The Inherent Culpability

in Every Given Moment

Imagine if folded hands were

the secret to fruitful prayer.

Hands un-idle, joined

in mutual cause.

Hands shaken in agreement

with ourselves.

What if this is our dilemma?

To grasp the ability

to walk about inside a dream

while at the same time not know

we are dreaming

yet simultaneously examine

its intimations as if

what we are experiencing is meaningful

even when our presence at its center

may be a fallacy 

wrested from sleep;

all references hopelessly subjective.

As if to surrender to

or to manage each moment

were to know the difference between

what is being bestowed upon us

and what is being invoked

or both.

Since we can witness

and be witnessed

as well as witness

our selves witnessing,

how are we to separate

what part we play

in the slightest occurrence?

If A misbehaves and causes B

to anger

where is the line of culpability drawn

if both A and B share cause and effect?

It must be that cause is its own effect

and the only way out

of this insidious collaboration

is a conscious response as opposed

to an unconscious reaction.

One perceives, digests, weighs,

while the other merely rhymes.

To that end

I'm here to dismantle a prayer.

One of mine.

Dear God, thank you for this day.

Please help me to be the man

you would have me be.

This is, in a sense,

a postmortem.

Where is the proof

in an equation

whole-heartedly constructed

from spiritual yearning?

As if every prayer were

a feeling one’s way

through the dark.

Now, imagine

twin hands

taking hold of each other,

agreeing,

guiding,

reassuring themselves

as they recycle their energies

as deliberately as

an elixir of Life

in a retort.

Prayer engages with the invisible.

In other words,

we choose to concentrate 

on the unseen.

Since things seen are temporary,

and things unseen are intangible,

think of what this means.

All great qualities are incorporeal;

God, grace, love, hope.

They are incorruptible,

preserved by their visible absence

and our compulsory faith in them.

So why give 

so much credence

to things corruptible?

What if from here on out

everything we did were

a kind of prayer,

hand-made

and from the heart;

as if the heart

were an opera house

in need of our singing,

a telescope

longing for a glimpse of the moon,

a branch begging for

the weight of a bird.

If I am a ship, then you are the sea.

If I am a bird, then you are a tree.

If I am a mirror, then you are me:

A God as gracious as we are.

A God as loving as we are.

A God as disappointed as we are.

A God as thankful as we are.

A God as generous as we are.

A God as fearless as we are.

A God who is, in fact,

praying back at us.

10/27/24

The Sprouting

Every time I water the flowers

I water myself.

Every time I water myself

I flower.

Do the flowers know

who and what we are?

We are hybrids surely.

Our arms and hands

gradations of green,

our faces,

if one can call a blossom that,

a variety of shades

conducive to the light,

but our thoughts

are a cornucopia of colors.

Our feet below ground

are something of a riddle.

For instance, what are we to do

in all that dirt?

What if we have it wrong

and the soil is life itself

and we its propitious offspring?

Either way, we must learn

to care for ourselves.

Life has its seasons,

even one to die in,

if only to sprout again

in inexorable Spring.

Try seeing it like this:

We are the gardeners

of our selves

in as much as

we tend

to the garden 

within.

Now take note of the man

hovering above and below you.

To live inside his head

instead of inside this room

is equally precarious.

He sits at his computer

as if it were a piano

to see what music

he might make.

At his disposal:

a world of flowers

sprouting from

heart to head.

10/11/24