Alla Bozarth Words and Images Welcoming Light in the Wilderness: Cosmology, Christ and Us~Poems New and Old, Beginning with Everything, then Joy

The Sun, with all those planets revolving around it and dependent on it,
can still ripen a bunch of grapes
as if it had nothing else in the universe to do.

Galileo Galilei

Glorious, Galileo! A perfect example of how scientists think like artists~ playful, original, creative, easily enchanted by the Real Wonders within and around us~ all moments of the Divine made visible, audible, delectable, aromatic and palpable in Creation.

The Deep Deep Faith of an Evolutionary Scientist

God’s preferred vehicle of creation is evolution.

On the opening day of my astronomy class

at Northwestern University when Professor Hynek

leaped onto the lecture platform, opened his arms wide
and said, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was—

Hydrogen!” he was speaking of the Voice of God

in the first split second of Creation.

From a state of Pure Energy, God pushed,

and in the push came a breath, and God pushed again,

and from the breath out popped a single ion of hydrogen,

and God pushed again, and from the single ion of hydrogen

out popped the Universe, and God breathed again, and the Universe

began to radiate out like an egg cracked open and spilled, and God

said, “I shall never stop breathing, for this breath becomes song

and the whole dance of creation, and it is a wonder, a beauty,

and I shall call it Beloved to Infinity, and as the parts die

and others are born, I shall lovingly draw the old parts

back into Myself and infuse the new parts with

blessings, and I shall grow more blessings

as everything blooms and becomes.”

From that first effort of the Holy One to create

Matter and Time from Divine Energy, to utter

the first note of the Canticle of Creation,

to conceive the Sacred Story of Everything,

to give birth to the Cosmic Drama,

came forth the unimaginable wonder

of the Mystical Body of Christ

made manifest in Being.

And the Body of Christ grows ceaselessly into Itself,

for Divine Nature is illimitable, unimaginable, Infinite,

Eternally More.

God is becoming More

through becoming creation.

Intuit the Fact of Pure Energy that is More Love,

both darkness and light and neither of these, nor no one thing

in isolation from any other, no stray atom, but all stray atoms,

no stray star but all stray stars, no stray runaway child but all

stray runaway children.

And so the Breath of God breathes out to become

the best and the worst days of your life,

the most outrageous happiness and

the depths of grief beyond words,

and the working times and

the waiting times in between.

The Word of God unfolds forever, enfolds all.

The Word of God is faithful and forever alive.

The Word of God sings the song of cosmos, one note unfolding

into the next, a chord changing itself into an arpeggio, a sonata,

a fugue, a symphony. As the evolution of a cantata into a choir,

a concerto into a symphony, with the emergence of soloists

suddenly appearing from the hiding wings of What If and How—

God brings forth constantly changing creatures by means

of co-evolution, where everything adapts moment by moment,

eon by eon, to everything else~ what came before, what is now,
what shall be.

Think of free-form dance during fair weather that turns

from darkness to blinding light, from soft rain to lightning and hail,

from storm to birdsongs and caressing warmth of the sun,

think of mountain ice becoming a waterfall, of rivers spilling into the sea.

Cosmology is the Divine Invention, the Divine Invitation

for us to wake up and pay attention, to enter the story

fully, lively, ready . . . to become part of the wonder,

to feel and think through the miracle, to experience the gift

of Being, to puzzle, experiment, explore and interact with,

to feel ourselves becoming, becoming with, always changing,

others around us who are also changing, and the dance opens up

into a circle of many, then a pas de deux, a solo, a silence,

then over again. Many, many layered, intersecting dances of life

all at once, each slowly evolving into new ones.

Being human and afraid, we still remember the perfect time

before birth, before responsibility, before uncertainty,

and crave a return to a static universe where nothing is asked of us

but to be, where judgment does not exist, nor loss nor tragedy,

where failure is a foreign word and anything difficult does not exist.

But we are born, we somehow bear having been born, we make the best of it.

This world full of beauty and also of random disorder, illness, injury,

ignorance and hate, the resentful rage of revenge against life

for having been born— is still our place of becoming,

of choice, of adaptation and Grace, for God

never stops being born in our lives.

