Being Real, Being Alive

I want to bury
all notions of
love, beauty,
joy and peace
and everything else
that dazzles us
to seek and search,
on this endless road
to possess what is not.
They have danced for long
before our empty eyes.

I want to listen now
to the tiny weeds,
that hold out relentlessly,
hidden in the undergrowth;
the thistles, the mistletoe,
the suckers, the poison ivy;
I want to feel
what it is like to be them;
what is it that drives them?
They must have a song
that's gone unheard
in the glare and din.

And when I've listened
to them long enough,
holding my words and thoughts
in a silent aquifer,
I will know what it is
to hate and to love,
to be ugly and beautiful,
to be wounded and euphoric,
to be distressed and at peace.

I will know then
what it is
to give life
to every seed
that's watered
by an unseen hand -
the rafflesia, the rose,
the suckers, the sequoias;
by being real, being alive.