The One Place

I. Howling at the Linear
In order to stop thinking,
we can stop thinking in order.
Go ahead, give your thoughts
permission to rush about pell-mell,
howling at the linear prescription
that has gotten us to this impasse.

The artists cling to bits of happiness,
a poem here, a song or painting there.
And the youngest children,
if unsupervised enough,
can keep their hold on the clarity
of wonders multidimensional.

A hundred purple birds
explode from the trees before your eyes,
a bolt of silk unravelling in air.
If the world can be this beautiful,
how many many other things
are waiting to be found?

Believing everything we think
has our species stuck in mud,
in useless rules and cruel views.
Stop thinking in such marching order,
in order to uncover the compassion
living hidden in our body’s cells.

II. Practice
I wasn’t at home in bed,
there was no drumming.
I sat on a bench in a park, and suddenly
I was journeying to the Lower World.
My ancestral totem greeted me,
took me to my Teacher.

There I was on the bench,
and there I was
in reality non-ordinary.
Without a session at the gym,
I stretched and flexed
the muscle of my consciousness.

Time for humans to strengthen,
to bend, expand, extend. Awareness
reaches further than we realize.
Time for each of us to find
every hidden power, to bloom
in lovely sudden flowering.

III. The One Place We All Belong
The night felt three days long.
Three whole days the world was gone.
Then it all came back.
The ambered mountains appeared again,
and everywhere the scent of violets.
Here. The one place. I’m here.

My hands are fat with sleep
I spread them wide in gratitude.
A branch blinks into an owl.
I interrupt my silence, to sing
to a world as pathless as water.
Here. The one place. I’m here.

Fed up with being careful,
I laugh in careless trust.
Alive! Sliding on the dewy grasses,
I bend to cup some to my mouth.
Like fairy wine, it tastes. Here!
In the one place where all belong.

©Susa Silvermarie 2026