Finding Peace

Every night the gates of delirium are torn apart the irrational flies across the moats and walls of my defenses as easily and seductively as a murmuration of starlings, and I am rescued carried away on a magic carpet. And each morning I arise into sanity again like clockwork. The doors of perception are thus opened for us all, all the time, and yet equally are blown or thrown shut. Against all odds I have found peace with this from following whispered words, and signs as subtle as the direction leaves fall and flowers face. So now I have no concern for gain or loss or the endless display of chaos and the natural order that is the world. How do I do it? I plant my mind like a stake hammered in to hold a tent firm regardless that there is no tent, no shelter, just the stake, and planted thus the winds of chaos are loosed and welcomed. Come what may, what harm may come? For without even a tent there is no cord and thus no way for the stake to pull free. And so there is just awareness in the storm awareness in the calm awareness in the no-space where order and chaos dance and play gently as they make love. (originally published in my 3rd book of poems SUN MADE FLESH AND FIBER, 2019)