The Thirty-First of December

Usually, when we celebrate,
we remember:

a child leaving its mother's womb,
the formalisation of love,
the departure of a loved one.

Tonight, we celebrate endings,
but we have no endings to remember
because nothing ever really ends.

In truth,
life flows into life
as year flows into year.

However,
I have no doubt
that the vast puzzle of existence
is gradually solving itself

moment by moment,
with each dawning of truth,
with each feeling of love.

I have faith
that we are gathered
in the midst of a perfection
being made
quite simply
for the pleasure of doing so.

And that one day,
everything will end.

And so all our celebrations of endings
are being held
in the name of that one ending
still to come
when all that was ever made or dreamed
is finally complete.

Soul Bridge

Meet me here on the soul bridge
Meet me here tonight
Leave your body on the physical plane
Let your soul take flight

This is where the souls dance
Chest on soulful chest
My ears can hear what you're telling me
My soul can feel the rest

Way up here at the height of soul
We can watch the flow
The stuff and things of the physical
How they come and go

And when the body needs the body,
How do two be one?
Then hips touch hips on the plane of soul
As they've always done

Meet me here on the soul bridge
Meet me here tonight
Leave your body on the physical plane
Let your soul take flight

Water

You may think that water is just
the primary moving part
in the machine 
of the world.

But when it rains,
it calls out to us
from gutters, drainpipes, 
rivers and ditches.

And so it is a communicator
of the secret and forgotten passages
by which it passes through
the human layer.

And when it rains,
the roads and pavements shine
and street lights live again
in the darkness of puddles.

It is a renewer
more honest than snow,
and it gives second chances to those
who have burned theirs away.

Water does so many things
and does them so many times.
Perhaps its power of revival stems
from making each its first.

No Prior Experience

Do you realise 
that babies 
are being born 
every second
with no
prior 
experience? 

That's why you get all this crying 
and digestive malfunction 
going on for 
years!

Just think
if we could find a way
to get babies born 
with a reasonable grounding 
in the mechanics 
and philosophy 
of being a person. 

Wouldn't that be 
fantastic?!

Just think of it!

Executive babies!!!

This Is Not About You

Go and look at the waves
See how they crash on the shore
Again and again and again
No newspaper reports them
You saw them with your own eyes
No billionaire chose for you to see them
You went of your own accord
No authority gave you permission
You did that yourself
But this isn't about you
It's about the waves
And how they do what they do
Without the slightest human intervention
And it's about more than the waves
It's about the dripping in limestone caves
It's about the creatures in the Mariana Trench
It's about the formation of rain drops at two and a half thousand feet
And how none of them depend on humans
They do not require photographers in order to exist
No commissioning editor controls their existence
They just are
And they just do
Whether you know it or not
And that's not just true on Earth
But in the great red spot on Jupiter
And the soft gyres of the atmosphere of Neptune
And in the nuclear fusion of the sun
And in the elliptical paths of comets
And in the swallowed light of black holes
And in the slow but inexorable expansion of the universe
None of it is about humans
None of it is about you
None of it cares about you or has the capacity to do so
It has been happening
It is happening
And it will go on happening
Whether you know it or not
Whether it's in a big book of high resolution photographs or not
Whether any scientist anywhere has observed it or ever will
And this is true of almost the entire universe
Ninety-nine point nine nine nine nine nine nine percent of it
Everything except for the tiny lantern of cognition here on Earth
A theatre in which every audience member also sits upon the stage
Almost everything that has happened, is happening and will happen
Does so wholly one hundred percent regardless of humans or whatever they happen to think
And the crashing waves on the beach
Are just the beginning of a thread
That begins here
And wraps all the way around the universe
And you can go
And look at them
And remember
This is not about you
None of this is about you

Untitled Poem

Is it

that all your thoughts
belong 
to one mind 

or 

that all your minds 
belong 
to one hand?

River and Her Man

I, a witty human,
buzz at the surf.
It, a muscular river,
paws at the shale.

A mosquito and a hippopotamus,
we live up to the limit
of each other's worlds.

Applying tiny forces
in highly specific ways,
I call myself
sophisticated.

It roars in ascent
and in retreat,
ever outward facing.

It does not choose.
It is the most complete
embodiment of its own
possibilities.

In a boat, I row across it,
drawing a line
in the extended now
of my inner world.

It whispers
directly into my dreams,
from beneath,
at the softest part of my mind,

rolling against my
least-known shore
and doing what she
always does,

shaping me in ways
my clever brain
will never comprehend.

Half Man Feel Double

I came away from it all
Pulsing with seismic aftershocks

The feeling of having been open
Of having let my substance slip
From cracked hands

It left new marks, 
New scores and scuffs
On oak-hard skin
Added to a thousand,
No different to the casual observer
Than the last raindrop to smear the window,
But spelled out on me in pain
Like a word

I am scattered across oceans,
And the effort of holding myself together
Is so great
That the needle of time
Scratching out tunes on my surface
Pushes too hard, too deep
From the white and dead
Into the living tissue beneath