The night is dark
While silent creeks slumber.
The wise cedars hold their tongue
Under their burden —
Their dance to the wind.
A breeze stirs in the distance,
As if coned by an invisible hand.
Solemn in the silence, the garden sits,
Taking deep breaths of humility.
A brilliant blaze flashes —
Disrupting the dark wall of solitude.
A messenger to the mind comes;
An angel of enlightened glory
Bearing barbed wisdom from above.
“To live,
You must first die.”
Breath escapes —
Velocity of volcanic doom.
A chill descends upon the garden.
Transmission received in a scold of pain,
A fit of furious rage as burning ether boils;
The pitch of a strong soul broken.
The cedars are gone now —
Driven from the presence of abjection.
The creek, too,
Turns from her slumber
To leave the place deserted.
Not even the wind
Keeps company in complete sorrow.
The grip of ten thousand sins,
Sits as an elephant upon an ant.
And the ant breaks —
Devastated . . .
Desperately alone . . .
Demolished
Under the weight of awakening —
The reckoning of false axioms.
The garden is driven from hope
As a slug from the sea.
Echoing is the despair
Of Hope’s widow:
“There is nothing now,
See, the grace of this place
is gone.”
And the garden shudders.
The rivers run red,
Rolling in rusty beads,
Tracing paths
Down the garden’s face.
A strength surges as static life;
Returning on the wind,
The cedars and river rest.
Uplifted as positive streamers —
Amid the thick musk of flogging —
The garden stands to break its silence.
“The path I choose is
Not cobbled in the throes of desire.
It is not mapped,
In avoidance of pain.
Rather, I walk it
Blind,
Comforted by my fear.
Most surely, know,
The path I choose is
Designed on high.
For it is written:
‘Greater love has no one
Than this,
To lay down one’s life
For another.’”
Refreshed in resolve,
With divine rage reaffirmed,
The garden turns to leave —
Renewed he beckons:
“The time is here;
Now awaken brothers,
There is a light on the path.”
