shimmering three

awareness is reflecting

in this entity

of space and time


like sunshine is reflecting

on this shimmering

of body-mind


like tens of trillion nuclear

explosions are enjoying

all this rhythm rhyme.

shimmering two

before the beginning,

the timeless is shimmering

i am,


with six senses creating

time and

space—


and here

this universe and now

its beginning...

shimmering

there is a shimmering

and the shimmering holds itself,

divides itself,

names the parts,

identifies with some,

and wars with the rest,

yet loves!

for there is a shimmering...

say the word

all words descend

from one word:

love.


so many permutations

and so many once-removeds,

there's a dictionary full


of impostors

and wannabes

and woebegone forgottens.


it all becomes

so much simpler

when you realize


the translation of any word

(minus the unnecessary complexity)

is simply love.


in the beginning was the word.

that self-preserving poem

o samsara!

o you piece of intricate bullshit!

o you never-ending stream of self-deceiving selfishness!


o you sleeping behemoth

gone slouching to bizarro bethlehem

in little buddha bumper cars!


o emptiness

so madly full of nothing

but that self-preserving thought you call yourself


in constant wars of great denial of

said emptiness!

just say i love you.

houston, there's a koan in my poem

hello? hello? any who home?

     ground control to major major.

houston, there's a catch-22 in my koan.

     all your words are breaking up.

since you’ve always been the moon, how can you ever point to it?

     you must objectify in binary; nonduality does not compute.

space is just that something in the middle of your face.

     time is something nonexistent that we think is of the essence.

consciousness is blowing in the wind.

     are you or are you not still working on maggie’s farm?

space is emptiness but not the light.

     the naked city has six billion causes.

toto, i have a feeling we’re not in thinking any more.

     i could be god if i only had a heart.

love is never having to say


if a tree falls within a forest, do you love it whether it makes a sound or not?

do you love the wind blowing or the flag flying or the mind moving? or none of the above?

if a train leaves los angeles at nine and another train leaves atlanta at eleven, do you love three?

if love was a mirror and the world its reflection, who would you love?

if you love to love a cause, and everything is either causeless or the result of untold causes, what cause will you tell yourself you love?

if freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose, then is love just that wordless absolute with all the world to give?

does your reflection in the mirror make a poem?

we are not meant to be anything.

meaning is a plaything of the mind.

we be.


being is a reflection of that

which is neither being nor nonbeing

but beyond.


so call it beyond.

beyond! beyond!

o wild beyond!

o that beyond this thought.

beyond this world of consciousness.

beyond equality of all there is in being.

beyond the body. beyond the mind. beyond intelligence.

beyond beyond!

but not beyond its love.


today the leaves are changing colors;

tomorrow the trees will lose their leaves.

next week all trees shall leave

and then next month no words remain.

how wonderful that all remains the same!

(does your reflection in the mirror make a bang?)

after the last leaf fell,

love grew on every branch.

i felt it through the picture window.


if you meet this poem on the road, kill it.

Mary Christ Dakini

O Mary Magdalene, apostle of apostles,

loving mystic witness of our death and resurrection,

Christ Dakini,

here occur to us and teach your paradox of feminine

and masculine uniting in the truth transcendent,


emerging from the centuries of ignorant

paternalistic western sado-masochism masked as true religion

into now, this moment soft with love in being,


now receiving, now accepting, now

in understanding of your true surrender,

not to then or there, but hand in hand with Jesus now

to bliss and consciousness and spirit,


emptiness in cognizance,

the kingdom and the queendom of

our god the mother and the father,

loving energetic true

orgasmic miracle of one,

of one, of one!

an omnipresent geography

o be! existence!

that which cannot be denied!

for here and now i am.

not this i am nor what i am

and not the thought i am

but that essential seed i am.


no identity of noun

and no possessiveness of pronoun

but a movement just before

the silent space becomes a verb—

that dawn before the dawn,

when sky is not the sky but not the night,


when sun is not yet in the east

but somewhere where it's always been,

some timeless time zone

in a longitude of love

and latitude of an omnipresent

geography of god knows where!


there! i am! o be!

something passing

nothing real was ever wrong

but that you only thought it wrong,

and even that which thought it wrong

was just a thought that thought it wrong,

and not a thought is even wrong

for thought is something passing—

never something real which could be wrong,

for only something never changing is the real

and nothing real is ever wrong.

how to (a catechismic poem)

how does love write a poem when the mind is grasping at the pen?

we write with the heart and follow its freedom on the page.


how to avoid the fear and horror of the void the divided mind avoids?

we write from the void; the unitary heart discerns it's nothing to engage


the source of everything named anything,

the source of any concept we call source,

the source of what we think is mind,

the source of what we know is love,

the source of universe and superstring,

the source of Jesus, Buddha, Lao Tzu, Rishis,

source unmanifest, the source of sources,

source! of course! O Source!