Holy Spirit inspires and the Word of God still breathes out and says,

Let’s become something wonderful and new!

It can be done by a smile, by a breath,

by simple consent to be here

for a day or an hour,

for a year . . .

And from there, or wherever we are,

to be surprised.

From the moment we open our eyes, we are discovering wonders.

Our senses work with the brain’s powers of making sense, and from seeing,

hearing, touching, smelling, tasting, intuiting, thinking and feeling, the brain

creates perceptions, making sense, rightly or wrongly, of what we experience.

As exploration and discovery unfold, we correct and revise our perceptions.

The integrative mind does not perceive conflict between complementary

dynamics, but how they cooperate in the Divine Mind, how God outers
the Word anew throughout space and time, continues to make all things

new, and that creation flows through streams of evolution, so that Christ
dying and rising each moment, Grace can be free, in all things bound,
always be free. Therefore, God’s preferred vehicle of Grace-full creation
is naturally evolution.

Alla Renée Bozarth

See Brian Swimme
http://www.journeyoftheuniverse.org/

See Richard Attenborough
http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/charles-darwin-tree-life/

Tree of Life Lavender Labyrinth

Kaleidoscope Lavender Labyrinth

Spiral Galaxy

The Shimmering Moment

for Carl Sagan and J. Allen Hynek,

my astronomy professor

at the moment of death

there are no atheists

the great astronomer

would have said~

the great astronomer had said~

there is no god necessary

to this self-made miracle

of our spacetime universe,

and matter regenerates itself

without beginning or end

to infinity

his colleague said,

in the beginning was the word

and the word was . . .

hydrogen!

the great scientist said~

there is no intelligent life beyond

our own, in or out of the universe

his colleague said,

in the beginning was the word

and the word was hydrogen,

and when that single ion

cracked open like an egg,

the cosmos were born

the great scientist said~

I believe in what I see

and know, the billions

and billions of stars,

and it is more

than enough

and then he told his colleague

that in secret, not to be discredited,

he knew there was intelligence beyond us~

and later when he learned the one thing

he’d never studied, that he, a mere mortal man

after all, was dying, he said~ yes, I believe

an intelligent Being brought us forth and even

that it loves us, that we are not alone

in our knowing, perhaps not even

superior, I believe that god exists

and soon I will learn the features

of infinite Love

and his colleague said,

in the beginning is the word

and the word is Love

Alla Renée Bozarth

Diamonds in a Stony Field
Copyright 2012.

Voyager Crosses into the Final Frontier

the voyager left home today.
all packed up with cheap, old-fashioned
equipment, cameras, sound machines,
gadgets for sending messages back home,
and the latest jet-pack style equivalent
technology so no other fuel will be necessary.

first off there was a stop at the front gate
where an irresistible Martian sunset was
holding court, and we had to watch
the trine rise of Venus, Jupiter and Earth
lifting over the horizon~ God, it was gorgeous,
three stunning pearls in a coral sea, and who could guess
how different their size and composition were?

we got some lovely pictures of the Milky Way
and all the other planets en route. turns out
some of those rings around Saturn are braided!

Babe’s been out of the house for 40 years already.
word is, the final departure from our heliosphere happened
about a year ago. we got one garbled effort at Goodbye while
our traveler was crossing the horizon field beyond our ability
to hear anything further . . .

the voyager has two 30 foot long whip antennae
extending outwardly in a V, so as not to miss anything . . .
and using antique transmission, they were able to pick up enough
from the surrounding density of space plasma, and had the great luck
to be helped by two huge solar flares at that moment which excited the plasma
particles enough to let their vibrations register on the voyager’s instruments,
converting the energy into audio signals for us, a lovely last little chirp
of So Long that echoed back briefly, and then abruptly went out
as Voyager entered interstellar space forever.

the next thing Voyager will see will be the Oort Cloud on the outer edge
of what we almost know, the gauzy sphere where so many comets are born~
that lovely cocoon-like nest, that filmy shell of light and wonder.

