A Portrait of the Artist

As an Antibody

“There are no others.” 

                        ~Ramana Maharshi 

I don’t want to die

only to wake up 

and realize

I didn’t really know 

who I was

or where I 

left off.

Let alone

where I am

going.

Who among us

feels it would 

be impossible

to forget

such constructed

a reality,

or to never

have known

we were 

draftsmen, 

when 

every idea

begins it’s life

as a germ.

All that striving 

and wanting, 

and hunger,

then suddenly

the mirror

admits a

foreigner.

Couldn’t I have

just been glad 

to be alive?

What ever caused 

that feeling 

of nothing being

ever enough?

Had I 

thought to

lie still and listen 

to the machinations

of the world 

as it

simply happened

on it’s own accord

without re-making it 

into an image

for and of

 my own

design,

maybe I

could have

been

myself from

the beginning.

What did I 

not have that 

I felt 

so without,

and what if

in the end

that’s what

an illness was for;

to teach us how 

to stop needing 

to make things 

happen.

As if we had 

to behold a thing 

in order for 

it to be real;

that 

all becoming 

had needed us.

As Rumi wrote:

our looking

ripens things.

We all have neighbors 

who are pirates

and some who are 

predators.

I, who am 

a neighbor myself

and who

cannot find God

and have no idea 

who I am

in relation to Godliness

or where to look

to find you

have come to believe

we must look

straight into

each other.

What if I took 

to serving others,

whether as penance, 

or simply wanting

to make myself

useful?

Maybe God would

notice me if I 

were to do

one good thing 

for my neighbor 

if only

I could camouflage

my doing.

What if one day

I were to let 

the wind 

dictate my direction,

and dare to

be choice-less,

though that be

a choice in itself.

One sole day.

Not to choose. 

Not to shape 

what I give.

Not to cry 

for what I want. 

To put another first

whether I believe 

in them or not.

To witness 

without evaluating.

Then just maybe

I could

learn to live

at last

on a microbe

greater than

the circumference 

of myself.

February 15th, 2021