Listen

listen to me
not with your thoughts,
not with your words,
not with your feelers,
trying to make sense
of what you are
or who I am;
listen to me
with the silence
that swallows it all,
where you don't know
where you begin
or end;
listen to me,
lie still, in me.

Listening, with Appa

and you held me
in your eyes,
in your breath,
against your skin,
always looking
for the soul
beyond the cloud,
listening
as if there was no one else,
nothing else
to be listened to,
when time and space
paused
around your steady gaze
rooted
in this one moment -
the only one we have,
threaded on the string
we call Life;
and I wonder now
when I think of you,
who will hold me
like you did
every single time?
perhaps you will,
when I listen
to the sound of your voice
resounding
in mine.

Listen

have you ever heard
anything in your life
more wonderful
than the way
a little bird
opens her heart
to let the love
she's filled
in her hollow bones,
seep into the empty sky?

and have you ever stopped
and wondered
for just a moment
how her faintest song
from that distant tree
flows in
with the sunbeams,
in good faith,
through your frozen window
every day?

and I ask you
if you will stand there
silent and empty-handed,
or turn away -
too busy, too scared;
and if you would
care to listen
to the joy-filled song
of your own wounded heart,
so you can listen, to mine?

Listening to my Heart

when I want
to listen to my heart,
I go to the forest -
not on a safari
where I sit pretty
in a noisy jeep,
when every restful leaf
is rattled awake
by its rude passing,
but on a slow quiet walk
through the wild grass
and unkempt paths,
where every movement
is born of a stillness,
where the eyes
and the ears
and the mouth
and the skin,
drink in the glory
of the wildness
that I seek,
a precious wildness
that emerges slowly
from the silence
that lies hidden -
the roar of a lion
from within,
from the deep.

I speak.....but will you listen?

a weary tiger
kills a man.
the world conspires;
a mad hunt is on
to silence it
forever.
"I speak", says the tiger,
"....but will you listen?"

the living soil
sheds a silent tear
every time
an ignorant farmer
kills as he tills
centuries of love.
"I speak", says the soil,
".....but will you listen?"

a little weed
finds space
besides a lily,
uprooted as it sprouts;
a hushed cry
to live and let live.
"I speak", says the weed,
".....but will you listen?"

Deafening silence.
But will you listen?