Homecoming

When I slept under bushes,
stillness said
dwell in me.

When I was anxious, it showed me
peaceful silence
in a stone.

Religion led outwards, away
from the quiet
witness.

Clinging to my father sky god,
I fought to breathe
his air,

forgetting I was born
water’s
creature.

Sky’s teachings
were like
snow:

symmetrical,
beautiful,
cold;

something free,
fluid and
formless

he had hunted down,
field dressed, and
frozen.

I tried hard to make
his ideas my home
long years,

till life was such a burden,
I told a mugger
to shoot me.

***

Though stillness often called,
I did not listen
or follow.

Then came a day
it showed
itself

clearly
in all
things.

I slowly savored every sight
in an open air
market;

gazed in
solemn
joy

at pyramids of produce, bins of beans,
richly colored mounds of
powdered spice.

Even blackened cabbage leaves
trampled
flat

in the gutter
delighted
me.

Now I see it showed itself
to point me to a
home within,

that causes neither fear nor remorse,
needs no punishments, no
enforcers;

and to get my attention,
to give me
a warning:

***

Outside a fishmonger's,
in a
pine box,

a fish struggled,
thrashed, gills
gaping,

on top of a neat row
of its already dead
fellows,

its scales softly kissed
by gently falling
snow,

love it could not feel,
water it could not
breathe,

an invitation it
could never follow back
to the seas.

Fatefully, I ignored the urge
to linger, see deeper, and
turned away,

not reading the warning
I know today was
shown me there.

Its message given and ignored,
the peaceful passion
passed.

Faithful to my idol,
I journeyed on, unseeing,
four decades.

***

Still, even the prophets
of false gods can give
good gifts.

In the end, this one helped save
my life, my sanity,
my soul;

made me ready
to receive today’s
miracle,

one he was
impotent
to give.

So, perhaps it is true that
we can make no
mistakes.

***

Late in life, I turn for home.
A subtle door
opens,

and through it come all these memories
with understandings I never
had before.

Like the time on LSD
I saw something
supple, thin

take its shape from black waves it rode
over bottomless
black depths.

I knew I saw myself:
but why so thin?
And why black?

Was I that shallow, my life
that meaningless,
that dark?

Now, I remember
for the first
time

the floating
thinness
was

the ocean’s surface
lit from
above.

The waves and depths
were only
black

because
they were
unlit.

***

But
no
more,

for now
there is fire
in the deeps.

Stillness
calls me
again;

offers
me dwelling
in its homey vastness;

grows as a
patient silence
peaceful in my breast.

This time,
suffering’s mercy
has finally trained me

to listen
and to
follow.

This time,
I do not
walk away,

but
gaze
thoughtfully,

deep,
and
long.

***

So, I
abandon
my old deity,

his
threats
and cold demands.

I
leave
to him

his
guilt and shame,
his promises and plans.

It takes me
but a moment
to go where I’ve always been,

where stillness
dives into itself,
and the seer is the seen.

Home
at last
in my native seas,

I
swim
the kindled deeps that swim as me.

© Larry Haworth, 2017