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Posts Tagged ‘ecstasy’

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Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on February 26, 2026| 6 Comments »


for Mark Burrows
 
And there, in your letter, several doors,
all of them in the shape of an exclamation point,
all invitations to slip myself through
their dark slender lines and into
the realm of ecstasies—world of oh!
and wow! and yes! and love!—
into the sensory kingdom of blisses
that is always here, and yet somehow
I miss it, dulled as I am by the ellipses
of shoulds, the endless commas
that join me to the litany of frying pan,
dish soap, calendar, telephone,
toothbrush, postage stamp, pillow.
But oh! The wide spiraling of eagle this morning!
The deepening rose of the clouds at dawn!
My daughter asleep in her room!
Oud! Ginger! Dark crimson yarn!
Emptiness! Cool breeze! Your letter!
What joy this morning when I saw
all those tall, slim exclamation marks
and recognized them as the doors they are,
each one the chance to say yes! Yes!
to vibrating with elation! Yes! to the bright
bubbling champagne giddiness that rises inside
because wing! Because spring! Because sun!
Because pillow! Because toothbrush! Because breath!
Because orange! Because toes! Because you! 

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When We’re All the Way Out of the Way

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on March 31, 2025| 15 Comments »

We show up, burn brightly, live passionately and hold nothing back and when the moment is over, when our work is done, we step back and let go.
—Rolf Gates


This moment, too, is surrender, this blazing,
this bliss-ache, this bright-chime of being,
this showing up heartbare with no shred held back,
this feral unselving, this radiant loss
of all knowing, this wild unhiding
where anything can happen next,
this, too, is surrender. Not like the soulquaking
gut-fall of grief, only just like it, no foothold
except on the needle-tip point of what is,
that place where there is no story, no self,
no yes, no no, no safety, no promises, and
all is being, yes, this, too, is surrender,
this opening beyond self, this radiant obliteration,
unfathomed unfurling, trust-flaring, now-flaming,
instructionless grace, this ecstatic exploding
that always and never arrives.

*

Oh friends … Rumi said, “Be a fool,” and also suggested “be helpless, dumbfounded, unable to say yes or no … crazed, lying in a zero circle, mute …” … 

And so … happy April Fool’s. Perhaps not the fool where you try to trick people, more the fool where you are “surrendered to beauty.”


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