Poem: Space, Silence

Space, Silence

There in the silence a single flame is left to burn,
It erupts and then falls again into still more silence,
A poet stands and recollects on a memory that will not let go,
And that thought is born into a poem,
All silence gives birth to heaven.

In silence all things become possible,
All gentle songs,
All roaming memories,
Even the in the space between the clouds,
The blue sky becomes visible –
Space give birth to silence,
And silence gives birth to heaven,
All of heaven is found inside of the spaces of silence.

In the lull between ocean waves,
There is space and there is silence,
When I stop and listen to nothingness,
I find myself in mediation, inside of space and inside of silence,
The waves are of heaven,
And the silence of my world is the heaven that I have always sought.

Running outside one day, my child finds the lawn is soaked with the morning dew,
A police helicopter roars above,
And the rushing of the freeway beckons from the distance,
All around there is constant noise,
But he does not see the helicopter,
Nor pays any attention to the cars in the distance,
He is transfixed on the wet grass caressing his bare feet,
In his fragile world, he cannot see this duality of existence,
And I begin to think of those cars and where I need to be in a few minutes,
I locate the helicopter and hope that a murderer is not loose and will kill my family,
But my child pays no attention to any thoughts like this,
He is not even concerned with the blue jay giving him a funny look from the tree across the way,
And I realize the key to his life is the key to life I had and lost,
That his life is a life of hope,
Each day he finds something new that fascinates him,
To him there is nothing to loose in life,
Only all to gain by being in silence, by finding the gifts inside of the spaces,
By being in a state of constant heaven,
My boy is in a state of constant hope,
He always finds something new and his first instinct is to love that new thing,
No matter what it is nor what danger it might hold to him,
Until he gets stung by that bee, or bit by that snake, his first thought to pick it up,
Look at it, and in that time, that space, that silence of looking and learning,
He is loving,
He makes me wonder about how disturbed I have become,
To concentrate on those cars and wonder what is next for me to do,
Or that helicopter and find what harm is about to come my way,
My child knows the keys to all of life,
The feeling of that water on his feet,
Or the look of a bird in the early morning hours,
It is no wonder that I feel so lost, listless, afraid and alone,
I forgot that moments are not sought and found,
But that moments are lived.
And that we live in heaven on earth,
And heaven is found in spaces and in silences,
For when I am silent, I can see the spaces and the gifts that lie in between

A series of poems written after reading Gilbran’s “Prophet”. Like reading “Howl” , this book changed forever the way I wrote and has gone on to become one of my greatest influences. I imagined myself as a grown man looking at his boy playing in the backyard of my house in Lawndale. To a child the world is wonderful and inspiring and to me, the world is full of calamities, full of challenging thoughts and listless dreams. It is about remaining quiet to rekindle the wonder I once had as a small boy. If everything is new, then nothing can ever be the same. September 2003