Occluded
Clouded
My mind a storm of thoughts
Breathe
Stillness
Empty myself
Of past, present and future
Of fear, desire, need
In the quiet
A softening
Becomes a glimmer
Becomes the light itself
Flooding the plain
Of my existence
Which at first
Seems wasteland
Breathe again
And the waste becomes barrenness
Breathe again
And the barrenness becomes emptiness
Detached
From time and material things
I learn the beauty of emptiness
Which I fill
With this moment
In motion
I am still
In stillness
I am empty
In emptiness
I find no peace
Hollow
Haunted
Vacant
Amidst this familiar pandemonium
I alone am solid
Yet invisible
Carrying as passenger
A pain which pays no fare
Answers no questions
Offers no solutions
The me of this moment
None will remember
Not even I
But here
The pain shuffles off
Into the crowd
And I will not remember it either
In the bright sun of day
I am shadow
A mask without a face
A smile without a reason
Laughter without glee
A sign of existence
Without presence
So I breathe
Bury my hand
In the hot sand
Shout out the pain
Of heat and grief
And emptiness
Give voice
To the being
Which once cast
The shadow
Until the voice
Becomes being
A vessel
For the light
The pain and grief
And emptiness
Become the shadow
The surf
The gulls
The sand
The wind
The sky
The emptiness of a beyond
Reaching further
Than the distant horizon
But there is no such sea here
So when I want the sea
I draw a slow, very deep
Breath in
Close my eyes
And release
Slowly
The breath
And my presence
Here
Now
Release my presence
Begin to breathe deeply
I listen for the waves
And hear them
In time with my breath
I listen for the gulls
And hear them
My thoughts glide away on their wing
I scrunch my toes in the sand beneath my feet
And feel it between them
Grounded, solid as the Earth
I open my chest to the wind
And it washes over my body
Filling my lungs, my being with life
I raise myself up to the sky
And bask in the warm sunlight
It feeds the light within
I am transported there
To the shore of the sea
I release
All that is not this moment
Let it take wing
Like the gulls
Watch this flock of attachments
Fly beyond the distant horizon
Then disappear behind it
I sit here
With the sea
With the emptiness
In the emptiness
There are only the waves
Which are my breath
My mind
Fills the emptiness
Unspoken
Creates
Stories imagined but
Untold
Gravel and dust and grain
Roads that go on forever
In the mountains
I feel diminutive
Until I climb
And conquer one
Stand on top of the world
What is there to conquer here
But a thousand miles
Of horizon
In the emptiness
Of my quiet mind
I discover the contours
Of being
Pix to Words 