CurranPoem

Sometimes, when I wake up in the morning The world is not what I want it to be But the world is still the magnificent mystery In which I am stuck between Plato’s ideals And Jesus’s Kingdom and Buddha’s Nirvana And the crazy man at the bus stop The world—It is in your face. It won’t let you go. Descartes got it right.   Throw it all out.   It is all A bundle of thought knots: concepts—illusions Birth and death and memory and hope A dance with realities we don’t understand You Think: The fact that you can doubt your doubts Is a clue.   There is a you behind the you you think You are—who loves the ideals, lives in the Kingdom, Dances in Nirvana and gives the crazy man at the bus stop A hug—He stares at you thinking you are crazy.

There is no church, no synagogue, no mosque, no temple Big enough to hold my faith—I love the solemn spaces— The stained glass windows of the churches, the golden light Of Buddhist temples, the sacredness of synagogues and the Prayerfulness of the mosque but it is the light of the sun which Lights the windows, the voice of the sutras which greets The Buddha, the prayers of devotion in the mosque that I hear Light and voice and spirit and faith are my sacred space In which I worship and the world will try to take it away from you At the bus stop, in traffic, in politics, in the evening news, In failed friendships but the sun shines on all of us and Gravity keeps us all in our place while we work it out