to itself among the aspen

For hours I listened as the entire world made music there, upon that one tiny creek

I felt so safe as the warm evening rain tinkled softly down upon that old metal roof

I spaced my thoughts between the bird calls, and so they came and went

The distant thunder rolled across and away in echoes, one peal cascading upon another

All during the night, the peaceful sea took a restful breath with each single wave

Their music carried me to a place where I just wished that I might someday abide

Wolves howled in cold and lonely wonder at the mystery that stood their coats on edge

Fingers scraped the strings between the beautiful chords they strung together like pearls

I heard nothing but my own footfalls for such a long time, so far out on that empty trail

Their roosters began calling just before the dawn, helping to set me on my way once more

Huge branches creaked above me as those giant sequoias stretched up for the coming rain

Familiar elder voices carried gently up the wooden stairs and I fell securely into a child’s sleep

That wind chime bore a message about something that I felt I should have always known

The simple croaking of those wet green frogs briefly made everything seem alright again

I found the white noise of the waterfall once more, carried along within that giant crowd

The roar of my own heavy breathing filled my ears where the way was long and steep

In that Apache sandstone, the wind drifted and eddied, as ancient shadows came and went

The rich timbre of her voice lingered in my memory and often came to me in dreams

Our crackling fire brought a deep sense of well being despite the vast surrounding darkness

I passed long hours to the purring of that calico cat who rolled on the wool blanket in my lap

After my escape I noticed the internal deafness caused by always having to shout out my thoughts

The soft sound of snowflakes upon my cap, many at once, began, at last to set me straight

The mysterious music sometimes emerging from my flute both delighted and surprised me

I took a sideways satisfaction in that here, the jets were too high for their sound to reach me

The quiet repetition of that empty phrase helped settle my breathing and clear my head

I noted drowsily that the shouts and laughter of the playing children did not disturb me at all

I saw that, from a great enough distance, the ugly roar of heavy traffic faded to a soothing hum

I nodded saying nothing until, at last, even they had finally heard themselves for quite long enough

I turned ever so slowly to the surrounding silence, so very pregnant with everything, all at once

Atmlast things maybe even begin to sound like the rest of my life really should have always been

Rain Of Blessings

Rain of blessings falling so very softly everywhere at once, all the time, almost indiscernible

Very quiet and so gentle as to be easily ignored, so light as to go on by, normally unnoticed

Yet flowing away in every dimension, easily outpacing even the expansion of this universe

As faint as the cosmic background radiation, but just as all-pervasive, when tuned in at last

Layer dancing across layer from the pico to the tera scales, from the quantum to the multiverse

Rain of mercy, shower of grace, redemption soaks the lines of each and every smiling face

In the sky shimmers a rainbow of joy from the soft light filtering through these falling blessings

My fevered forehead cooled by the mist off the infinite sea of peace these showers fill

Spinning slowly round and round, I briefly take a place, as I turn like a blossom falling down

Rain of blessings fleetingly opens our eyes wide to that eternal harmony unfolding all around

Perfectly interweaving springs, all from the same source, balance me with calm energy

Radiating mercy from the center of grace, interweaving with cosmic phenomena, out in space

Cooling when it is too hot or warming us like a bath, our faces upturned like little flowers

Their vast and eternal flow carries off our tiny sins just as surely as it erodes all our tiny actions

Rain of blessings, falling in all directions, through every dimension, without an in-between

As always, just as soon as I really sense it, I am instantly overflowing, into those gentle tears

Reflections of rippling waters, echoes of fading footsteps, fossil starlight from so far away

Dirty, smiling, tiny children, gap-toothed old men nodding off in wisdom, gentle yak upon the trail

Cymbals sounding off the vast blue ice fall, uncountable simplicities, all so inextricably bound

Hail of joy briefly awakens sleepers, flood of compassion carries away their joyful images

In my mind, running mostly naked, a brown child glistening in this warm monsoon of cosmic blessings

A Few Revealed Cosmic Truths

Lurking in the fantastic rock and icy rime formations in far off Patagonia

Mutely testifying in the ancient volcanic peaks of Colorado’s snowy San Juans

Now glowing greenly with life behind the mists of a waterfall in western Canada

Once again in the dusty sunset casting orange shadows upon the Sahara dunes

Overt in the tender embrace of the Emperor penguin pair late in March

Subtle in the bird-filled potholed beauty of summer on the Northern Plains

In the deep blue of ocean waters far from shore, it came to me once again

So strong in Autumn when the trees ignite in their colored riots

In the books of physiology, anatomy, astronomy and cosmology

There in the depths of her brown eyes and the soft timbre of her voice

Echoed in the stately waltz of sun’s planets, moons, asteroids and comets

Exploding into the air with the glistening Dali colors of leaping giant blue marlins

