Dirty Little Secrets

down to the shore at dawn
to meet my Mother
and sing to her my sorrow
a prayer-like song,

rivers of blood flowing
like soldier’s wine
in a war-torn country,

i ask Her to stop the hate
and She sends them a Wave –
of despair — of warning,
but they cannot hear Her

brothers in blood
clutching their guns
instead of their babies

I wish to tell you
how I feel,
but my words fail me.

Sitting in nothingness,
singing my nothing songs,
silence reverberates
off into nothingness.

One moment flows
into eternity
as the sun rises.

“At the funeral of one of his monks, as the Abbot joined the procession, he remarked, ‘What a long procession of dead bodies follows the wake of a single living person!’” (The Golden Age of Zen 145, 309 n.47)

For twenty days I have contemplated the actions of human beings, one upon another… murder then suicide… my best friends are now gone. Their lives, this turn of the wheel, are ended. I have mourned and I will likely always mourn their passing, but it is my own loss I mourn, I think. I will no longer hear their voices, touch their hands, witness their lives. Each time a life has ended unnaturally, a light in the network of lights that have touched mine is extinguished. There is less light left behind.

It is not right that one should choose to end another’s life before the natural passage of one’s life. I do not see it as “what was meant to be” and I can see no justification, no moral imperative, that makes right that which is wrong. I do not know everything there is to know, nor am I a perfect being… yet I do think I know right from wrong in this case and my mind does not rest easy.

The Zen quote above tells me that, yes, death is inevitable to us all, we cannot avoid it… it will come… as it always has. My desire to cling to that which was… this is a hard thing to let go of, yet in clinging, I see myself as striving against a great river, rather than letting the water flow. I am aware that I am making this more difficult than it perhaps needs to be… but, as before, I know not how to let go. It would seem the simplest thing, to just open my hands and let go, but it is far from simple for me.

In some ways, I see it as being afraid to be free… and yet, we are not free, trapped in these bodies, on this earth, though our minds and our thoughts and our feelings can travel vast distances. On the other hand, all is one… there is no need to go anywhere or do anything to be free, but just choose freedom. Clinging to what was is to trap myself in the past, as I have done before. Yet, there is no past, no future, no time, no distance… all is now, all is one. My friends’ have left their bodies, yet they are with me now in another sense. Each time I think of them, they are here now… even now, probably watching me type this, knowing these tears are for them.

Let it flow.

in the magical land
of the musical spells
grows a tree most grand
where my spirit dwells

in the heart of the wood
at the top of a hill
we that loved once stood
aye, we know that land still

some can guess what i bear
ever i loved, yet alas!
whether Here or still There
through the woods do we pass

now every tree is a token
of the land where we dwell
ahh, the words that were spoken
when i loved, and so well

from my sight love would hide
on me no shame will fall
whether i walk, or whether i ride
in my life i loved them all.