ONLY SILENCE

Love, but not love
for a reason.
Love for this
Silence
in which
all life unites.

True, true: a human
mother is fiercely attached.
True: a human heart
in relationship
to anything
must offer itself foolishly,
generously in love,
must completely break
to heal; must open
even wider to grieve
its many losses.

True: we can sing
and sweat to shine,
and move and eat
and learn to live
for love
as best we can.

But through it all? Through
the bright blood wail
of birth, and holy
tremble of death,
Silence, our Mother
is here, is us,
in all, through all.

When we are finally done
searching
for any fulfillment
to ever come from life;
from anything, or anyone?

From any story, any picture,
any role, or any goal
attained, success achieved,
desire met, beauty
kept, romance found?

From union tasted
inside depths
of orgasm, peaks
of revelation, shimmering
glimpses of bliss?

When we are finally done
in our love affair
with suffering,
our lust for lack,
the haunting shame
of unworthiness, our
addiction to the erotic
pulse of longing?

When we are finally
truly DONE,
then, suddenly
the heart
notices itself:
to be nothing
but Silence, Stillness.

Deeper than any
possible fulfillment,
there is only this.
All is home in sweet,
vast, unknowable Stillness.
There is nothing to do
and nothing to be done.

Then, not even
a lover or loved,
a savior or saved; no more
inner or outer, heaven
or earth, spirit or body.
Only Silence.

Mother, Beloved
I no longer have a need
for faith in you.
There is only you.