Salt flat

Salt flat

Existence, said my Lord, is a big fat zero.
Buddhists say the same - trying to shoo

everyone through the narrow slit of a door
beyond which lies, not paradise, but a vast,

flat, uninhabitable terrain.
Surrender, it would seem, amounts

to encountering every (blessed) moment
as the wondrous insignificance that It is -

life becomes death, soul becomes Soul,
illusion becomes Truth, zero becomes Everything.

And we, o pilgrims, become God,
gliding through, gliding through -

in the fine release, the swift transparency,
the invulnerable poise of every (blessed) moment.

Not a narrow path to follow,
nor a mountain to scale in the distance

but, an endless salt flat, in every direction equal,
to espy, acknowledge and wander

until we make our worthy return
to the Ocean from which we came.

O child of God, to surrender is to stop trying
to make something out of nothing.