For Ken and Kris Kristofferson, c. 2007
-from “Fillet of Soul With a Dark Night Glaze”
…right now, look to the lofty,
shaved-head, everyone-is-right,
tetra-arising, talking-horse’s-
human part of you – oh, Wilber –
Spirit-in-Action by any other name
is still
a rose arisen
a raisin’ as the Sun
from this waking dream to
face the challenge of lying
in the luxury of multiple perspectives,
creature comforts and I – Am – ness
while the prosthesis business
booms in Baghdad,
Bethesda and beyond
rest in the timeless
perfection of this very moment
while the hole in your heart
blossoms too big to bear,
too intimate to bare
and the move from
me and you
to us
to all of us
to all that is is just this,
just this, but
sometimes so hard to remember,
to shift to move on
and we don’t know in that moment
when the sheep leaves his fold
when the fool flees her flock
if he’s a rebel without a clue, she’s
of little faith, or the next emerging
evolutionary perspective –
what’s a shepherd to do?
As I speak, whose voice
is this, really – whose vision
informs my first-person pronoun –
the eye of flesh? the eye of mind?
the I of Spirit? Or, perhaps,
the Cistercian’s anonymous
authority of the collectivity
speaking through yet another
case of mistaken identity?
Inquiring minds want to know.
I am in this room, and
I am this room and
everything and everyone
in it. I am music,
silence and
of course I love myself
and every single one of me
whom I’m nevertheless called to ask –
do I authentically transcend
and include the
skin-pigmentation thing, the
masculine-feminine thing, the
hetero- homo- trans-
and bi- thing, those
ever-resilient ethnic and
religious things, the
liberal-conservative,
wisdom-compassion,
justice-mercy, and
intimacy-solitude things, and
can I finally stop seeking
what’s impossible to avoid
what I always already am
and fully feel my
absolute Embrace, my
Mother of all diversity issues,
the One as the Many,
who invites me to sit down in
the One Taste restaurant,
order my fill
from the Emptiness menu
– I’ve already had the Fillet of Soul
with a Dark Night glaze, so bring
me whatever you prefer –
dine alone with you, with us,
with all of us, in the company of
all that arises moment-to-
moment in ever-present
Awareness, savoring every
morsel of each course served
in this Nondual Feast
still desire,
have room for
and enjoy
the sinfully divine, moist
midnight chocolate cake,
get up from the table
wash all the dishes
return to the street, and
in my own voice
eternally
nourish and nurture
all sentient beings?
Copyright (c) 2007, 2015 by Reggie Marra
