Sunday, February 7, 2016

Bob O’Hearn - Rain on the Mountain, Bubbles on a Stream



Falling rain, each drop a momentary ocean,
filled with the mysterious essence
of eternal potentiality –

these days, at the first sign of light sprinkles,
most people fling open their umbrellas
and scurry for some dry shelter.

I want to get totally soaked!

I want to stand naked,
mouth open wide to the sky,
deliciously bathed in cool water.

Who will drink with me?

Stumbling through the triple worlds,
I’ve encountered mostly sleepwalkers
hovering daintily over dreamy gardens,
planting colored flowers in the air.

For far too long I bided my time
in the red dust towns, lingering lazily
in the stagnant back-waters of borrowed
knowledge, speculation, and belief.

I only daydreamed of those legendary hearts
who climbed to the sky, exhaled the stars –
have they left no footprint behind?

From the viewpoint of that primordial space
where clouds of galaxies appear and vanish,
one traceless stream of seamless light
arches unaccountably through
a vast emptiness.

A luminous arrow launched before memory,
no longer even seeking a target, circles higher
around this storm-soaked mountain
whose tallest peak is a tiny speck,
afloat in a moistened ecstasy
of softly raining bliss.

One second here stretches on forever –
in this spray of silent light, nothing
rises up to be known or owned.

Heart-struck, astonished,
I wander now on a rocky path
that won’t be found on any map.

Opening my eyes, suddenly seeing,
I know again, as if for the first time:

I am alive!

Tonight, I’ll dream in wordless poems
of bubbles floating effortlessly, wedded
with some cool clear current in a coincidence
of mindless motion, sifting through huddled masses
of bleached boulders, riding wild white rapids,
brushing along smoothed canyon walls, then
pausing in calm pools of rippling peace,
forgetful of any intention, destination,
or even any no-destination –

a brief small nothing adrift on nameless water,
aimlessly reflecting the shine of infinity,
vanishing in the blink of an eye,
appearing again as . . .
everything.




 
 
 

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