Sometimes
the clouds roll in
a few at a time
like spectators
to a barrel jumping
competition,
and before you know it
the sky is bruised,
the waves have run out of room,
and they’re colliding on all sides
like a legion of cymatic vendettas,
or a black body radiation field
composed of infinitesimal ballerinas
and one-way mirrors.
It’s the same way
particles come into existence,
always in pairs,
up and down,
here and there,
whirling, concocted, linked-together, just-in-time–
the connections obvious
because the void is so full of this every-which-ways looking.
But it’s uncomfortable to breath
right at the moving boundary
between life and nothing whatsoever.
You can drown on a teaspoon of water.
So, we’re trained to resist.
We’ve been bred for thousands of years
to take just this very circumstance,
and grab it by the neck.
But oh boy… they love it when you resist!
The waves I mean.
Try and grab a wave by the neck.
Resisting is like
putting your odds on the idea
that you can think faster than God.
When that thought
builds to a crescendo,
Murphy’s Law goes all hyperbolic fractal
and time inside the inferno starts whipping by
like a stiff breeze off the Cape of Good Hope.
Long story short,
one way or another, the waves slosh
over the sides of your life.
You start to sink.
You may start to panic.
But what this poem is really about,
is that you can breath underwater.
See, that changes everything.
If you’ll let it, obviously.
Where we get off track
is this thought we get sometimes–
from being bred for thousands of years
to grab this situation by the neck–
that if you hold your nose
and close your eyes
and sink into the water
and Hafiz slaps your hand out of the way
and secures a fitted mask to your grille
that’s equipped with a patent pending
underwater breathing apparatus…
you say no–!
It doesn’t count!
It only counts if I do it naturally…
You see…
sometimes holiness
lowers a bucket from the sky,
but the decision is made
to hold out
until wings are sprouted.
Like we have that kind of time.
All I’m saying,
is that if peace holds out its hand,
crawl onto it.
Let is close around you,
and carry you safely
through strange places
that sound like they’re subway stops
full of totally insane negotiators
that have been bred
for thousands of years
to speak in tongues
and jockey for position.
Let peace carry you through.
Let Love teach you the structure of silence.
Let Hafiz put a mask on your face.
Stop insisting you know
how this works.
Embracing Forever 
Wonderful post Michael. Another creative journey up and down and back through the hidden gates of underwater breathing with peace and Hafiz. Being carried by the peace is a beautiful idea, though it doesn’t seem too peaceful to have it be subway stops with insane negotiators. 🙂
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Thank you very much, Brad! The part of the subway stop was about the idea that peace can carry us through difficulties. In truth, though it isn’t really addressed here, we perceive the world sometimes as being full of these threatening situations. Those dissolve as we accept peace into the center of our lives, and we discover they were something altogether different than we once thought. But at first, my experience is we need that anchor to establish peace in our own minds and hearts. Then the reinterpretation of the world can begin in earnest… 🙂
Hope all is well on your end, and that you are enjoying a lovely fall weekend!
Peace
Michael
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Thanks for the clarification. I may need to practice holding that peace close and center in the next few weeks. Details to come on my blog. To autumn and peace.
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I may print this. It provokes such wonderful feelings
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Thank you for such a warm response, Barry. I’m pleased you found it so… I cannot think of a greater response than knowing one’s creative work has helped those wonderful feelings connect from one to another.
Blessings
Michael
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I love this! It reminds me of playing with the waves in the ocean. On a rough day, I’m reminded who’s in charge. It reminds me that I need to jump into the bucket that holiness lowers from the sky, because I don’t have time to “hold out until wings are sprouted…Like we have that kind of time.” Perfect! I need to let the wonderful gift I’ve been given carry me along to a better place, because I DON’T have to do it all by myself, and I don’t have that kind of time! And my most memorable dreams have been the ones in which I can breathe underwater. I must share this!
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Hi JoAnna!
