01 August 2012

Breath of Starlight

The morning star hangs high and bright like a teardrop in the western sky. Thin grey clouds float by and create an illusion -- a doubt:  is it a star or a flying machine? 


No.  It is a star and it is not moving. It sparkles like a glistening teardrop.


I am on the front stoop drinking coffee and smoking a cigarette, my eyes drawn to the charming light. I feel strong and sure and joyful. For a long moment. Like the time it takes a teardrop to fall. 


Then I land, hard, in my body. It is 5 in the morning and I've been up all night. Insomnia is sometimes like an extended meditation:  feeling exhaustion like a bear, lumbering through my body...and then releasing, relaxing, breathing deep deep deep into the vital enlivening core of me, within/behind the sense of exhaustion. 

Wracked by bursts of frenzied thinking:  what to do about the car, coordinating the move, no money, no work, nomadic, what to do, my family, my life....and then releasing, relaxing, breathing deep deep into the vital enlivening awareness within/behind the frantic, compulsive, pain-driven, thinking...

The morning star hangs, a talisman in the firmament just as I have material form and exist in the world of form. There is the miracle of stellar illumination and the miracle of human breath. Like thoughts, clouds appear, distort the view, move like smoke--changing shape, disappearing.


I am breath. I am starlight.