Voyager I will reach the inner edge of the Oort Cloud in about 300 years
and could take another 30,000 years or so to leave it. lately, our traveler
has been bombarded with a force of cosmic rays, while the solar rays
have plummeted, though the magnetic fields around Voyager
have not changed direction as expected.

observers focused on watching the magnetic fields
to tell them when Voyager left the solar winds’ domain,
but they neglected the significance of plasma density.
in so many ways, this trip is surprising the scientists,
defying many human presumptions . . .
as reality will do.

our brave explorer is now 11.6 billion miles from home.
at the very least, it disorients, it dizzies, it boggles.
at most, it evokes wonder beyond words . . .

Weeeeeeeeee YHHEW !

Alla Renée Bozarth

The Frequencies of Sound
Copyright 2013.

“On the electrodynamics of moving bodies” Albert Einstein, June 1905

yes, solid, liquid or gaseous matter converts to raw energy—

fat becomes fuel and a game of tennis or a term paper—

petrol converts to raw energy and becomes a trip to the islands

what seems most inert has greatest potential

for energy to work its wonders or mayhem

the trick is to find the most amount of energy

in the smallest amount of mass, and the most energy

in any union of particles is in the core bond. Think of the single ion

that was the cosmic egg, still unfolding multiverses of new beings—

convert that thought to poems, tears, kisses or laughter,

convert that thought to a new invention or a beautiful lunch

think of the diamond worth millions that must be cut with precision

or shatters, the priceless power and beauty of love’s energy, its radiance

revealed when worn as a gift from the Beloved to the Beloved

in their adamantine bond.

if less than two ounces of mass was required

for the energy which destroyed two great cities,

brought tragedy to hundreds of thousands

of human families and other species also,

but ended a hideous war—

then what chance has any of us to avoid

being struck by lightning in one form or another?

the power is where the bond is strongest.

take care how we use it, people.

use it for nurture, not nuclear nightmare.

scientist Brian Greene demonstrates: all of New York City

has less energy than the newspaper in your hand. read it, you hold the whole world

in your hands and take in all its oceans of sorrow and rivers of light

with your eyes. read it with comprehension and change the world for better

in your own small marvelous way, today.

Alla Renée Bozarth

The Frequency of Light

Create Joy

The pain passes, but the beauty remains.

Renoir to Matisse

Suppose you have a chronic affliction.

{Who doesn’t?} Suppose it distracts you

from your life and you don’t want it

in your life. You want to say, I am more

than this misery, I am more than this body.

Go ahead, then. Live through the pain but

create around it, create so much that is beautiful

and wonderful and marvelous, so much that is

meaningful and helpful to others and also to you,

create so that the pain will not have a chance

to tempt you. It will not be able to get a word or a groan in

long enough or deep enough to deceive you

into giving it your identity. Instead, you will be

what you create. And you will always be

what you create. And what you create will be

for those you love, for the strangers who will meet you

long after your pain has died forever with your recycled body,

and they will find your clear, radiantly healthy spirit,

and they will say, Thanks. This is lovely. This is just what I needed.

Even if you are unable to create with your hands,

create awareness with your mind, create insight,

create peace with your spirit by letting it be drawn out

and beyond the window pane into the fields and sky, the marketplace,

the festivals, across the oceans, to other planets and between the stars.

Remember the world that needs more love and love it,

love individual beings where you find them,

move your mind out into it and travel through it

with tender eyes and an appetite for everything marvelous.

Let the pain melt away with your mind’s love

in the form of self-transcending compassion,

even when you cannot smile or speak or think.

In your deep meditation that happens by intention below the pain~

will your burdens to become blessings, like compost in the earth,

like sooted snow in late winter, yielding to the sun.

One inner word is all it takes, as simple as, “Here,” or

“Help,” between breaths. It will be done.

You will have made your pain into something more,

a connection that keeps alive your bond with all living beings.

And from below, their own soul roots will quiver

with a feeling of having been strengthened and blessed.

You will have been part of everything, still contributing,

reverberating that one intention throughout time and space

beyond your own body, mind and mortal life.

