Allowing your eyes to close,
Relax into a comfortable position.
Tune in to the flow of your breath.
Feeling your inhale.
Feeling your exhale.
The poem I'm going to be sharing with you is from the book Earth,
Water,
Fire,
Air,
Space Meditative Poems.
It begins on page 68 and is titled Looking the Five Elements.
Part One.
Looking into the Wind.
A million tongues collide in the way atoms combine in each word designed by voices now mute in the slow dissolve of matter into space.
The wind not privy to definitions of time,
The recent past,
Ancient empires,
And pre-Columbian eras.
A flow unobstructed,
Dialects disregarded,
Translations not needed.
Every syllable resurrected and walking on its own two legs into silence.
The cosmos in which all speaking merges into one.
Beyond tongue,
Beyond ear,
Beyond any revolution,
Involution,
Evolution of what this world can carry.
Part Two.
Looking into the Ether.
There is salt,
Flocks of it,
White wings catching the light.
Salt from the sea,
Salt from the brow,
Salt from the minds,
Salt from the bread,
Salt that doesn't even know where it's from.
The salty sound of voices crackling cyber-optically profound words that are only particles of sound scattered.
The seasoning of what must be said into the soup of silence,
Simmering as it has for ages unbeckoned by the newest recipes.
The latest ways to say X plus Y plus C equals something you must taste for yourself.
Part Three.
Looking into the Water.
There is nothing but lava,
Molten fire erupting,
Bubbling up from the core of a song composed in aquamarine.
Rhythmic waves,
Tranquility of absolute transparency.
The current synchronized with the luminous moon,
Not batting an eye at the seed of fire hidden inside the song,
Knowing it must rise even with water in its lungs.
Spew forth and not,
Not,
Not be tamed to implode,
But shake the clear waters free from their lull.
Fill their clear vessels with primordial heat.
Part Four.
Looking into the Fire.
There is nothing but sleet,
Centuries of it,
Folding into the rhythmic waves of a sun-sung sea.
The sea and sleet separated by millennia,
Which is to say the molecules of the mollux have not known the cold fury of pelting ice,
Yet carry it as they carry the ancestral wings of gulls they have never seen.
Even as they glide directly above,
Miles from the benthic depths,
Ink dark and just as unwritten,
Wordless plots hatching unscripted,
Completely on cue,
Act two gliding into act three,
No intermission required.
Part Five.
Looking into the Earth.
The transfixed bones of bliss return,
Holding the gaze as if to say,
What are you doing looking down instead of up?
And we too sifted the soil with our hands searching.
The phalanges motionless paint their vanished skin of a dream,
Green stripes,
Blue designs,
A language of crushed berries and herbs.
The pelvic cradle rocking without moving into a rhythm sustained by joy not compressed by the passage of time.
The capillaries slipping into dreams of themselves.
The hips no longer hips,
But the space through which the earth itself still sings.
