High

What is Meant by Waking Dreams

relax your shoulders into your spine
collapse like wings.
all my thoughts are random
with no rhythm or reason -
or is it rhyme? -
nothing like song
or like mathematics -
nothing you learn in school.
rather, this is something found
when listening to the sound of air standing still
while you sweep past on a swing
or down a slide.

this morning, I was on the road before the spaceships
came to pick up the children;
the sky was aureate-purple
early sunlight diffused and catching
the molecules of various atmospheric gases
and being transformed by them.
I knew that later the sun would rise
transforming dull gold into sparkling diamonds
dripping off the grass by the shuttle stop.

when I was a child, they would dart
around the red plastic flowers on the feeder.
what must the world look like to a hummingbird?
would it move as slowly as mine?
perhaps they feel as if they are floating
through a softly blurred field
in spite of moving so fast -
because they move so fast -
humming meditatively.

Passacaglia

There are songs which captivate me, quiet my mind, and hold me still. They are so deeply affective, so compelling, so beautiful and alive, I can't speak or think; I can hardly move. All I can do is feel. It isn't even listening. Listening requires thought, some kind of intentional engagement. These songs carry me through attention - beyond.

The music becomes an experience, a world of its own, colored by something deeper than emotions, more real than the senses. I can feel the elysian wind of this world in my hair and smell the bright grass, the dusty trees, the sweet flowers. . . . The air tastes new, fresh - like the crispness of cold, clear water. I feel grief and joy and yearning - pure and unadulterated. I am moved beyond movement.
I feel old, as if I've seen and known everything there is to know in this place. So full, so stained by time, my skin feels thin - stretched to hold each past moment - not as memories, but as whole experiences. I feel young, as if every smell, every sound, every sensation, and every sentiment were new, untouched, unexplored. I soak it in without a thought; it becomes a part of me.
And for minutes, for moments, I do not exist here - only there, part of the organism that the music comprises, breathing as it breathes.
Yet, I sense that the music is only a single entity in a greater field; it is encompassed by grace, love, beauty, and light - by a perfect existence which lacks nothing and in which everything finds its being and its place. I am surrounded by God, who is above all, over all, and in all, perfect in holiness.

My love, you are a song to me.