And that will be your forever joy.

Even after there will be no more human beings to experience your spirit,

it will be part of the Song of the Universe to infinity,

part of the Holy One forever.

Alla Renée Bozarth

She Loves It All

when god was a girl she loved

to play dress up with hydrogen

and nitrogen, she wiggled her hips

and blew kisses from her voluptuous

lips and wiggled her fingers to toss the stars~

she juggled them and tied ribbons on them

when she wanted to create new dimensions,

to open all the directions she hurled them like a salad

that no one told her not to play with, so she giggled

and played until all the ingredients stuck on the ceiling of sky,

but then she’d coax them back into action and let them decide

where to go and how far and when or if to land, and

she would go far out, way, way out to play

with her dolls, the gaseous, luminous balls of delight,

hold them in her cool hands for a millennial minute

to turn them into planets and things of that sort,

with what we call substance, solid stuff

but there was precious little of that compared

to the zillions of light years and miles of raw energy

she stores in those closets disguised as nothingness,

dark matter if it’s just out there and going nowhere

(we think), and dark energy if it seems to push

the many verses ever outward from each other~

for epic cosmic poems gone lyrical and operatic wild

there is always music as silence and vice versa

going on in the movement between beings

and yes, she likes those comets, never lost

her taste for new things, plays with galaxies and constellations

of beautiful toys and wears them like jewelry in living colors,

lots of necklaces and rings, baubles on Christmas trees, then turns them

into mirrors of herself, better than hot melted many-colored glass spinning

in the fire~ though sometimes she is shy and covers them with night invisible,

that brilliant dark country that covers the map of heaven, and she does it

the better to show her curls, her graceful arms, her reach into fire for love,

her laughter-made comets~ and sometimes she braids their tails

and sometimes she says, you are simply gorgeous,

delicious as roses on a birthday cake, scrumptious

as a coarse lemon poppy seed wedding cake with

thick passion fruit frosting, with gold leaves and silver

bangles and pearls, with marionberries and cream

and she then gets distracted and remembers it’s lunch time

and she cooks up something new to serve variously

here and there around the place~ and to her, the future

is not in front or ahead or out there but inside, always

inside everything, where the past is pretending to govern

what we call the present but she calls Beloved, and where

nothing yet imagined is just about to happen

next week we’ll talk about when god was a mountain,

then how all the kinds of rocks became her feet

until she wanted to run again with a bird’s eye view

and became a baby giraffe

and later, about how she tried on the whole zoo,

and then settled down for several millennia

as an entire evergreen forest, yes,

the ancient sequoias, the redwoods mingling

with blue spruce, and then she became an etude,

a fantasie-impromptu, a symphony, a garland

of roses, a garden of petunias and pansies

and marigolds which she served in salads

to strengthen the blood of her mammals,

and dandelions, which doubled as tonic and

oh~ maybe she’d like to be a mermaid

and swim all the seas, yes, that would

be fine, she says

and about then god the old woman decides it’s time

to figure out what to do about all the beings who suffer

in pain, sorrow, confusion, anger or fear, which she knows

from being all of them, and asks us please to pray for her . . .

