Schools of meditation try
for years to reach the narrow door
to Now: between the dying of this
thought and the rising of the next.
Of course it really is so simple
a child does it all the time,
happily being what it is
hot, cold, hungry, howling, running, asleep.
The sea helps, and mountains and trees.
No longer children,
we need help cleaning the tapes
of their noise: memory’s like static,
and plans chat on their programmes in our heads.
Quiet’s what we require, and to subside
into quiet, but not to go to sleep.
To have no occupation,
no book even, only eyes like blank film,
a mind set to record what comes.
We cannot control, and have lost the desire.
Sit watching the waves curl over.
There is a moment when the water is like glass,
green glittering glass, then it
tumbles and foams. Now and then skimming
the swell, a bird flies past and there’s
another moment when its shape shows doubled
in the wave, only you can’t be sure when,
if at all.
When it happens,
it sinks into you like a stone.
Under trees, lie listening. Run clear
like water, leave your breast to reflect
whatever occurs: breeze, rustle, patter
of rain, that deep note of some bird like a bell
caught in your upturned attention,
a mind not pitched, not tense, merely
waiting, a pool.
For anything:
a falling fruit, the yellow jewel
of the weaver bird, shiver of the wind.
On mountains there is a wind; a breath
comes form eternity.
Silence is palpable. Even the falling spray and rush
of the waterfall fades to a barely visible stitch
on the slopes far below. Then an eagle yelps,
crying with its heart and mounting, mounting,
and your breathing stops and your soul
rises with the wildness instantly,
higher than the humans can go,
still feeling the wind,
and you know you are flying, you’re flying now
poem published in a collection by Carrefour Press, Cape Town in 1991
