"Questing" and Other Poems

Questing

For eight years, I stalked answers like small game.
Questions the trap,
Reason the bait.

At thirty, I set out from the fragrant garden
surrounding my modest house,
trekked across orderly plots tilled by churchmen, politicians,
good burghers of society;
past fields fallow with the bitter weeds of control.

At thirty-five, I reached the ledge of life and looked down.
Looked into the abyss of certain annihilation.
All voices around me said
Go back, fertilize your field.
Reap harvests of spousal and filial love,
seasons of warm nights reading by the fire,
of good wine, new books, and leather chairs.

All voices, all instincts, all callings said go back
but I stepped off.

Free-falling was a rush of indescribable joy.

I wish I could say I fell unhindered,
but when my eyes saw the horror that lay ahead,
I scrambled, afraid; grasped branches,
groped roots of doubt that pierced the rock and
hung into the air.

I stayed my fall, am bruised and lame,
unable to go back
unwilling to go forward
unwelcome in this inhospitable spot.
For years now I've rocked on this bare slab
And though I've wept and fasted, wept and prayed
Daily battled that monster that I saw
Faced horror with fear of life and fear of death
'Til fear was dead and cannibalized.
The terror that I fought sleeps now.

I'm ready to go, ready to let go, ready to go.

And so I let go,
only to find
I'm already here.

---

Ripples

like a bubble from mud
let go
release

trust
you'll know the way to go
it's your nature and right
to reach for the light and lighter

on your sudden breach
the lush ripples
of your opening heart
will spread
throughout the vast pool

and show others
the pool is illusion

---

My Life as an Onion

I've always visioned my life
prisoned in layers thick
and layers rustic
to be pried off
with weeping eyes
and strong thumbs
until the clean
white core of me
is liberated.

Older,
now I see
that the birth-pure nugget of me
is daily enveloped
by transparent sheaths
of magnificent life
one on another
glossy with experience
creating a whole --
perfect, plump,
ripe and red.

When the knife comes
and cleanly cleaves
look closely, witness
the green beginnings
of another shoot
indomitable life
insisting
from that same clean core.