That longing
at the center of your being
is Hafiz
and Christ,
the Buddha,
ten thousand angelic beings,
my mother,
your great great Uncle so and so,
the not so famous one,
his pet Lhasa Apso Louie,
along with
everyone
you’ve ever loved
and
ever will love
and
all their friends
and neighbors
plus
a few party crashers
and
so on and so forth–
hell, it may as well be
Love Itself!–
shouting and waving
and
blowing horns
and
jumping up and down
at the edge of the field
like pandemonium
squared
in an effort
to flag you down.
Finally,
you stop.
(Sighing)
Gee-zeus CHRIST!
you’re thinking.
Put the tractor
in neutral.
Set the brake.
Hop down
and shake off the dust.
Walk over,
careful to step side-long
in the furrows.
Wipe your brow
with your shirt sleeve,
thinking about tomorrow’s weather
and
the position of the sun
and
the acres left to plow
and
the potential impacts
of losing three days
of growing season.
You look at them with
your squinty-eyed
all business
let’s get to the point
‘cuz I’m kinda’ busy here
in case
you hadn’t noticed
face,
as if to say,
Okay, already.
I’m here.
I’ve given of myself.
So… what is it!?!
Hafiz,
who is sitting
next to me
in a blind
on the other side of the field
from which we are both
watching through binoculars,
narrates:
“Here it comes!”
The gathered
assembly of joy-filled friends
are calmer now,
more subdued
now that you’ve drawn near,
but beaming like sunflowers
on a clear June day.
Happy as clams.
Just because.
Just to be near you.
Just to be close.
Just to see your face,
to look in your eyes,
to feel your presence.
Look at you!
They’re
like a stand
of wild-crafted
shit-eating grins
on fleshy stalks,
swaying in the breeze.
Giggling behind
closed mouths and cupped hands.
Joy on the verge of spilling over.
Your own future great great great granddaughter,
a glowing child of eight
and longtime fan of beetle taxonomy–
(she has this whole collection)–
winks at you,
filling you in on a little secret
she suddenly can’t contain.
She is the spokesperson:
“We just wanted to say hi.”
That’s it?
“Yeah pretty much.”
So proud and excited about this.
“That’s it.”
Hafiz squeaks with delight.
Through our binoc’s
we can see you frozen in place,
simmering, uncertain, faltering.
You scratch
the back of your neck.
Whack!
Slap a mosquito dead.
You’re caught cold
between another
Gee-zeus CHRIST!
and the best
feeling you ever had,
if only…
…if only you’d let it come.
Suddenly
Hafiz is gone,
has dropped through
the door in the floor
like a fireman
at the sound of the horn.
He appears
moments later
in my field of vision,
sprinting across the dirt,
a retreating series of dust clouds.
I think he’s headed for you,
but…
he swings up into the cab,
puts the big machine in gear
and rumbles off across the field,
leaving you standing
beneath a dispersing puff of smoke,
cutting off your retreat.
You look around,
spinning in place, grasping.
You stare straight through the blind,
unseeing and empty.
Something is familiar
in your eyes.
I realize you’re me,
standing alone in that field
on top of your own shadow.
I’m seeing myself,
glimpsing my own distance:
Here to There…
Hafiz set me up!
Then I watch
as our knees crumple
and sink into a freshly plowed seed row.
Our shoulders tremble–
with laughter,
with tears,
with every feeling
blurred together as One…
Who can say?
Who can tell the difference?
They’re peeling off
one-by-one
and the distance is fleeting.
Hafiz is rumbling back down the field now,
making another pass,
driving almost straight,
(not really),
(not even close, actually),
(but beans don’t need
straight rows to
reach for the sun
when the time comes),
and we have
a little girl in one arm
and a creepy crawly beetle
we just found in the dirt
in the other
and my longing
has sprouted shoots
from the field Hafiz has plowed.
That’s just one little thing
about longing.
It’s all in there,
everything you’ll ever need,
in that one feeling,
like a jawbreaker
that just keeps
changing colors…
Embracing Forever 
Fantastical journey into longing with Hafiz, Michael, bean stalks and all the mixed up stuff. Fun way to celebrate my birthday. Thanks Michael!
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Happy Birthday, Brad! Hope you had a great day… May your next orbit of our nearest and dearest star (no offense to you others) be even greater than the last.
Wearing a cone hat and blowing one of those retractable paper kazoos,
Michael
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Love the imagery and words. Thanks Michael. I’ll hoist a party hat with Hafiz, dancing on the stars!
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Stunning work here, Michael. What a journey! Love sure has its ways!
Much love 🙂
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Thanks, Himani! Love has its ways, indeed. We are all along for the ride, keeping these heart journals to describe what we find along the way. Someday these will be in a museum built to house artifacts from the Great Exodus out of Separation, and the onlookers will realize, it was the discovery of one another that saw them through… 🙂
Michael
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M! This was a wild ride out of body and time (a huge trippy packet of words) I’m thinking you may need a warning label on this post. Is it laced? I’m slow to rise this Sunday morning, yet now I’ve lived many lifetimes, covered my self in sweat and dust, re-awakened that giddy, powerful love and longing, sprouted up new shoots, plowed the back acres, and met my beginning and end, all before my morning tea. You oughta charge admission! Shooot, Dawg, you and your rascally friends! Maybe I ought just go back to bed.
