what I’m learning now (audio poetry 3:46)

i’m learning that i’m not learning anything new –
only choosing to remember a vast universe
that I heretofore chose to forget

(whether it was some intergalactic battle of good vs. evil
or the fact that my slightly agoraphobic father kept us home
if there was any possible chance of a thunderstorm
within a 200-mile radius,
doesn’t really matter)

i’m learning that in more than sixty years of existence
i perhaps have learned nothing whatsoever about love,
except that it carries the power to elevate above all else
and will run helter-skelter through
any tidy emotional framework
we believe we have fabricated

(i’m learning to want it in a way that I have never known
and, of course, I’m learning that I haven’t
the slightest idea what that might be)

i am gaining a deep wisdom
about contentment right now
how it rises out of simple soil
how utterly enough it is to live each day
with a roof over my head and earth under my feet
and to feel the electrifying ease
of being at home in my own skin

(for reasons of no import, this gentle concept
eluded my understanding until now,
arousing a succulent irony at the very moment
I recognized its arrival
astride the back of a great white tiger)

every inspiration that is pure of heart
weaves me into the warp of life’s sacred tapestry

every moment to which I bring my undiluted presence
is a moment sublime in its lack of adornment

each prayer I choose not to utter
births itself with a hope and promise
for which there is no measure

in every imaginable aspect that alights
within my circumference
i take the hand of creation in a pas de deux divine

what i am learning now is holy reconstitution
a way to sequester myself from all
that seeks to encumber my rewiring,
a practice that brings a godlike order
to man’s chaos of fragmentation
and returns me to the garden perfect, untouched

how great, how deep the satisfaction
watching the sun moon clouds stars
sweep across an endless western sky