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

I Got Away By Some Unconscious Grace

It was surely nothing that I could have done, at least not with this puny conscious effort

I was simply borne along like a tiny fallen leaf which started down upon one little stream

Delivered far away from the roots of the tree that bore myself and many others

And as luck would have it, my life was pretty easy, though surely not filled with good

I got away, but I really haven’t a clue as to how - Or much, much less, just why

Awoke in safety at a distance, washed up in honest surprise and amazed gratitude

So filled with happiness by the anonymous mercy that tears swelled my eyes

No way this blind and stumbling random walk I had just pursued got me here on my own

Yes, I did see the innocent masses lined up barefoot, dirty, sickened and hungry

But, someway, somehow, I was never chosen to shuffle along silently among them

I got away, but never did I even have a clue as to where I might be fleeing

Looking back I saw so many fatal accidents I had so narrowly and mysteriously avoided

Not through goodness, mercy, charity or selflessness did I find myself living like some king

It seems as though protected by an unseen guiding hand when viewed in this fuzzy retrospect

But that same hand bore down upon my comrades for their whole time from birth to death

All of us as fated, as if by chance, like any fragile butterfly, tossed in winds and storms

Like the one of a hundred million salmon fry that somehow returned to spawn

My life a series of mostly unseen and un-noticed Just In Times and By A Single Threads…

Venal and ugly as I was, it appeared as if my shortsighted greed was always rewarded

Others explained their random motions in this great entropy as being blessed or even great

I burned with that one tree within thousands of mountain acres where lightning struck

My amazing, unexpected, skin of the teeth upset was pulled off with no time remaining

A drunk laughing and singing in the high-speed wreckage wrapped around that large tree

Letting dumb luck fill my selfish ego with a fictional sense of divine entitlement

Inexplicably expelled by the roaring torrent, I peacefully observe from this quiet eddy

I got away by the unconscious grace of the same blind forces that steered us one and all

My tiny efforts within the maelstrom could not have hoped to produce this wondrous effect

Like a miracle baby found unharmed amid vast death and wreckage, I simply smile

Tossed by unimaginable forces that I could not see, I made up an explanation as I went along

Just as unforeseen as the dragonfly on my bumper, I still take pride in my great strength

Too full of myself to notice the great emptiness in total control of my irrelevant destiny

Laughably worrying that I had time to waste, I raced about leaving tiny, ephemeral tracks

I got away into this safe and quiet place for a bit of contemplation at the common brink

Having evaded the normal life of poverty and suffering, I still hear their muffled cries

I marvel at how it all happened, even as my confusion over why grows ever stronger

Briefly holding this still life of an insignificant instant in a nano-sized corner of the multiverse