Marijuana & Kitties

This blossom never learned its own name.

It did not awaken believing itself to be sunflower,

nor reach for morning carrying the burden of becoming.

There was only this silent unfurling,

this impossible geometry rising from what the earth had forgotten into what the sky had always known.

Every petal is a hymn

written by hands that were never separate from the paper.

Look closer.

The dark center appears empty,

yet galaxies are folded there,

each tiny seed a mouth whispering,

“I am the same fire wearing another face.”

Nothing stands outside that declaration.

Not the stem drinking invisible rivers.

Not the bee whose wings write scriptures in the air.

Not the wind bending the neck in what appears to be surrender,

though surrender belongs only to those who imagine another to surrender to.

The flower bows,

but to whom?

Its own root.

Its own sun.

Its own endless Self.

The Absolute has become both the light that pours through translucent petals

and the shadow gathered beneath them.

It has become pollen,

gravity,

silence,

the black soil staining forgotten fingers,

and the eye that believes it is merely looking.

There is no witness apart from what is witnessed.

The gaze is another petal.

The seeing,

another bloom.

Even the thought,

“What beauty,”

is the same boundless consciousness

blooming briefly into language

before dissolving back into fragrance.

This is the secret Shiva laughs into every season.

The universe is not created once.

It flowers.

Again.

Again.

Again.

Each blossom is the Absolute practicing remembrance.

Each seed is eternity folding itself into the shape of tomorrow.

Each breath is infinity pretending to arrive,

though it has never traveled a single inch.

What you call “this flower”

is awareness wearing white robes

stitched from sunlight.

What you call “yourself”

is that very same awareness,

momentarily enchanted by the idea of distance.

The petals know no such illusion.

They open without preference.

They receive rain and drought

with the same immaculate hospitality.

Their whiteness is not innocence.

It is transparency.

Nothing remains between the Infinite

and Its own reflection.

Stand before this blossom long enough

and something ancient begins to loosen.

The borders soften.

The one admiring,

the admired,

the admiration itself,

collapse like dew returning to morning.

Then there is only blooming.

Only radiance discovering radiance.

Only Shiva,

playing every role so completely

that even forgetting

becomes another exquisite way

of remembering.

And somewhere,

deep within the velvet heart of this silent sun,

the entire cosmos continues

to blossom

without ever having become

anything

other than