S T L L N S S

Have you ever tried to enter the long black branches of other lives -- tried to imagine what the crisp fringes, full of honey, hanging from the branches of the young locust trees, in early morning, feel like?

Do you think this world was only an entertainment for you?

Never to enter the sea and notice how the water divides with perfect courtesy, to let you in! Never to lie down on the grass, as though you were the grass! Never to leap to the air as you open your wings over the dark acorn of your heart!

No wonder we hear, in your mournful voice, the complaint that something is missing from your life!

Who can open the door who does not reach for the latch? Who can travel the miles who does not put one foot in front of the other, all attentive to what presents itself continually? Who will behold the inner chamber who has not observed with admiration, even with rapture, the outer stone?

Well, there is time left -- fields everywhere invite you into them.

And who will care, who will chide you if you wander away from wherever you are, to look for your soul?

Quickly, then, get up, put on your coat, leave your desk!

...

Listen, are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?

While the soul, after all, is only a window,

Those who don’t feel this Love pulling them like a river,

those who don’t drink dawn like a cup of spring water or take in sunset like supper, those who don’t want to change, let them sleep.

This Love is beyond the study of theology, that old trickery and hypocrisy. If you want to improve your mind that way, sleep on.

I’ve given up on my brain. I’ve torn the cloth to shreds and thrown it away.

If you’re not completely naked, wrap your beautiful robe of words around you,

and sleep.

TELL ME IT ISN'T MAGIC

THE WAY YOU HEAL YOURSELF

Love and love alone that's all I've known.

In the beginning, the middle and to the end unknown.

Someone is calling me.

I think it is my soul.

Open the door.

Lazy in love.

Answer the call.