When I lie there dying, or here,
for it is always here that we lie
or stand or walk or die,
let me not discover at last,
My God, it was the little things!
It wasn’t about the party I voted for,
or whether I grokked nonduality.
It wasn’t about the vegan diet,
or how many protests I attended.
It had nothing to do with karma,
or which Guru I followed.
It wasn’t about becoming a Christian,
or a Muslim, or having any Way at all.
It was about gazing into the face
of a baby at Rite Aid.
It was the moment I caught and held
the eye of the fourth grade boy
behind the dark school bus window,
and said to him clearly, without words,
“I know how loneliness feels.
Therefore you are not alone.”
It was about finding the frog
who lived in my umbrella
at the corner of the porch.
The first Autumn rain, when I
unfolded it, spilling him into my hand,
and took him over to the rose pot,
placing him among the withered petals,
and spoke clearly, with clear words,
“You may live here all Winter.
I will listen for you every evening.”
It was about this kind of courage,
to speak with frogs.
About not minding garden dirt
caked on my knees, not taking
a shower on a Summer night
because I felt so good
that I planted the tomatoes.
It was the moment I sent my friend
with terminal cancer a link
to Allegri’s “Miserere,”
something as easy, as small as that.
It was about pausing on a long walk
to watch the cumulonimbus roil
into a personal face, I won’t
say whose, I’ll let you find your own
form of the Friend, who really does
appear in clouds, in trees, in toadstools
that spring up at midnight in glistening rings.
It was about the courage to whisper
Thank You whenever that countenance
smiles upon you, the courage to confess,
“Yes, it is possible, it is not foolish,
it requires no believing, only wonder.”
When I lie there dying may I dare
to tell my dear ones, “There are no
big things, only little ones, somehow
threaded in a wine-dark mandala,
a wreathe of heartbeats growing
fainter, fainter now, a circle made
of all the moments when I paid attention,
even for a breath, growing fainter now,
yet widening into blue, into the sky
of one eternal heartbeat,
the point of it all.