Poetical Synopsis:  My Silent Ground

There is no ground beneath my feet,
But Jesus showed the way:
Not a thing I do will be complete,
And the sun will shine today.

My mind is like a canopy
That casts a shadow on the ground.
It covers what it would not see.
Its judgments make no sound.

The clouds above are silent, too,
While the sun is shining down.
And by and by a ray breaks through
To my shadowed patch of ground.

No one sees it save for me.
There is not a thing to hear;
Just a silent witness in a tree
Standing near but not too near.

Was it the ray that caught my eye
And drew it to the tree?
Was I asleep beneath the sky
And dreaming silently of me?

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The sky perhaps is like a bowl
Turned upside down and hung
Above our heads to keep the whole
From flying off unsprung.

My mind perhaps is like a pond
In which the sky is reflected,
A trickster with his hat and wand
And all his gear collected.

And what’s the trick if not to make
The eye believe that what it thinks
It sees is all there is and none to take
From heaven but some little drinks?

The sky which seems so far and vast
That only what my mind reflects
Should be to me the first and last
Reality that God collects,–

That sky, in truth, does it not hold
The world more firmly in its hand
By what its openness does not enfold,
By what its spaciousness does not demand?

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If so, then why does ‘mind’ endure
And make its many choices?
To what end did I prefer
One over many voices?

To push, to pull, to cleave, to hate,–
To wrestle with the streams
Of life and find me coming late
To strange contorted dreams

Of what was not but might have been,–
Of what’s not yet appeared
That threatens though it be unseen–
Is this, then, what I feared?

Or might it be that what I sought
Were pleasure, pride, and fame,
And all that ever could be bought
By staying in the game?

What drove my mind to weave the tale–
Or did it weave my mind?–
That mental magic would prevail
And all my hopes unbind?

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The ray of light that heaven sends
To glide across the ground
Reveals the tree but then, forfend,
Itself cannot be found.

The koi that shimmers in the pond
Swims faster than the wand
The trickster waves to cast his spell
And bring it in his hand.

At last I lean upon my knees
And stare into the water.
I hear a stir and then a breeze.
The rocks begin to totter.

What first I thought I saw as me
Is wrinkled and unclear.
But then a new discovery breaks free–
That it was only fear.

I turn and see the sky above,
If only for a second,
Reflecting from its emptiness
What in the pond had beckoned.

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The koi sits in my hand, the left,
And the wand is in the right.
The magic drama now unfolds
Without effort, without fright.

If what I saw was in a dream,
The dream has reached its measure,
And what unfolds on Earth below
Is really hidden treasure.

Without judgment, without plan,
My little pond becomes the sky,
With no limits placed on man
And nothing to decry.

For nothing that the bowl protects
Did not arise within it,
And hence the human ‘mind’ projects
The sacred infinite.

What hides behind each thought and thorn
Does not a sting remove
But bathes it in that glorious morn
Where nothing need improve.