There’s such a simple joy in playing with the waves in the ocean. Being part of the natural rhythms, and feeling the ocean smile viscerally up against us… It’s like bobbing on laughter… 🙂
Thank you very much for the re-blog, and you’ve resonated strongly with what I was feeling here– how we can make space in our lives for the unity to which we are forever enjoined to guide us along. Time can be a measure of our resistance to this surrender… I love that you’ve had dreams of breathing underwater. I think I had one once, too. I’m sure I have. I have this vague memory or familiar sensation when I think about it, but I can’t pull it up clearly. But it’s enough to remember it.
Peace
Michael
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Reblogged this on Loving Me, Too and commented:
Michael tells me what I need to hear, what my soul longs to hear. Loving me, too, means letting go of my arrogance that I must do it all by myself. I will accept the gift that carries me to a better place.
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Ok, Michael. I will. I will crawl into the hand of peace and let it carry me through. I will let Love teach me the structure of silence. I’ll take the mask because I really don’t know how this works, and I really do want to breathe under water, and I’m tired of trying to grab waves by the neck.
Grace and peace,
Mary
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Hi Mary,
It seems to me that you already have… We know this… We know this place, but we find ourselves so often manning life’s dashboard again, checking the compass and the console, breaking out the navigation charts to plot our course, and hemming and hawing when the winds blow us astray. Astray of what…!? 🙂
We are unified in grace, and peace is the ticket we present at the platform…
Michael
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letting clouds be themselves
and waves and particles
be what they are
in their own
non-locality,
smiling happily
not knowing how
any of it works.
I can share some
of this freshly picked apple
and I know it tastes good 🙂
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I love your replies, David. They are always full of wisdom and insight, and packaged so gently. Here I love the idea of everything dancing in its non-locality, smiling happily, not knowing how any of it works. This is the sublime beauty of nature for me. There is a passage in the book A Course of Love that talks about how everything in the universe is perfectly balanced in its relationship to everything around it– how love is fundamental and joins all to all, and you have captured the essence of it here. Many thanks for your presence here, my friend.
Love
Michael
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” if peace holds out its hand,
crawl onto it.” That is wonderful.
Thanks for the reminder in tumultuous times.
Peace
Karin
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Thank you, Karin. I’ve been feeling the pull of the tumultuous, and yet within my day I have those “holy instants” where I look up, and notice the safety and warmth of just being present to what is happening. I know you understand this feeling, my friend. Thank you for sharing it with me here.
Blessings
Michael
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Thanks Michael for the very timely reminder to stop insisting that I have the slightest idea how any of this works.
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My pleasure, Don. I need this reminder daily! Ha! I’m thinking of starting a new line of fortune cookies where this is the only fortune you ever get. “I haven’t a clue… and I’m in love with” Then the paper cuts off. Printing error or something… 🙂
Always a pleasure when your smiling face appears here!
Much Love
Michael
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Thank you for this amazing gift. Reading you is like daily Christmas or birthday presents to be opened….sometimes I often save them for that moment when I really really need one….oh wait, that would be everyday, right? Peace and blessings to you and thanks for being a miracle to my soul. K
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My pleasure, Kim! And thank you for being a miracle to my own soul. I need these moments of connection everyday, too. What is the purpose of life if not to discover the beauty and power inherent in the spaces we occupy each and every moment…? Writing is such a powerful way to connect with this place, and I see in your own writing that you know this feeling… 🙂
Peace
Michael
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Beautiful. So many lines in this one that speak to the truth, but the last sentence says it all. Haven’t got a clue!
Alison xoxox
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Thank you, Alison!
Being clueless is one of the glories of this life!
Much Love
Michael
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Resistance. Yes Michael; it is a devil of a problem we seem lumbered with. Alongside your own fine body of work, and as I think I mentioned to you before, I am reading Thomas Merton’s translation of Chuang Tzu. That work, as is your own above, is mainly about the effects of resistance, and its opposite, surrendering – it is Daoism of course. With your permission, I would include a sample:
Surrendering
If you persist in trying to attain what is never attained (It is Tao’s gift),
if you persist in making effort to obtain what effort cannot get,
if you persist in reasoning about what cannot be understood,
you will be destroyed by the very thing you seek.
To know when to stop,
to know when you can get no further by your own action,
this is the right beginning!
You never find happiness until you stop looking for it.
