My father’s last poem * 6/3/14

Preface:

My father was old to me at birth, 49.

The shipping lanes of his life,

were on a different map from mine.

We would meet as mountains apart.

His thoughts never formed my clouds.

My tears never became his rivers.

Before his death, I would only stare

across his distant gaze.

He would walk across the carpet

of my young life

but hardly leave the touch of tracks.

He had a insular tower in his mind.

I colored him there with crayon pictures.

We grew in generations, set apart.

Recently I wandered in his footsteps.

Somehow, in my mind, this last poem

is all I ever had of him.

There were days,

where he blanketed my life

but never tucked me in. 

This is my father’s last poem.

Of course, I wrote it for him.

Poem:

Breath is the vigil and the veil.

Give the trust of breath, a role

as your guide and benefactor.

Act in acceptance of your body as mentor.

Be comforted that experience is

but the wrap of nonessentials,

for what you come to hold dearly,

as high point experiences,

holds you indifferently forever.                                     

Let others be messengers

to deliver you from within as if learning

from the human experience

gives you clues about the divine plan.

Timing is your everything, make divine,

your place of constant receptivity within,

as all habits secretly chorus this song.

Find for yourself the essence behind form

as a source for you, outside of time.

Secretly know that energy only poses as form

for the courtesy of sensing towards knowing.

Raise up your devotion out of inward surrender

and let yearning be your unprovable levitation.

Embrace ritual out of doing as you allow

your movement to confirm and express your wholeness.

Fashion an altar out of your attention.

Just suppose your pause, practice and notice

show no substance in the light,

yet realize that every shadow recognizes

its master with subtle honorable shyness.

Give to others from where you are going.

Be gifted by spontaneity in your circumstance.

To control life is a method to die from within.

Let trust be your creative means

of self expression, for to honor only belief

is to become the caretaker, never the owner.

Always convey from your being,

then speak from your mind.

Learn to love others,

even beyond their absence.

To heal from within is to love into life.

No one will give you what you need,

but you can secretly take from yourself

what you need in their presence.

Often allow others to eavesdrop

on your inner dialogue.

Know that you can never give energy to others

but you can share the field of you

from where you are radiant and strong.

And finally, all this knowing

is not for you to keep,

but revealing it to yourself ongoing,

richly through living

will provide for the light of your being

to come forth as presence of your spirit

into consciousness then shared . . .