Two Meditative Poems

The Gatekeeper

 

I have been knocking at this gate

my whole life,

knocking, knocking, so long

that my knuckles have worn

a hole through the wood,

and sometimes, if I stand

just right, I can see bits of light

coming from the other side.

I am afraid to put my eye

to the hole I have made by my knocking.

It is like looking

directly into the sun.

So I step back and keep knocking

making the entrance a little larger

with each knock,

with each prayer for understanding,

with each thirst

for what lies beyond the gate,

beyond this world.

I must wait respectfully

for the gatekeeper

to answer my summons,

though the temptation to batter

through the hole I have made is strong.

I would risk blindness,

risk incineration

in the world beyond the gate,

if I did not already hear

the footsteps of the gatekeeper.

 

 

 

Something

 

 

Something

imagined us into existence.

That something was

very scientific,

very loving, very wild,

very mathematical,

very chaotic,

very purposeful,

very explosively given to

extravagance and elegance,

profusion and color,

yet so gentle that It knew

exactly how much to breathe

into the fire of life

without burning us all to cinders.

Imagined into existence,

we are here, duty bound

to imagine ourselves back to

that Something,

whose nature must take imagination

as the earth takes wind

for the circulation of its ideas.

I will imagine myself back into

the bosom of that Something

that made me

as a wind-wisp,

as a pink cloud from the most glory-stained

sunset, imaginable.