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WARNING
THIS POST IS LACED WITH LONGING, LOVE, AND MORE THAN A SMIDGE OF THAT INNER TOMFOOLERY THAT IS BROUGHT ON BY EXPERIENCING UNEXPECTED BURSTS OF GRACE AT SCATTERED POINTS IN TIME OVER THE LAST SEVERAL DECADES, THE SUM TOTAL OF WHICH HAS LEFT THE AUTHOR OVERWHELMINGLY SKEPTICAL OF THE WORLD’S MOST BASIC CLAIM– i.e. THAT IT EXISTS.
READ AT YOUR OWN RISK. POSSIBLE SIDE EFFECTS INCLUDE A BENIGN STUPOR, REDUCED RELIANCE ON MATERIALISM, AND FREQUENT DIFFICULTIES WITH TAKING BUREAUCRATIC PROCEEDINGS AS SERIOUSLY AS ONE SHOULD.
ABSURDLY
THE AUTHOR’S TYPIST
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“A BENIGN STUPOR” –indeed! 🙂
this post left me slumped in drunken stupor! How come I have never knew of this nest of your?! Every post is like a little discovery of your big world!!
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Thank you so much, Diwata! You are too kind… This drunkenness is contagious and benign both, and I’m happy you have found your way here and shared your responses. I have enjoyed the discovery of your nest as well recently. We can build from that… 🙂
Michael
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Speechless Michael ! Needing a drink of water before experiencing again ! Love , megxxx
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Ha! You’re digging into the archives now… I had fun with that one… Thank you for taking some time here today, Meg. I will make us some tea!
Michael
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Loved this, I too need to stop thinking of all the potential impacts and give myself over more to just being, “happy as a clam.”
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It is truly amazing what just being happy provides… I have for the longest time been right on top of thinking there was something missing or not quite right and just lately have somehow managed to let those feelings drift away. What remains is pretty wonderful. Perhaps it is the stars, the timing. Perhaps it is a bubble. Perhaps it will remain… I found it was preceded by weeks of experiencing uncertainty and self-doubt, to a fairly strong degree. Like we talked about on your post a month or so ago. Glad to share this moment with you, Julia. Thanks for the visit today and hope you are well…
Peace
Michael
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Sounds entirely beautiful.
I have been experiencing a lot of tiredness, more than seems warranted by my activities. Like you I have been wondering – is it the changing of the seasons, the stars, the energies coming into the planet, or possibly the acupuncture I have recently started by way of my dog – who I’ve been taking every week since Christmas when she lost the use of her rear legs – thankfully the acupuncture has given her back quite a lot of mobility.
I feel especially tired and the NEED to sleep after the acupuncture, so I think some of it is tied up with my body healing itself – nothing wrong with me, but still I think we can probably all come more into alignment with the wholeness of Source. But it’s funny, I’ve also been incredibly tired other times.
I wonder if it is that I have (once again) been taking on too much of other people’s energies instead of staying strong in my own. Today I had almost the whole day to myself as a result of canceled plans and although I felt tired and not up too much it was delightful to have that time.
There’s a wonderful meditation I have about filling yourself up with the purest and highest energy of your self. I think I may start doing that again on a daily basis. Here in Japan the whole society is geared around conforming and subsuming your own identity in order to keep the peace. It strikes me now that that meditation would really help me not to get sucked into that and to stand strong in my own unique essence.
Meandering thoughts poured out on your page….
Sending you peace and many more moments of such pure and unadulterated joy.
Julia
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Hi Julia,
I think there are various seasons we traverse, and beauty to be found in each one though sometimes we have to do some digging! I liked the description of that meditation, and am sure it is very helpful. I think sometimes fatigue can be like this gestalt of ideas we have, and we need to take a load off and let them disperse. Not saying that is your position at all– I just know sometimes it happens like that for me. The moment of letting myself relax truly, fully, unequivocally can be so healing in and of itself. I have to really work to get there, though! Ha! Sometimes after a stint at work that has kept me needing to go, go, go… I give a lot, and then there is a time to take a few days off and I think, yes–! I will do this and do that… and I crash… Ha! Sometimes it is simply what we need. And I would think acupuncture for sure… moving the energy around, causing the need to let things reach their new equilibrium, opening circuits, etc. Sleep sounds perfect after that.
Your most perfect line of this comment: “nothing wrong with me” 🙂
Peace
Michael
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I really have to thank you for that you know Michael – your comment reminded me that I am right where I am supposed to be, perfect wherever that may be; to trust in that.
After many years of making myself wrong, it can take me some time to ease into this new space of accepting.
Honored to have such company on the path.
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Likewise, Julia. I am honored, too. Thank you for sharing that. We are all far more similar than we realize, I think, exploring a common territory of what it means to be…
Peace
Michael
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