What is – and who?
Within the age-worn masks of maya
There is only the one,
Where the clouds slip over the blue
Skies
Like white kites, wind-blown,
Scattering –
Then
Gone.
In the midnight
Before the dawn
History’s nightmares of desecration
Crack like jack hammers –
Then they have flown,
Away,
Gone
By the hour
Of moonrise,
When
Only the deep desert remains,
Only the ethereal,
Wise stones,
Only the clarity
Of the presence that never wanes,
Only the one
Who becomes all beings, and
Who by day
Sings within the luminous song
Of the cactus wren,
Perching where the wind stirs
On the high pine bough,
Overlooking the shifting sand
Of the shore,
Strewn with bitter bones,
The fading fires of empire;
There is only the one who shines in the white
Petal
Of the dogwood tree,
Tipped on the cliff-height;
Or who looks through each of the thousand,
Awakening emerald eyes
Of the cobra,
Drifting from cosmic wave to wave,
Never to settle
For long
On the rolling, green-winged sea,
The many-hooded cobra – the couch for Narayana,
While he is dreaming now
And evermore;
There is everywhere only the one,
Only the single
Flower,
Brave,
The unfolding power,
Brahman,
Within all the many, mist-blown masks of maya.
© Sharon St Joan, 2019
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