circles seem to continue

to close around me

today I sat forlorn on a bench

watching nameless traffic

and flashed on a similar autumn morning

42 years ago

a cool hazy morning

when I was at an absolute loss to know

what direction my life would be taking

and all the hopelessness

of knowing my spiritual endowment

might be a cruel joke

that would lead me from downfall to downfall

with occasional peaks that would

only set me up for the next fall

prophets of 'positive thinking' may say

I set myself up

but how facile their beliefs

how completely they disregard

karma and its inexorable demands

they'll never know in the skins of this lifetime

how fortunate they are

and how their blessings have insulated them

from the truths of others

I cannot say yes or no to anything or anyone

we all bungle the job so thoroughly

and so blindly

and sometimes even the most well-meant teaching

leads the sayer into the grossest snares of vanity

and unconscious pride

so blame is evenly spread

even onto the Almighty who claims no fault

in creating creation to these very strictures

"I gave the pattern for all roses

if a petals wilts I'm not to blame"

no? as if there were some other force in reality

than the Ineffable Itself causing this mischief?

and oh the punishment for daring to say so!

the drop in Grace for daring to question

the One who demands absolute obedience

and will brook no opposition from Its creatures

on pain of perishing and being eliminated from Life

oh if the One could be as forgiving and gracious

as It demands we be

maybe just maybe we'd see a way through these travails

other than the destruction of all we hold dear

but all we hold dear is as ephemeral as ourselves and our loves

and mercy seems not in the divine vocabulary

here the anguish of the Renunication that we're taught

gains All

what of us poor humble fools who just want to be part of the All

in our places as our own entities

our rightful parts in All That Is?

evidently we cannot get that right either

and no enlightenment comes except at the force

of the Almighty Fist pounding all false notions

of Love and Grace and Mercy and Forgiveness

out of us

and with this as the case

when?

how much longer

until acquiescence?

the total surrender to the Living Fabric of Life?

I don't know I don't know I don't know

I just see scenes repeated in my life

desultory mornings of hopelessness

dark nights of cold fear and despair

comforting in their weird way by familiarity

as circle after circle in my life

closes and I am lead out of this life

the way I came in

ignorant and frightened

but with an uncanny calm

as if subconsciously all the miseries were beginning to slip away

and if nothing else

a relief were waiting beyond the finish line

of this life's race

a trip through some 'winner's circle'

and on to release and peace

even if I had to return

in some future condition to continue

the atonement of my errors

at least it wouldn't be this life

of shames and sorrows beyond endurance

because yet I

yet we endure

for what further grief or what ultimate transcendence

who but the One knows

when or where or how...

Content (c) 2008-2011 Philip Milito.