Alla Renée Bozarth

Marc Chagall, "Tribe of Simeon" lithograph

for the Jerusalem Windows

Dance Then To Everything

Music is everywhere

music is in sound and

music is in silence

Therefore I dance

to silence I dance

to tears I dance

to laughter I dance

to groans and moans

I dance to Rachmaninoff

and Bach, to Beethoven

and Dylan, to Carole King

and Marvin Gay and to everything

composed, harmonious and played

Dance then to birdsong and waterfall,

to the spring scented forest and garden,

to snow and the rain, to river and ocean,

with desert or mountain, I dance

For the dancing mind can dance

forward or backward in time and space also,

indeed to outer and inner dimensions uncommonly known

I dance with my eyes,

I dance with one hand,

I dance clapping,

I dance with one foot

or one shoulder, my hair

dances with wind

I dance to poetry while hearing it,

I dance to poetry while reading it

aloud to the tree for whom I wrote it

As I dance around the lovely thing

with my hand or arm encircling

As Rumi danced his grief

and finally his joy around

the cool, smooth, sacred stone

until he warmed it with longing~

As Rumi danced around the pillar of loss

when his beloved teacher and friend

called Shams, The Sun, had died—

He danced to call back the Light

from the belly of darkness

that had swallowed the sky,

as now the Sufi dance after him

For Dance is the Song of the Body,

and Songs are the Dance of the Voice~

as both Move, Utter, Outer the Soul

I dance to the gospels

I dance to the psalms

I dance to a friend

I dance mostly and always

to God

Don’t let the limitations

of your body deter you,

dance with your mind,

dance with your soul

Feel free to join me

across great distances

of space and time

and dance on your own

Dance all by yourself

so no one will know

but you and the Beloved,

in whatever form you

experience the Beloved,

and let the Beloved

dance with You

Alla Renée Bozarth

The Frequencies of Sound
Copyright 2012

I Am You

My third eye sees from inside God with a God’s Eye view

And your third eye sees from inside God with a God’s Eye view—

When you look with your Third Eye into mine, You see your Self, holy,

and when I look with my Third Eye into yours, I see my Self, holy—

Therefore, as I walk the earth

I say to the tree, I am You

I say to the fruit on the tree, I am You

I say to the solitary shell, I am You

I say to the creature once living there, I am You

I say to the bear, I am You

I say to the bird, I am You

I say to the flower, I am You

I say to the bee, I am You

I say to the storm cloud, I am You

I say to thunder, I am You

I say to the rain, I am You

I say to the waterfall, I am You

I say to the river, I am You

I say to the fire, I am You

I say to the mountain, I am You

I say to the desert, I am You

I say to the ocean, I am You

I say to the homeless person, I am You

I say to the millionaire, I am You

I say to the elegant poet on dialysis, I am You

I say to the caregiver, I am You

I say to the disabled person, I am You

I say to the ancient, I am You

I say to the city, I am You

I say to the student, I am You

I say to the teacher, I am You

I say to the farmer, I am You

I say to the prisoner, I am You

I say to the soldier, I am You

I say to the swimmer, I am You

I say to history, I am You

I say to the newborn as to the dying, I am You

I say to You, I am You

Alla Renée Bozarth

The Frequencies of Sound
Copyright 2012.

Marc Chagall, The Blue Violinist, 1947~ two images, one brighter and one truer, both brilliant coloration as always with this extraordinary Russian Jewish artist who emigrated to Paris~

Marc Chagall, The Blue Violinist, 1947

The Holy Agnostic

An Anonymous 20th Century Saint of the Open Road

If by God we mean that than which nothing greater can be conceived,

then we cannot conceive of that entity except as existing.

The Ontological Argument, St. Anselm of Canterbury, 1033-1109

He looked like he’d been on the rails all his days,

self-taught and of plain speaking intelligence,

with the features of Henry Fonda playing

Young Abraham Lincoln or in The Grapes of Wrath,

but older. Over campfire dinner his compadre asked,

“Do you believe in God?”

“That’s a complex question,” he ventured.

“If you mean do I give assent to the tenets

of any religion, No. If you mean do I have an idea

or cherish an image of a divine being who is merely

a larger version of ourselves, with all our vicious traits

of jealousy, small-minded exclusivity and petty revenge,

as well as our tender traits of forgiveness, mercy and generosity—

I especially say No. The former traits are too mean and small

and the latter go past our reckoning.

“If you mean do I want to lock God up

in some small and manageable box,

easy for human beings to predict and manipulate,

enlist on our side in any conflict, call upon to justify

our own rash judgments and childish grievances,

it’s definitely No.

“I recall the wisdom of someone who said

that the greatest limitation to learning

is the presumption of knowledge.

You see, I have the same hunger for that so-called

Wholly Other that I suppose everyone has instinctively,

the hunger that gets us in so much trouble and leads us to

hurt, maim and kill each other— God is love and I’ll kill anyone

whose idea of that is different from mine, is what that amounts to.

