Row Your Boat

Whatever I feel,

What’s done to me,

I’m still the one in charge.

Live life large

Or with serenity,

This life is my property.

For all those blows

Beyond my power,

It’s up to me to face the hour-

To stand up or capitulate,

As rising waters undulate,

Stay behind, duck, cower,

Or elevate my state?

I know I have to choose and yet,

No telling what’ll come to be,

What really separates my good intention

From insanity?

I think I’ve made the right choice,

So off I go smug and content,

Only to find catastrophe-

“No that’s not what I meant!”

Let go of what I can’t control,

I’ve heard it many times.

I’ve even heard I’m not my acts,

Nor the thoughts within my mind-

Just an awareness floating free,

Not shackled by free will,

Or tortuous responsibility,

Neither innocent nor guilty.

That sounds nice, that sounds easy,

I think I’ll drift along,

Row, row, row your boat I think’s the song-

Now I’ll sing it consciously.

Lightness

Use the mind as an instrument

Is what the lesson said,

Remember that you’re more than living

And always less than dead.

Lightness also means not heavy

Like the properties of light,

The here and now is where you are

No matter how dark or bright.

Speak more or less or not at all,

Feel the quiet of sun swept mystery,

Embrace the pain and joy of life,

Love away the misery.

Disappear into a word so deep

You understand it to its core,

Then live in wordlessness a while

Or else what is living for?

Continuum

The knots in my muscles

Release themselves

Bit by bit

Like water falling over stones

Descending step by step

Loosening

Not holding me up

In awkward poses

Anymore

I think of where I’d like my bones to be

What seems most natural

Looking for balance

And uncovering

The logic of the body

Taking its position in space

Changing over time

Not imagining any purpose

Other than to be

My body

My awareness

My mind

Now I see it now I don’t

Now I control it now it controls me

Now I wonder

About the I

And the inseparability

Of all these things

Extending now my body my mind my awareness

I become the space around me

The strangers in the room

My mother sitting next to me

And I see the world

As the continuum

That I am

I'm Getting Old

all the things left unfinished

and all those not yet begun

hover around me unceasingly

bothering me for fun

like an evil champion

like a villain on the run

a list of books I'd have to read

to know anything at all

the actions I know I'd have to take

to know that I stood tall

when it feels for all the world

that the world's about to fall

one step at a time they say

one deep breath to clear your mind

as civilization self-destructs

I might as well unwind

disposing of my time

like a sing-song, easy rhyme

that's the way to acquiesce

with what I have helped create

contributing however small

as we all participate

accepting horror deeds as fate

renunciation coming late

or take control

of what I behold

grasping with the will's hold

past the arc of what I'm told

wary of what I do for gold

because a life bought is a life sold

I must choose to play a more worthy role

because I'm getting old, I'm getting old