This iceberg shifts its weight in a low bow I cannot understand. I seek to comfort, but fail. So heavy. So ever full. Something bursts on the surface and something within. I sit and listen. Yesterday – I sit and listen. Tomorrow – I sit and listen. In this eternity the iceberg releases itself deeper and slides beneath my bare feet. Where skin touches ice, I dream of our sublime meeting. It is hard to bear in true presence and with eyes open. I need to feel you. Run with you. Breath along your side. I hesitate. Today – I only sit and listen.

On your periphery the sky mirrors its silent presence, and the clouds draw in the scene. You dance in me and echo the vibrance of human suffering. The lump in my throat imitates the mass of tears that forged you with time and time again. Still, I cannot understand. Why? Why this suffering, iceberg? Why this lame and shallow tango? Feet dragging in limb pose, no color draped, turning and twisting man or woman, no attendee in sync with waltz or jive. I hear the music! I hear the music, screams my heart, but only a skip and spin in memory’s embrace, where you melt and return all tears to the ocean, and the humans to their beds, where they may rest and dream.

The „why“ grows faint as the clouds disperse your image into the universe. I pain, you pain – pain. And tears well and ice melts and humans have sat and listened, and suffered, and always will. I miss the dance as the music beckons me to lift my legs and shuffle my feet, shake off the blinding dust of suffering and lunge into the tune, to slip my own tears out of my body and into the sea, and slip out of my heavy garment I cannot shoulder, cannot understand. A little disco, jazz and mambo – they too have a place and name like suffering, but I, I need just dance.

Ocean visitor on dark sands. Once was far off, a world beyond. Same visitor. Sitting still, listening, wondering, what may be. Every exhale, every inhale seizes, draws in deep, persistent shivers. The organ(ism) world pumps, is alive, sends waves, nudges minute and month , or other ideas, to follow. Strictly human ideas. Caressing glass and metal into the beating heart, names and numbers too, wiping now or later all concept of form, of need, of want, of past and future. Not driven by emotion or aim. Only the rhythmic, natural, convulsion, coming and going, giving and receiving life. Wave emerging, wave retreating.

Is a song a roar? The foam on moving mass, does it blow out candles and hum a blessing to life? Or, occurs the ocean in a shell, a curved bell, resounding all known and unknown? Word on word, thought on thought slipping away. And then, what remains? That too may be a concept, a hope, a holding on. What if nothing remains?

The ocean quivers inside the visitor. The visitor steps out of shoes and falls into heart. The heart opens and closes. It pumps not with purpose. The visitor stops, drops the cloak, walks naked as ocean, as universe, speaks only as wave, turns to rock and tree and grass, and dust, and is heard no more. Ocean heart beats, presses in, presses out as it must. As it must.

(Just is, here to blossom and to flower, and to grow and die, and grow and die. Hopefully without suffering. What more do I know? What more needs be known?)

This chapter has my heart draped in heaviness, though the heaviness it wears like a garment; dressed raw, raw love. The sky and the butterflies are my witnesses. A hum outside drives deep and settles at home, on that sole wooden bench just opposite the brooding fire. I too sit quietly as you fill the shadow next to me. Light: you overrun my soul and swarm the edge of me. Your waking erupts, breaks out of a remoteness foreign to me, in a single stride conquering every outpost of my existence. And so, I fall.

Low blackbird flap and whistle – space, though infinitely wide, hold my hand. Set sail, old friend, I missed your trusted tremble, now passionately disrupting me. Your calling advances through me, through the crust of the earth, as sunlight hails roots to press, and then pulls and pulls the strands of life. Sprouts. And flowers. And trees.

And as buds turn their heads they transform and blossom. I mistake their quiet disposition and overlook their drive to live out an ingrained plan. I slip on my vigilance and observe. The surge so plainly visible over time, yet mysteriously hidden. I lean against bark, and carefully place bare feet on ground, rest eyes and mind. In my innermost I search out the same light that knocks on every bud with its caring and determined capacity to wake the heart of all creation.

Its presence disturbs me. I cannot ignore the call. I want to because my reality I so prudently built is threatened to collapse. I wonder if this is how bud feels before blossom, and if the snowbell knows of its ring before present. The same before-before rings and sings through me. Where is the seed planted that now stirs and responds? And where the roots that quiver outwards? Branches unclad legs, exposed neck, and leaves on fingers and nails. Then turn to touch. Here warmth.

I fail to shake the grain out of my system. I really have no choice, but to embrace and tie my rope to life, now beckoning me to taste fully. I step aside and allow. I open. Life curiously schemes and prepares in hidden cavities, and then bursts forth freely, withholding nothing, smashing out of me, into me, cracking my nucleus to wildly chase the winds and climb the bark and climb the branch and reach the sky, to breath and breath again, and yell „I am“!

So here I am, welcoming spring.

I run in veins and hymns of birds and flowers, and drink from the basin of unity. Lay down your arms and tire into mine.

Peace.

A tilt in time and my life spills into age. It grows on me, age. Although I have addressed it with a soft touch to the cheek, I embrace neither time nor age. Regardless, both rest in my heart beating out of its confines and wait to be seized by that, which holds all: my origin, my home.

In deep and low breath I taste life. And I sink further into life. It grips me, not with cold hands, but with the caring urgency of one who mothers patience in every cell. I taste a morsel, then, fall to the chase as I stir and wake, and wake and stir.  No reckless raid or sweep, only a careful scrutiny veiled in the robes of a novice and consumed by the possibility that this is it.

