
alOne in the Silence: A Poem
A persistent assumption
There are Others
And listening to the insistent mind
Which wants attention – Look at me!
As if it were alone
in a vast universe
of loneliness
“I’m a This, I’m a that…” it says
A man, a woman, and old one, a young one
A rich one, a poor one
A sick one, a healthy one
Secretly reproducing in our absence
An abundance of reason
for holding onto the presence of a ghost
Celebrating suffering
Relishing fear and hate
Only as a last stop
To resting as Awareness
The party must go on, you think:
The market for Sadness
Who will buy and sell
Otherwise …
Our words betray us
Saying “wise” is in “other”
Otherwise
Spendthrift in Love
We persist to insist
Deficits to exist
Pretending the world exists
Independently
Meanwhile at home
Ignoring the noise
In the background
Kids frolicking playing
Screaming Joy
Laughing
Serious stuff we do
Resisting, building, protecting,
Securing against with
Fortress walls our frowns invoke
A tension growl a fence defense
The fangs of dog that barked here now
Play and wag with open arms for
Skipping children across the courtyard
Under bright blue sky
Azure “madness”
Freedom nameless
A bird in the sky flies and floats
Easily
Does God make an effort
Like bureaucrats waiting waiting waiting
In the mud
Of molasses time
Along with the politicians
Of greed and prejudice?
Only in your dreams dear One …
For true Flight takes no time
To lift off, fly and land
It’s already happened
Now
So here we are
Nothing to do
Nowhere to go
When alOne
But if your boots are in the mud
Wait until you pull them out
To clean them!
For I insist
Under all that mud
Are clean boots and feet
Waiting to be liberated
from confusion boredom fear impatience anger
and all the rest …
No one and no one
Can pull them out but myself
Whose favorite hobby is
Wild resistance,
An anxious heart
Harshly crowing a song
Not letting Love in … waiting waiting waiting
Like a dry raisin in the sun
For the Heart to open;
Forgive don’t run away
Melt the glacier
of ruin
Survival of alarm
Breathing eating shitting and smoking nope
Go on
While I remain motionless
Freedom
Here and now
Escaping from Itself
Only by minding the store
Of memory and future seeming
Do we need God (or the guru) to give us a Sign
“Permission Granted To Play”
Freely in the Sun of Love and warmth, humor lightness and
Being at Home?
Simply Be
In the universe
But not of it.
Yet questions and doubts, skeptics and pundits
Unite in a chorus
I left behind at the fair…
While I sip my beer
In a quiet cool desert,
A canyon shelter
Keeping the company of crows croaking signals,
Beautiful gently colored softness of light, and
The humming beautiful Life of
Silence

Canyon Sin Nombre 2021 Eric Platt