Graveyard gates

Graveyard gates                                                                               
 
I have come not to teach, said my Lord.
Liberation, apparently, not something you learn how to do. 
 
With this lifetime of accumulated knowledge,
it’s difficult to become a vessel now with a perfectly hollow ring.
 
There’s an old joke about a drunk
stumbling into an open grave.
 
I’ve forgotten the punch line.  I’ve dug my own grave;
settled into the bottom, studying the sky.
 
I can dig no deeper nor climb back to the surface.
I thought the virtue of patience
 
referred to the length of the journey.
Now I see it only begins
 
when the path veers from the highway
and enters through the graveyard gates.
 
O child of God, how stubbornly you cling
to the only thing you know.