No mud, no

lotus.

 
Thich Nhat Hanh

natalia jakubek / requiem

I have studied

and become intimate with

 the speed of darkness. It’s so fast it’s

always here. When the light withdraws

the dark comes from no place. It always lives

with us. Your heart and brain are black.

They never see the true light except in violence

or autopsy. Of course the brain can cast

its own blinding light that we wait for in a poem,

at least blinding to us. In our trances the loves

of long ago enter the room unescorted, silent

perhaps from the black bottom of the ocean

where we all die in perfect darkness, a sense

of whirling that recedes back to the time

the ocean swallowed the smallest stars

then heated us into our early life.

Darkness is always there,

it only stands

revealed.

Jim Harrison

If you find yourself half naked

and barefoot in the frosty grass, hearing,

again, the earth’s great, sonorous moan that says

you are the air of the now and gone, that says

all you love will turn to dust,

and will meet you there, do not

raise your fist. Do not raise

your small voice against it. And do not

take cover. Instead, curl your toes

into the grass, watch the cloud

ascending from your lips. Walk

through the garden’s dormant splendor.

Say only, thank you.

Thank you.

In

a life properly lived,

you’re a river. You touch things lightly

or deeply; you move along because life herself moves,

and you can’t stop it; you can’t figure out a banal game plan

applicable to all situations; you just have to go

with the “beingness” of life,

as Rilke would

have it.

Jim Harrison

No want

is the greatest bliss.

It can be realized only by experience.

Even an emperor is no match

for a man with no

wants.

Ramana Maharshi