How can we see perfection in a tree,
or in a sunset,
but not in ourselves,
or in each other?

Each one of us
is no less a miracle,
no less an expression
of the sublime.

A tree does not cripple itself
with self-judgement,
or analysis;
it simply is.

Why have we not learned this simple skill:
to accept ourselves for what we are,
as one more expression of the divine,
experiencing its own divinity,
and cherishing the divinity
of everything around us?

As I walk this waterfront,
nothing is as it was
when I first came here,
many years ago.

It has become a playground for the rich,
with a few amenities thrown in,
as a gesture, for the rest of us.

I am just a visitor here,
a tourist from the past,
though this is still my own town,
and yet so different
from my memories.

And thus I am reminded
that everything is always changing
and always will change,
whether I want it to or not.

The more I lean into that,
as I stand here, a stranger in a foreign land,
the more vulnerable I begin to feel,
and the more alive.

There is a very troubled man
whose heart is entombed
in a bottomless ego,
so he will not feel his own pain,
or risk exposing it
to the world.

He has made his ego
his best friend,
and it is a loyal friend,
clever and resourceful.

It shows him how to use the pain
in the hearts of those around him
to gratify and protect him,
by telling those who will listen
exactly what they want to hear.

For those who would love him,
he feeds their anger and fear
with wild tales of imagined enemies,
and their evil plans
to crush what they hold dear.

For those who would loathe him,
he feeds their outrage
with what is most repugnant to them,
so they may feel strenghtened
by their own righteous anger.

And thus,
he feeds on the rage
he has engendered,
king of the web of hate
he has spun around him,
basking in the glory
of our attention.

What is lost,
when we wake up,
is the comfort
of the dream.

We were lulled,
as we grew up,
with the sweet myths
of all the virtues
that the world we saw
was swaddled in,
blinding us, as well,
to its inherent vices.

And here we are,
bathed in the blinding light
of a million painful truths,
squinting past the glare
of our uglier side,
straining to see
the subtler shades
of our inherent beauty.

I am tired of trying
to be something:
a man,
a person,
a human.

I would rather be
as I was born,
a blob of energy,
always in flux,
forever undefined.

I would trade my identity
to become anonymous,
like a snowflake,
to give up this need
to be anything
in particular.

I often wonder
if I have freed myself
from my own ego,
but that is just my ego,
worrying about itself.

It worries a lot,
about my shortcomings,
and if I’m “doing it right”,
trying to remodel itself
into something new and improved,
yet always reluctant
to release its grip
on how I see the world.

It is a snake of thought
eating its own tail,
in a loop to nowhere,
maintaining its power
for as long as I feed it
with my attention and concern.

I am riding this horse
(my body/my mind)
through life’s terrain,
as sights and sounds,
feelings and thoughts
flow by me.

Mostly, my horse
goes where I need to go,
and so I loosen my reigns,
and relax, a grateful rider.

I have waited too long
for the world to be
just as I thought it ought to be.

I have let my happiness depend
on what goes on around me;
I have given up my power
to the vagaries of circumstance.

So now, I place my trust
in the world within,
at the center of infinity,
where everything is possible,
and already perfect,
just as it is.

Street light flickers on the pavement,
filtered through the swaying branches.

Beauty is in the interplay
between disparate things,
dancing.

Day after day,
a sad, deranged man
vies desperately for our attention,
and we, in our complicity,
give him what he asks for.

Will we ever learn
to break free of this compulsion,
like rubberneckers on a highway,
as we pause in our own lives
to wallow in the mire
of his sad imaginings?

The gift of our attention
is a poison pill,
polluting all our spirits
with anger and fear,
dooming us, and him
to an endless loop
of fevered dreams.

It is up to each of us
to break this cycle,
and help to heal
our country’s wounded soul.