Nepal Poems: The Garden, The River of Time, This Is All There Is, Impermanence, Garden of Dreams, The Cave, Mistake

A mishmash of ordinary desire threaded with brief flashes of oneness with the divine that arise only to disappear again.

I recently held a paper copy of my poetry book Prisms in my hand for the first time. Many of the poems in that book were actually first shared on this blog three years ago, when I was driving across the country and writing poems in Badlands National Park and in the center of Wyoming's Spiral Jetty and uploading them in motel rooms in the middle of nowhere. So it feels full-circle to be seeing them in print while also sharing fresh ink from this new journey.

Here are the last of the poems from my time in Nepal. I'm sure I'll wind up combing through them and compiling them into their own collection in the years to come, but for now, you get to be the first to read them. 

Thanks for being here.

*

The Garden

There is a garden
beyond
the end of the world

Birds fly overhead
and the wind blows
soft

Everyone anyone has
ever loved
waits there

Dancing by an
eternal spring

remembering nothing
because they are in everything 



The river of time

Inside the river of time
I move and writhe,
but outside of time the trees stand in the soft sunlight.

In a ruined temple
there is an eternal flame.

Outside the window
the world is green
and beyond that, the mountains stand like minor gods. 

Time drips through like a river
shaping the peaks, weaving its web.

The weaver sits on the hill
wearing all white, shaking out
worlds like droplets of water.

In one world I sit on a bench
and listen to the river run.

Flies buzz around the temple door
while the laundry and dirt and golden statues 
gaze in the dark.

In the real world
I am the river, the ocean, and the mountains, and the sky.

I am not my mistakes.
All that matters is that I try to be better.

The wind moves through the rafters of the temple.
My body drips through the floorboards.
Apple trees shine in the grove.

I look through a slat in the walls of the dream
and see my own eyes,
older than the world,
looking back.

I rest on a bench
by the white stupa and stone,
by the ragged cliffs, in this mountain hollow,
in this block of stone, inside a sea,
inside a galaxy of suns, 
inside my own throat.

Maybe we can still go home.
In the ruins of the world of time
I climb through arches and labyrinths and cycles of death and rebirth

but in the real world
there are no more words
no more poem
no more trees
no more body
no more searching.

Where are you from, says a tourist
brandishing a camera. 
Nowhere. I am not here.

Yet I smile,
step into the clock,
step into these dusty sandals,
my curdled stomach, my burning arms,
my echoing wild torment so big it could almost swallow everything —
And I tell him. 

The trees know the truth.
I unzip my skin. I step into their arms. 
Leaving an automaton behind.

My automatic hands 
and legs move towards the real temple,
the ruins and the eternal flame
winking and glittering, now in the memory garden,
encoded on the map in my head

the weaver moves 
the wind fills my lungs

forgive me my sins I ask the water
while the real me laughs from above
and below and inside

and I hear the echo
in the wind in the apple trees —
the true tongue, the laughter
in and beyond the heart of all this. 



This Is All There Is

This moment, the light just so
This particular ache, this particular 
Momentary glimpse beyond the dream

And yet I can’t accept one thing —
Dreamer, why all the suffering?
Why is life so fragile
It can all come apart with the pull of a single stitch?

If it be freedom
That condemns us to this misery
Or if it be desire keeping us in the wheel
Why did you make it so hard
To escape?

There’s the outline of a door
I’ve been seeing all my life, yet 
In some ways I’m further from it
Than ever before — 

I walk in your temples,
Barely believing, yet 
Still expecting you to work your wonders.

It hurts to be alive.
A gong echoes across the gold leaves.
Flowers fall on the tables.
The sages all say the same thing.

Why does it feel like a curse sometimes?
I’d better learn to accept it.
Maybe someday I’ll rejoice.

Maybe someday I’ll walk out the door
Singing, smiling
Cherry blossoms on my head —

Knowing for the first time
This is all there is. 


Impermanence

ghost suns pass through like breath
here and then gone
a milk bath of mist.


Garden of Dreams

In the garden of dreams
water lilies float on obsidian water
while outside the walls
the city
chokes

There are still
perfect places
they are just
hard to find

The world burns
but the rich 
promenade

Hotel lights
glitter
a child reaches for a coin
crocuses circle skyward
the ruined trellises are damp with rain
and the lovers lie on the grass

Somehow all are a part 
of the same
design

A fabric 
sweeter and more terrible than
any 
forbidden
fruit 

Why would you make
the garden
only to put
poison in it?

Was the garden
just a dream?
Or was the sin?


The Cave

Alone, I suppose I am 
In this red house poised alongside a waterfall
Where long ago a tourist fell to his death.

I went to the bottom of the old cave,
Saw the sacred statues there.
At the basin of the darkness, a flash of light, a rush of water.

And I knew then that I wanted love,
That the search is always leading there,
That I wanted the balance I saw in the lovers —

And in a stranger I saw a possible crack in the dream.
Yet the moment passed as quickly as it came.
But the old stones know, and they hum.

And I have friends older than humans —
The rush of the falls. The arc of the trees
Will hold me here until the storm passes.

The storm always passes.
The cave opens
And the waterfall pours through a crack in the stone. 

I always kept myself, alone.
Talked to the trees when I had no one to talk to.
Invented imaginary friends, then fiction.

It is so tiring to be human.
But it is such a short trip
And reaching beyond the wall is worth it in the end —

Yet this luminous silence has its own dimensions.
Here in the red house, a woman alone, I perch
Like moss, and wonder if

I will ever be known, or will ever really know
Another person, if that is in the stars for me
And if it is, when they will come, this abstracted love.

Friends always seem to leave, love falls apart.
I return to the trees. I return to the words. 
I think of the past. I wander the dream

And know we are not separate —
Yet I feel so far from everything —
And everyone — and every dream —

Except the soft air, the pale water
The red blossoms on the ground. 
The words flowing like a waterfall

Through the crack in the cave in my chest. 
Reaching out to you.
Here, take my hand, for you are lonely too.

And we are not alone in our solitude
And in fact there are millions of us, night wanderers, those who find
A conversation heavy and a silent night like paradise.

But there comes a time
When the silence grows too long
And the gates close and we must take a chance. 


Mistake

I follow myself to the top of the mountain
to the temple, to the stream
to the core of the night
to the valley and back again.

So long I’ve wanted to change
become new, burn out this
withered thing, enter who I
could be, I always felt, if I just found the right fire to walk through.

Eyes watch from the four directions.
Maybe this is all there is.
Maybe this is the world.

Loud voices ruining the view of the mountains.
Wandering hands in the garden.
A bellyache in paradise.

Me and the machines and the mystics
The gods and demons, the clock and the timeless.
Woven together
mirroring each other, falling apart to come back again
burning and growing, seeking wholeness.

Maybe some have found it, some holy shrouded ancient souls.
But as for me,
and the rest of us,
here we are, all of it, trash and red lipstick
shoes on in the sacred river,
seeking forever
together and alive, writhing and reaching,
knowing nothing.

Come, let’s dance because we are broken and whole
and all we can do is try 
to be better, and fail over and over.

Let’s walk the dusty path.
It won’t last very long anyway. 

And along the way there will be flowers,
trees and fragments of stillness,
and dreams and nightmares. 
All a part of it. All all all. One one one.