February

February in the bardo, wayless Between,
More solid surely than beginning
or arrival, when thaw and peristalsis
squeeze me out of myself,
pass me like a burning stone
from dark to dark, spore to spore,
the gift of one electron to the next,
a discontinuous thread of quantum shifts,
a shrug of the indifferent vacuum.
Somehow bidden upward by a dumb
invisible glow, through troughs and
hollows of loam, where the only hope
is Presence, I hear the unstruck chimes
of Imbolc ringing in their seeds,
taste the licorice roots of pure attention,
sip sparkling streams of emptiness
between frog croaks, scent star-spume
of the void in a coyote howl.
This could be the hour I meet You
in solitude, Bodhichitta stillness
of the black hole, whorl
of dahlia blossoms in a withered bulb,
silken wisps of Andromeda listening
to itself, coiled in serpentine Otherness.
How many Dharma talks must I attend
before I discover this galactic silence
rippling between my thoughts?
Let your constellations bend over me
and kiss my forehead with
unfathomably intimate distances.
Let a sparrow sing in the season
after the dream, just before waking
when the diamond that never sleeps
is born. Call it my Heart.