What are tears?
We all carry the ocean within us,
Salt and minerals and water.
Perhaps crying,
Be it joyous or grieving,
Signals the desire to return
To this primordial state.
A wish, unspoken, even unconscious,
To be as we began.
May you know you are home
And be at ease.
Time and memory are fluid,
Running through us with marbled colors,
The psyche as malleable agateware.
The bayous and cypress trees of childhood
Exist vividly alongside now-beloved mountains draped in smoke.
The Shearwater cup that held tea,
Then favorite pan-fired gunpowder green,
From which I sipped early in the musky mornings before grade school,
Sits still on my mind’s shelf with successive handmade tea cups.
The paintings by my father and other local artists I see on the walls,
Together with current pieces of artwork.
The past is never that, though we can try to pretend
And even attempt to banish it from our being.
Better I’ve found, to accept this and embrace a multidimensional life,
Observing the interflow of old and new with detached curiosity.
Such mixture will inform all that we experience, however we decide.
I choose awareness. Let this bring what it will.
All things always in flux.
How to mourn you?
Only with detachment can I find room
For kindness and compassion towards you.
You struggled just as all do,
And I wish to think you did your best.
Some of your actions and words still linger with gray-tinged hurt,
But now I can feel sorrow over these rather than resentment.
When I speak at your service,
I will recount one of the few memories I have
That cast you in your best light.
May you find in this death peace from suffering,
An end to chasing illusory dreams, and the fade of your red anger.
I laid down the burden of these long ago.
Now may you do the same.
If I truly wish for all beings to be happy and free from suffering,
I must apply this also to myself.
At the moment, with my physical being wracked by pain
And my mind clouded by bleak depression,
I find this to be a difficult task.
Equanimity towards my own state is a struggle.
Occasionally I relax into spaciousness and acceptance.
But old patterns return again and again
To obscure my view and murk the light.
Sometimes I can see that these are illusion and let them go;
Other times I grasp them tightly as old familiar friends.
Indeed, they once were ropes that tethered me in safety.
So rather than judging them (and myself for holding on to such),
Let me honor their place, grant them gratitude,
And treat them gently with kindness.
I walk the path I do in knowledge that it looks the same
But, like everything, is always changing.
I still stumble and even fall. The rocks that bruise me
Appear like the stones from yesterday and before, even unto the distant past.
Yet when I pause to see, after the pain of impact, they are not.
I take hold again of my stick, pull myself up, and even take in
The glorious colors of the trees and sky and listen to the wind.
I walk on with my usual unsteady gait until the next halt.
This is where I am.
Consider this wooden object.
This is a chair. You say.
But is it? I ask. What makes it so?
This! And you sit upon it.
Ah, I see. But please arise.
I place my tea cup and notebook upon it.
Now, still a chair? Or has it transformed into a table?
I remove them.
Would you please retrieve that book from a high shelf?
You then stand upon the sturdy item.
It has become a stepladder.
What magic is this?
Thus is all.
Practice can be difficult.
Often my body is filled with pain
Or clouded by fever.
I realize again
That compassion and patience
Must be extended to myself.
I consider impermanence and the connection of all,
Grateful for the many kindnesses of others.
These current conditions will change.
One breath at a time.
I consider the gateway of my death.
It is always before me, sometimes hidden by distractions.
There are periods I see it more clearly.
As of late the details of its appearance become more defined,
And the door opens widely and freely.
When will I pass through?
I, as with other beings, do not know this for certain.
Each moment brings me closer.
Let me prepare now.
I can almost feel the latch swing under my hand
And hear the rustle of the gravel as my foot starts over the stile.
Lest you say,
“I am an island unto myself,”
Remember that an island is so
Only because of other factors:
The waters that surround it and the land from which it is formed.
Should you think,
“I depend only on myself,”
Remember that your very birth was a result of others’ interactions.
We are inextricably connected to all that is;
No-one nor nothing happens in isolation.
Consider this and realize therefore
Care for oneself includes care for all.