“My hunger for the Holy Unknown is so achingly intense

sometimes, greater than any physical hunger or hunger for human love,

that I don’t want to limit its fulfillment by defining the One I long for.

I want to stay as open as possible (I won’t be so foolish as to say

absolutely open, knowing my own humanity too well).

“Being open is the only way I can keep the wonder within me alive.

It’s my only chance for recognizing the One when It chooses ways

to show Itself to me. I hope it will be some kind of intimately personal

meeting, as overwhelming as falling in love. I hope it will have an intellectual

quality, though I realize my limited intellect may misguide my understanding

of the experience of a sacred encounter. I also sense that every encounter

is a sacred encounter if we go into it reverently, respectfully, carefully,

and above all, courageously, even passionately, but gently and

whenever possible if not always, non-violently.

“So my personal pledge to the Great Mysterious is

to carry no boxes to carve It up and stuff It into,

hording It for myself or the select few whom I might judge

to be worthy. And I also acknowledge that even if It makes Itself

unmistakably and specifically known to me in some way, my notions

of It will probably be as distorted as the next person’s, though I pray

(truly) that they will not be damaging or hurtful to others or myself,

nor would I use them as weapons against myself or others.

“Now, you may say that I’m an arrogant so-and-so

for not accepting someone else’s version of that Ultimate Being,

but I say positively No again, not arrogant, but realistic

in the acknowledgement that no human concepts or precepts

could come near to describing the Awesome Reality.

“Probably most of the metaphors work in themselves,

God the Mother, God the Father, God the Child, God the Friend,

God the Lover, God the Light, God the Word, God the Silence,

God the Creator, God the Redeemer, God the Spirit, God the Pure Energy—

and so on. But they only work when applied as metaphors, in the context

of the moment— and when they are made absolutes and become, any one

of them, literal and dogmatic, then they are like the letter of the law
that destroys the spirit, and instead of being life-giving, they stifle the soul
and paralyze its ability to receive The Real Thing.

“I am going to let you listen to something that may surprise you—
my agnostic prayer:

“Whoever You Are, first I want to tell you this— I love not knowing, but feeling

closer to You than air to skin, in the freedom of being open to Whoever and
Whatever You Are, as exquisitely mysterious as any breathtakingly beautiful
painting or flower. Bless all beings by helping them to be aware of Your Sacred
Mystery, and to receive it with a gracious humility, and if You can, help us
to love this astonishing life in all its sweet mysteries, and not lose faith in it
when it becomes difficult or horrifying. If I may, since it is my innate desire
to do so, I offer You my total unknowing, and with it, my thanks
for the intelligence and self-awareness You’ve given me, through which I have
this wonderful sense of You and my own desire for You. Somehow there is more
peace and happiness for me there than in any secure-making ideas that could be
put into words, and would therefore be limited and wrong.

“Yes, I know that even what I am saying now is too much, but I’m a talky animal

and have to start somewhere. I know You can’t interfere with free will, and You
allow chaos as the necessary destructive phase of the ongoing creative process.

I’m sure I don’t have to tell You that free will is difficult for us humans.

We’re mostly afraid of our freedom, terrified of making mistakes, and terrified
also that we have no idea what we want or need, but are being batted around
from illusion to delusion and back again.

“A sense of being is as hard to come by as a sense of self or soul—

as impossible for some as it is natural for others.

There must be a way for us insecure and immature human beings to relax

without needing to sink into fixed and closed notions and rules,

other than the freeing rules of respect and kindness.

“And I don’t have to tell You that we hate chaos, though
we create plenty of it ourselves. We crave order and predictability,
though we can’t achieve them in our own lives very well.

The scientists assure us that this is the way the universe works, though,

and they tell us it’s trustworthy, so who are we to whine and complain?

Well, You know we are going to whine and complain anyway, no matter what.

I’m rambling, because I don’t have much else to say, so I’ll close for now

with another Thank You. I love being here, mosquitoes and hunger and all.

Logic dictates that, given chaos and free will, You can’t do much about suffering.

It’s up to us to alleviate it with our patience, kindness and intelligence.

You’re doing a great job, