I feel my legs creaking as age steals up upon me
and, when I walk in the park, I know the ground waits below me.
All my health, lovers, adventures, years and successes
are just chaff in the winds of these many lives I've lived.
I sit near the still point and feel the simple knowing
that ebbs and seeps from there.
The old men with money and power and the tiny tots
with their little plastic sunglasses are all one to me now.
Love and being, here and now, and the leaves
that fall from the trees, they all whisper 'freedom and bliss' to me.
I look, and the urge to grasp rises,
but I say 'No'.
Each thing and moment, each coming and going is,
in itself, perfect.
Buddha smiles someplace in this moment and in no other
and whatever purpose is, and has been, is always now.
The ground waits beneath me and I hear its murmuring
and I wait, pleased, for what is and what will be.
The world is magic that there can be such peace here
in the midst of so much pain and war and evil.
gallagher
30 Aug 2013 - Paris, France
— Copyright 1965-2014 by Dennis Gallagher —