My greatest happiness consists precisely in doing nothing whatever that is calculated to obtain happiness:
and this, in the minds of most people, is the worst possible course.
If you ask “what ought to be done” and “what ought not to be done” on earth in order to produce happiness,
I answer that these questions do not have an answer.
There is no way of determining such things.
Yet at the same time, if I cease striving for happiness,
the “right’ and the “wrong” at once become apparent all by themselves.
Contentment and well-being at once become possible the moment you cease to act with them in view,
and if you practice non-doing (wu wei),
you will have both happiness and well-being.
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I’m not reading all that! Ha!
I may have to take a page out of Barry’s book and print this for ready reading. Thank you for this perfect exposition on the subject at hand. A hand which is slapping all concepts from away from me… leaving nothing at all but the glory of our spaciousness.
We are immersed in the profound.
Peace
Michael
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Touché! I can see I’m being a bad influence on you. 😉
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Love , Michael , my response is love … I know no other ( the breeze from your wings coasting me in this world , and the view is so magnificent ) . love , megxxx
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There is no better response, Meg. The love that passes through the constellation of our various hearts fills the realm, and settles into the openings of our non-doing… I like the image of coasting through the sky, on wings of grace, balanced between light and gravity, upwards and downwards… balanced…
Peace
Michael
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Magnificent… Barbara x
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Thank you, Barbara!
Peace!
Michael
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Aye, Aye, Captain. I’m waving the white flag with joy. 🙂
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Waving mine right beside you…! The doves of peace are coming in for a landing. 🙂
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There is plenty of wisdom in this, enough so that I can start a new wisdom sock drawer – it’s always good to have a back up – sometimes when I grab life by the waves, my feet need a new pair of warm socks. I do, however, enjoy those sock-free moments enjoying the liberation and bouyancy of going with the flow. Peace my friend, Harlon
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Peace to you, too, Harlon. I know what you mean about needing a warm pair of socks. Sometimes after a day of grabbing hold of the waves, this is just what the doctor ordered. Warm, dry socks can change everything– like the voice of a friend… 🙂
Enjoy our planetary conjunction!
Blessings
Michael
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You’re right. I’m listening – even allowing myself to be breathed at times. The ending has such a tone as to carry me a bit further along than my own thrashing might otherwise allow.
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Hello M,
I’m savoring the layered meanings of your allowing yourself to be breathed. There is a holiness in opening ourselves in such a fashion that we need. I’m the one thrashing now I’m afraid. Savoring the way the eye of a storm is transported all over the globe on skittish paths by forces always distant from its quiet…
Peace
Michael
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Yet somehow in this thrashing, you still manage to bring into my view this darting center of the storm swirling on the tiny globe below, as if you and I are watching from some distant satellite simultaneous to your own personal Michael dot in the storm – sending that glowing orb of Michael much peace down there on that crazy planet. He’s a good one to watch from up here. 🙂
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Wonderful, “All I’m saying, is that if peace holds out its hand, crawl onto it.Let is close around you,
and carry you safely”…….
And that my friend is it in a nut shell…… going within the flow, Water will always find its path of least resistance and seeps into every nook and cranny .. Breathing deep as we each swim within the tide of changes.. as we morph with all that is and all that ever has been 🙂
beautiful Michael
Blessings Sue
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Thank you, Sue. We have to be flexible and go with the flow for sure. Every time we get that vision of this–! it’s supposed to be like this!, we should be on the lookout for one of those tidal waves. Or for the waters of holiness to slip into the cracks in our guard and break us further open…
Thanks for spending some time here. Much appreciated!
Blessings
Michael
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Always my pleasure Michael 🙂
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I like so much about this piece, the bruised sky, the subway stops with those insane negotiators speaking in tongues, the flying carpet of peace (maybe that what the flying carpet story was all about), and “Like we have that kind of time” :), Hafiz handing out a mask. Great and meaningful images. I will fly with this one when I need some peace.
Kristina
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Thank you, Kristina! I’m glad you enjoyed it. Come back for a flight when you need some height from the moment’s events. I hope it picks you up, and you find yourself breathing peacefully at the bottom of that river, with a mask on, and Hafiz up on the barge, working the bellows…!
Michael
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