Sensed in the sound made by a heavy snowfall when all else is so very still

Mirrored in the music made by those who bring it forth for us to bear witness

Exactly the same thing from the loon far off across one of countless northern lakes

Part of the cold but fiery light that flares just for moments on distant peaks, near sunset

Chanted in river songs that never change theme but never repeat a single riff

Whirling under the great hazy wheel of the Milky Way on moonless winter nights

Left in messages on mossy boulders, tilled and striated by ice age glaciers

Within the phases of the moon and the slow flowing of the sun with the seasons

The amazing electromechanical mystery of a lifetime of regular heartbeats

The physical constants which could not differ, even in their 8^th decimal place

Pattern and order of huge swells coming to the shore in perfect weather

A baby elephant surrounded by aunts as he peeps out from under his mother

Warm-blooded miracle of the mighty bluefin tuna racing in schools at 35 MPH

The earth’s heat balance unconsciously maintained by the great ocean currents

Marine fossils upthrusted in the high Himalayas, tracing millions of years in earth’s history

The massive blue whale gently nudging her newborn upward, to its first breath of air

Mathematics we uncovered which predict the orbits of heavenly bodies

The ability to see backwards in time through the lens of a telescope

The complex web of interactions that makes up good living soil

The orderly struggle of succession that results in a stately climax forest

The fault tolerance of the mammalian brain in its reaction to even savage trauma

The incredible functionality bundled within every tiny common house fly

The feel of the gnarled exposed inner bark of an ancient bristlecone pine

Pondering those Greek, Roman, Mayan, Incan and Cambodian ruins

Puzzling over the differences between the uncountable and the infinite

Visualizing length from the quantum scale to light years in distance

Imagining time intervals from tiny Planck units to the estimated age of the universe

Mute testimony of a feathery archaeopteryx, petrified for unimaginable eons

Miracle of the hummingbird in flight revealed by ultra slow motion film

Spring dawn over the Andes flying south from short and gray northern December days

The wonder at our invention of cheese, wine, bread and beer

The boggling number of stars in each of the astonishing number of galaxies

Mystical, detailed and semiotic patterns on the birds, reptiles and amphibians

Perfect silent grace of a healthy mature tree, wherever it was chosen to testify

Surfing the warm salty ocean with a view of snow-capped Mauna Kea

Love which lasts for years even as the crazy world changes while we age

Observing Petri dish population growth curves over time

Trying to grasp the timeframe of earth’s ages in comparison to man’s short history

Earthrise on a silent starry black background, tiny against the surrounding void

Realizing the meaning of our endless, futile and brutal religious struggles

Seeing our perfect footprints completely erased by that first gentle wave

Shivering with wonder at the wolf’s lonely howl in the endless winter night

Realizing the hopeless, but inescapable, moral mandate, despite our endless struggle

Involuntary loss of vision, strength, vigor, endurance and fluid intelligence

The consummate and non-reflective, totally unstrained adaptation of all the cats

The instantaneous color responses of the octopus to changes in background and stimuli

Computing acceleration and velocity and their changes at any instant

Seeing dolphins and seals riding the waves for their own personal reasons

Watching killer whales toss live baby seals into the air to teach their own offspring

That deep, true aboriginal veneration of the earth and its cycles and its creatures

Tacit, yet unbreakable, contract of the bear, salmon, eagle, coyote and raven

The whisperings of a spring tide running strongly into a wide and deep inlet

The welcome warm sun on a cool day upon emerging from clean water

Being very close with a loved one as you both prepare for them to pass away

Laughing out loud time and again until our stomachs are sore and tears fill our eyes

Missing the rhythm and beauty of all existence long before we leave it

Glory of the late Pleistocene mega-fauna, now all gone away once and forever

The 100 million year reign of the dinosaurs already over for 65 million years

Tales of the Black Death, its Grateful Dead and our ashes all falling, falling down

Peaceful sounds of children at play mixing with bird songs from all directions

Rapid tracings of an electron gun we perceive as a stream from another reality

Raptor crying overhead casting echoes down a quiet canyon

The lessons we pass on from our slaughter of the buffalo and the Indians

The tectonic peregrination of the very continents, all about the globe

A sideways glimpse caught in an unexpected mirror by a momentary stranger

Watching as wavelets from our pebbles merge and fade away upon a quiet pond