Light on, window frames, light on moon and man and the tip of. A paper thin sliver of light. I see it merely because I know the hush of light on light like any traveler in timeless time. No piece did I learn or attain. There is no teaching in this vastness that isn’t already known. And though I sense rain, nothing washes out light

, and despite my curtains drawn on days, light never begs or burns for entry. How may I house light, if the same presence already marks every part of me?

The blue on blue on blue meets and joins seamlessly. Bold to wedge an I between two palms softly pressing skin on skin. Participation as an active effort is futile in unfolding serenity. It is a most passive display, requesting only pure and raw presence. A foreign visitor devotedly dipping his brow low into limitless awe. Not contesting breath in against breath out, but in equal attendance welcoming both as one.

Back on the rim of Fishriver Canyon. Same ageless blue. Shirt strewn on the dusty surface of a bluff. Imprint of devestating human news, a quiet shadow removed, trickling into the river far below, breaking against the tide – left behind like socks in a pile. Reheated emotion satiated in envy and spite now stripped off, disarmed. The distance carries nearer a vibrant homecoming. The remaining garment wears heavy, sleeves over thighs drop to earth, layer after layer shed. There, naked and exposed , feet lightly moving, gently smiling, effortlessly extending the spread of silver wings. Sizzling voice only a hum out at sea. Take off off off, flap sweet and long an outstreched breath in silent recognition. Maybe a parting, though much sooner a trusted arrival.

A new breath tastes like old breath, only the packaging needs change. I am full, not filled with supper, but with a grim attitude for change. Truth be told, the packaging feeds only into the appearance of  change, dressed like we tend to adorn our bodies.

Rest is distant from day to day, I know the ridiculous self-imprisonment is a savage way of torture. Unnecessary in all regard. When the packaging goes and the clothes are dropped and the torture ends all is bare. I take to the sands, walking on hands and knees, a fresh seed and bury it deep in the hollow. Will it find feed in this desert? A place to drop into with all its might to press roots from its core to reach into new depths and spread life? What circumstances allow seed to open in desperate

, but quiet spirit to expose freely itself?

Ok, I’m guessing this will be quick – fatigue is at my forefront. A weak excuse. Part of me is writing to check off one more thing on my to do list. In other part I owe you my undivided attention. My usual is a steady stride right past you, over to the balcony doors, which I open to allow for fresh air. Now I want to stop and look at you closely. A sort of acknowledgment, like bowing my head to say with sealed lips: „I see you“. The seeing is mutual. I admire your still progression through the seasons, and the unique timing that spreads through you, outwardly subtle, but on the inside, ah, a flow of life in growing evidence. By the time I recognize your awakening, you taunt my lack of attention by portraying growth even to the ignorant. Day by day your bud advances, grows restless, speaks of turning the insides towards the sun. I posses no true knowledge of your coming of seed and soil. It’s a gated miracle and I barely stop. And when I do, I perceive your sudden appearance and neglect the path that has made you visible even to me. I regret, at times, my confusion over what is of importance, and search the distance, when you are so near, right here in my living room.

Welcome dear friend. I thank your gentle presence , which asks nothing, forces nothing, and yet, wholly expresses life. Your design is restrained by my incapacity to capture in written word. A shortcoming I let dribble out of my consciousness to meet you instead in your illumination of purity. Touching petal to skin, I dissolve in tender peacefulness. Never did I know flower is here the way I am here, simply more quiet, equally fading in time. I fondly relate our being.

The nomad I have become or the nomad I always was and the nomad stewing within. Or the nomad I think I am or others think I am. The question: does it matter? Nomad challenges home, if home is a physical place, not if home is closer than any place. What if coming home requires no movement? In fact, quite the contrary. Then I may well be nomad and never have left home. Yes, in thought. In this realm I have left everything, returned, burned, created and recreated hell and heaven. I seldom mature in thought.

I doubt home is knowledge acquired. I want to say, it is seeing what was always here. I may nomad the world and never find home if I look outside, that is clear. My gaze in turn to inhale the outer world is to channel all present. Present here, present now, present gift. And I the recipient.

Now I must go. Not to a some where or a some one. Perhaps not even.  Only a single teardrop forming at the rim of my lid. A provisional taste of salt; saturated emotion, light rap in my heaving chest. You guard, shouldering the incessant flow of thought, let me go. Release me. Spill me – drop – into open sea, so I may be free. Some flesh is retained by your grip

, thus I step out of flesh, and cradle heart in loyal devotion, setting it down beside flesh on cold stone. I break with shell and find nestled tight acquired ideas and concepts of who I am. Pieces plucked from a blooming meadow in early spring, pieces on a board taking a bow, now stepping off stage – fall. And with it light and wind and sound as I too step, three step into darkness. And walk on. No glimpse of time behind or ahead – no time. Just space untouched and bare, no carry or call or ink dipped tiny feet on blank paper, no name or number, no I. Just. A return to home. The revered eternal.

Home, my peculiar log on log, young and old fable, how many times have you roused and stirred, stretched and strained into your ephemeral sigh? Oft your visit stirs me too. The timber wood tickles my touch, my yearn, my finger pacing your rugged skin, stopping at your exposed collar to map your hurt, where branches slipped at the cut of the saw. Your home razed to build mine.

Tree and then timber, like pig and then pork. I utter shame in desparate recognition of our deficiency. Our survival depends on shelter. I am obliged to recite gratitude. And will love to match your loss as I house in your walls, evermore a guest in debt.

Half-smile loosens my knot. The stream carries water in its own purpose. I tilt my heart to nod to stream and tree , and in a moment recognize the great surge that houses all.