…what can I do but build upon my most loving recent work?

Syncope means fainting.  I have gone there too many times.  Everything physiological shuts down, if only for a few seconds.  It’s happened to me so often that I now stay present and awake, out of body.  Not only is that magic, but what it helps me be open to experience is as wonder-ful as magic gets.  I’m never alone–just look up.

8 May 2018

8

Syncope

You know you will go there. It might take some time. Time is right weak if you see through the lies
and wires of the mind that can’t help but turn over each stone in its path, yet cannot recognize
that they’re not quite a wall; they just mark the high tide-line. They’ve felt the touch of wet salt on their skin,
though they’re silent and motionless. Listen so closely, your heartbeat sounds loud—in between beats, begin

to lean into the rapt state of knowing acceptance that this is a process that cannot be told,
but can only be deeply experienced. Out in the summer before us, the sky turns to gold,
but there’s rain in the eaves—we’re our own mournful climate. Count all the creaking old stairs to the dark,
final hallway before we break through to the basement—because floors are rotten. Then, rise with the lark

from out of a faint we two fainted together. Nobody’s injured; we just dreamed a dream
out of body till pulse talked itself into coming awake through the black that was more real than seem
all the lights overhead in this long awkward moment. Hold out a hand; you’ll feel fingers entwine
with your own in a most friendly way, then please just try to rise to your feet. There’s a tiny thin line

of light we can follow—there must be a candle behind that blank panel of old wooden door.
Who’ll ever find us? It’s no use to wonder—we’re underneath many a weak ancient floor,
still dizzy, but trying to part the long darkness by willpower, using the light of our eyes
from within, like the warm source of dreams when the morning is frozen, like tears, formed when either one’s cries

become crystals that shatter. I can’t take you with me, the sorrowful echo recalls to our minds.
Shattered against the cold final stone floor where the dead were once buried and now—Window-blinds
fly open upon a glad morning where love waits beside you to watch you arrive on the shore,
practice your getting-on craft, tether soundly to one friendly pier, and let all your tears pour—

You know you will go there. The future leads—forward, beyond the last bounds of the best-sighted eye.
Through the unmist of the clearing where someone who lies by your side softly stirs—you know why
you are here; now the question is whether to stay or return to the creaking of stairs by night rain.
Slowly, a hand in your own—past the stones of the not-wall—we’ve fallen, but look where we’ve lain.