freedom-04092007.mp3
evening poem.
they say freedom is another word for nothing left to lose
but how do you lose something you never had
and how do you find something you never lost
there are as many thoughts, opinions, perspectives, and beliefs
as there are grains of sand, or drops of rain,
as there are leaves upon trees, or stars in the night time sky
to the leaf, the world is surely different than
to a star, and it is a certainty that to the grain of sand
the world is much different than to the raindrop
if all things can know only that which they experience
and no one thing can experience all things
how can one ever say one has knowledge
how can one ever say one sees
beyond the moment or through it
as grain or rain,
as star or leaf,
or as you or me
there is a place that does not exist
within it, all things and no things
the memory of the sand, the rain,
the stars, and the leaf
they echo with emptiness, just as we do
are there sandy thoughts? perhaps?
does the rain ponder enlightenment?
do the stars weep for distance?
or the leaf, for autumn?
what would it take
to know the thoughts of these things
or to still the ones
here, in the head
that clump like sand beneath rain
that sing like stars over leaves
that swirl like leaves over ground
they say freedom is another word for nothing left to lose
but a star never lost a thing
and the sand is still blind
and the rain cares not where it falls
and the leaf looses as it will
and no matter how many words are spent
what is, is
as free as ever it was and as ever will be
bound up in all things and unbound in everything
upon which our thoughts, our breath, our blood
have no power
which is, of course, the true power – freedom