Where the Karanda Is Wild

the farmer knows the earth, her cycles of preparation and harvesting, the moon's tide and Joseph's dream: the years of plenty and the years of famine; we live in the time of destruction: Kali Yuga growth is change and space must be made for its planting wild geese flying in formation leave no impression in the sky; there are crosses to bear this is the time of harvesting what has have sown on the fecund soil of ignorance and imagination on truth and its introspection the nature of all things is to bear fruit apple blossoms will yield apples and orange blossoms will never yield plums unless it is grafted and the bough lives severed and reattached sometimes the flood of awareness breaks holy ground sometimes the lean years are ravens that pluck out the eyes and war fills the world with rust and bones there are always those who come wearing shoes of the fisherman to feed both body and soul Lakshmi may look like Ramana's cow some will choose to eat her others will say she's enlightened, adorn her with garlands of magnolia, malati and jasmine it's all the labor and practice of love how the field will yield what is sown, and if the milk of human kindness flows like sunlight and rain wild seeds blowing in a prairie wind through a sepia world, harvests of the heart wild with fire.