in that dwelling

blessed is being knowing being

for that shall know there's nothing else to know;


there's nothing to one's mind but what one thinks there is,

there's nothing to one's sense of self except the sense of self one thinks there is,

there's nothing to the universe of matter but the whole wide world of miscellaneous things one thinks matter:


all there is is, being aware of being, awareness being awareness;

say it any way the way your way will have you say it,

say it gloriously in song or say it knowingly in silence but after saying it just stop & settle down and in that dwelling—


be.

wondering at the movie

in the morning i awaken

and the movie starts

by wondering about the movie

that was playing in the movie

of my sleep.


afternoon the movie continues

to a scene in which the movie star

is wondering at the movie

in which he plays a movie star

& wonders.


in the evening there's a movie

in which the movie is the movie star

and all the world within,

his and her own camera,

lights and action!

a bedtime prayer

o here i lie

naked of form

and silently open

waiting for the rush of night

to madly love me

into everlasting day

source

a leaf falls and the leaf is mourned until the branch is seen as source of leaves

a branch falls and the branch is mourned until the tree is seen as source of branch

a tree falls and the tree is mourned until the earth is seen as source of tree

the earth falls and the earth is mourned until the universe is seen as source of earth

the universe falls and the universe is mourned until nothing is seen as source of universe

nothing falls and nothing is mourned

Let it Reign

The mind of God

is like the clear

October sky


in which a film of personal

accumulated cumuli

is screened by clouds we name an I.

right here right now a simple poem

in that

the universe is truly

three dimensions

here and now and bliss

and all are bursting through

one consciousness

as space and time and love

with nothing less to rhyme below

or reason more above

than this:

don’t forget the bliss

in this pattern

in this pattern

named a meadow

full of patterns

that this pattern

named an I

names grass, an empty

space emerges

Jesus H-Christ

for Ed Gandolfo

O Jesus,
middle eastern rising guru,
single in your nondual teaching,
paragon of parables in koan-like power,
tantric master living life without a second wasted,

loving bastard child of Mary,
loving brother, loving friend, and loving lover,
loving teacher teaching loving,
loving son of loving father loving spirit,
loving all as loving one is manifested in your loving word,

its liveliness of breathing in and breathing out,
accepting all, attached to nothing,
even in that darkest hour of brutal torture,
loving energy of living flesh is whipped and torn,
good-natured energy of head and scalp is pierced with thorns,
adoring energy of legs and arms is pressed beneath the weight of wood,
devoted energy of life itself is nailed and hung upon

your Shiva Shakti Cross where you O Jesus, O Tantrika,
shall receive all chakra suffering within your own mandala,
and within the exhalation of your mantra of forgiveness,
knowingly and willingly and in your tender lotus death release
its kundalini to the world, a single awe-inspiring blood atomic bomb!

with energy reverberating so completely in its scope of overwhelming power
the Roman Empire is consumed within its breathtaking blast,
and worldly hells of hieronymus inquisitions
and worldly heavens of michelangelo cathedrals
become created in its aftermath,

while underneath samsaric surface,
white waters of nirvana teaching,
floating in their mystic whirlpools,
ever one and lasting loving,
knowing only love and wonder,
always here and now unknowing...

~Son Rivers 2010
after Cynthia Bourgeault

Ripples of the Great Blue Heron

Five years ago today, on a day I had taken as a vacation day, which turned out to be the day before I was laid off from a company I had worked 18 years, I saw a Great Blue Heron standing on a rock in the middle of a pond in Maudslay Park.

I watched its great wings rise slowly and magnificently as it flew away. There is quite the transformation when that particular shore bird takes off. Its tremendously long legs seem to disappear and wide wings magically appear instead. I was mesmerized. But what I felt cannot really be written in words. It was a mystical experience, with workaday prophecies and spiritual intuition, that still reverberates to this day.

I went for a walk in that same park today, in honor of that mysterious bird and mystic day, and wrote this poem tweet by tweet as I walked a similar path I took five years ago. I had no idea where the poem would go, but after its few miles, here it is (with just a few punctuation revisions):

The Ripples of the Great Blue Heron

begin again at the bright green light of outside seeing in.

in the meadow of no name, the blue jay breeze of empty words will fly away with future forests and the past of trees.

in the woods of Ra, ten thousand yellow leaves are playing in the shadow webs of ash and flesh of fast graffiti.

in the orchard of old maple trees, the sugar color of the summer turns to paradisiacal sweet nothings.

the acorn road is filled with dead oak leaves and living horse shit.

but the mushroom swamp is dry with nothing but the mud of who am i

two roads diverged in an eastern wood but Robert Frost doesn't live here any longer.

the dark hill rises by itself until it turns into a shining tower.

the silver grove of arms and eyes is always fun and ever free in purple asters and the sitting thought of me.

hark! but something concrete this way comes.

below the bank, the river of a million mills is making something new today.

in the great white pines of absolute eagles, the sun is like a shadow on the ground.

not a sound, not a sound, not a sound.

the material is immaterial: so says the ripples of the Great Blue Heron.

~@sonrivers 2010