There is a dull weariness.
A dim, faraway, somewhat weak voice
(call him The Employer)
implores me to write.
Write what?
Briefly, an angry fire flashes in my eyes.
Within the donut-shaped torpidity
surrounding my midsection
a heat arises;
makes its way to the surface,
melting the lethargy.
A few trips to the thesaurus
bring life to my sleepy synapses.
He Who Needs Approval starts yapping:
"Is it ready to post? You see, forcing yourself
to work works! Maybe I'm alright after all..."
He recedes. A calm descends.
Outside, a motor idles,
adding a mechanical soundtrack
to the morning-sun-lit greenery
which surrounds me.
A bird's chirp can barely be heard
amidst the auto-growling.
Now The Judge has his say:
"This is boring. You did your first
awareness poem in 1990. No one
will care to read this drivel."
The Facilitator believes him.
And yet The Employer has me on deadline.
To post or not to post?
The Facilitator must make the call:
the buck stops here.
A neighbor's voice wafts through
the aural field.
The Literary Encourager chimes in:
"The play Our Town was as folksy
and bucolic as this morning's writing...."
A pause, as a cloud of awareness
fills the body-mind-Being.
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A gift from Existence. Ah, This.
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As Coleman Barks put it, in the book "Unseen Rain:"
"When the approaching presence calls out,
[Rumi] says, the first word spoken will coincide exactly
with the last word of his last poem. For Rumi,
poetry is what he does in the meantime,
a song-and-dance until the greater reality he loves arrives:
a melting tear-gift eye-piece to look through,
while it and the scene and the eye dissolve."
