Friday, April 1, 2016

Empty threats and promises

Empty threats and promises    
  
On a perch overlooking the ocean,
I sit in folded meditation. 

Between gusts of wind plaintively
whispering, stroking my skin –

the sounds of the crashing waves below.
Thoughts and feelings, hopes and fears

arise, wash over me and recede.
Though intimate and particular,

they are no more substantial and crucial,
no more belonging to me

than the wind’s caress and the surf’s roar.
No need to take seriously the fleeting touch

of the ineffectual, capricious wind,
the surf’s cacophony which is outside

myself and beyond control.  No need to follow
their empty threats and promises 

down the winding trail that leads
away from the Source; from the sea’s edge;

away from my body perched and folded
on the precipice above the breakers’ roar.

O child of God, from where arises this stranger
who you consider to be yourself?

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