How I wish I could cast the first stone. But of course, I have been guilty of it all.
What a gnarled mass the mind is! Twisting and turning in on itself. Plotting and scheming. Creating dramas, spinning yarns, launching pebbles. Better to open a good novel and listen to a master’s tales than your own senseless blather. Or do something constructive and compose your own poem from the stuff that swirls around in the cauliflower of your brain.
Bird of Paradise
One day,
The talons of the wind seized me by the scruff of the neck
And
Left me dangling in suspense.
For just long enough.
Then the great claws relinquished their hold
And
Let me drop,
Not so gently,
Back down on the ground.
It was just rough enough.
Then the retreating drumbeat of wing against sky
And
Just for a moment,
I understood it all.
It was a flash that brought the smile of the Buddha to my lips.
(Or maybe it was the Mona Lisa’s.)
Within that smile
There was no place for pitching rocks.
No space for twirling and writhing.
Just for a moment.
The tiny curve of a smile,
Like a still little cup.
Balanced atop one upturned corner,
The alpha,
On the other,
The omega.
And nestled in the dip at the centre,
The ever-present aum.
Who would suspect a smile could embrace all that?