Spiritual Breath

When
the breath rises
and life proceeds
before and after
Time

When

Einstein’s
curved universe
returns the
ray of light that just
bounced against my eye

When

on the starry night’s path
I reach out
and find the hands
of old friends
willing to look down
on the earth’s
spinning
like on a table of
eternal thought
and to say in our
observance
“I wonder if they’ve
had a good day”

When

I can imagine myself
in spirit, mind
and body
no further from goddess
than the ant
the elephant
the rivers in India are
in their own rhythm
and history

When
I can awake
with a smile
of contentment
because I no longer
need the artificialities
of boxed up existence
we have labelled TIME

When the polyester suits
of the sixties
and the Wall Street
furies of the eighties
or the poverty and
hateful indifferences
of the nineties
and dogs on motorcycles
or Madonna
chanting OM
mean no more
than we humans
finding strange ways
to act out our
unconscious disturbance
that God’s plan
has not been revealed to us

again

When the bombs in India
or the elections in Iran
stop giving me
reason to reach for an aspirin
or to stir with less ease
the tea in my cup

When

I have come to understand
the meaning of
Acceptance
and the meaninglessness
of meditating on my resistance

Then

I might relish
in the rise and fall
of the breath
and string it out
long and full
hoping that
it is one more
tickle
on the goddess’s
face
capable of
making her
smile.

Austin, TX May 1999