Centred

I stood in a garden once,
after paying full entrance price
and walking through the front gate,
when there arose in my heart
such a sense of heaven that every time
I am humbled, every time I am
brought back here, I cannot help but recall
what it is to look into the empty centre,
to hear the luminous silence, of God.

I thought that fragrant garden
was just for me, but now
this river has revealed that it wasn’t
the grail I remembered;
it was remembering me,
this make-believe mosaic of memory
who has made his promise
and will wait patiently to fulfill it,
passing the little time he has
looking at the pattern in clovers
and the playfulness of a few, precious clouds.

All of it perfectly lucky, if you stop counting
the honoured leaves of this book without end.

Traces

Harmonic

Gardening

By the river