My Purified Frame of Mind

There’s a stillness and a sorrow
Resting in the hush of this moment
I pull myself out from the sinking of it
Playing peek-a-boo with peace;
I surrender. Finally. Feeling the onset of ease

You can’t resist the spirit, you know
It has its own certain terrains to traverse
Whether welcomed or dreaded,
Prepared for or procrastinatingly headed
To
the depths of it, open themselves up for you
In anticipation of your own personal coming.

Sometimes I don’t belong to the world in which I live
Extraterrestrial understanding
Never sat well with the unknowing all around me
But I’ve accustomed myself to its customs
The dictates and indoctrinations;

I don’t have to stomach it to swallow it
I don’t have to buy into it to buy it
The albatross wears nicely on my neck.
A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down,
In the most delightful way.

Sometimes I wonder what we look like to the stars
How lonely we must seem, even from a place so far
Away
in my desperation I long to go
Row row row my boat so merrily and such.
Venitian canals where the crossroads are not roads, but merely water
And at sunset the streets become made of gold
(Someone should tell the miners in Alaska
they’ve been looking in all the wrong places)

I noticed (on that note) on the Discovery channel
(during an advertisement for that gold-digging show)
That the gold-rush folks hit it big this season;
the producers of the program say they hit the “MotherLODE.”
My husband mocks my dismay at this blindingly-incorrect spelling
What he doesn’t know
Is that the rubbing-me-wrong is rooted in my distaste for all things modern

What if the world’s electricity shut down?
No gas pumps working no stores open now
Spoiled food and anarchy
Because we all forgot how to fend for ourselves.

If I could have only one wish granted,
I’d move up in the hills somewhere
Maybe Northern California, West Virginia or Wyoming
Teach my boys how to live off the land
Catch and clean their own fish
Set traps and make music by a beautiful fire
Bait their own hooks and hunt with bare hands
Prepare for winter and sow harvests
from the soil beneath their ever bare feet

Sometimes I slip into daydreams where the boundary is blurred
Between the reality I’m living and the reality I’ve heard
Of
nighttime gypsy-longings
and unsung folk-song harmonies
these soul rhythms in my heart, of these, are made.

One time, not so long ago
I dreamt it and I stayed
Within the dream, my body awake
My eyes wide open to the promises He gave

“Love is patient, love is kind,” I hear my gentle Master say
And so I sing these lonesome songs
in harmony with my brain
Which tends to make its very own waves,
and rides them
like some solitary surfer
content to determine each one’s length

Frequencies in rhythm with the One and Only
truth-vibration
Surrendering,
Finally
Humbled with humility
The purity and honesty
Of coming to terms (and some form of acceptance)
With the temperature of each day.

The place my life right now resides
Has hard-core heavy seasons
And comically, the climate is considered mild here. Temperate.
I’d like to temper-Ate each and every botoxed meteorologist’s face
For undermining my discomfort in the weather of my days
On these kinds of days, to be precise
When I wasn’t prepared
For the monsoon rains
Freezing heat
And blistering cold
The lowest highs and highest lows
Occasionally, here it snows. Even in the summer
And believe it or not
Things will actually grow
in the winter’s spontaneous, occasional, unbearable 90 degrees
The things we aren’t unexpecting often lead us to our knees

This morning, my dad randomly called me. No reason in particular.
Mentioned briefly this “dream (he) had after he awoke;
Flying suddenly, up high, way off the ground
Five cylinders appeared; they were circular and rotating, taking up the entire sky.” I wonder then, if he somehow became cylindrical
and if it made him dizzy.

Spinning is certainly how we exist. Look at this planet. Rotating, so ignorantly around its axis.
If I was human, would my axis be this? The perceptions all part of existence.

Conundrum, prelude, afterlude. Enigma, prelude, afterlude. These visions and these seemings.

Dreams within the dreaming.

Eyes allow the heart to see the universe’s revelries. I stop and pay attention,
and my pulse is my own drum. It beats it beats it’s beating. Co-nun-drum. Co-nun-drum. Dancing, it is dancing, to its own quick silent beat.

In wonder, and at heaven’s feet: I dance, I kneel, I take a seat. I say the things my mouth can’t speak, my heart so full with awe.

Joy isn’t proof of some goal we can meet
Waiting visibly in front of us after this this and that;
Joy is defined in the journey itself; it’s who we are now, wherever we’re at. Joy is found in the narrow path.
Whichever road you choose to travel,
I offer this: just lose the map.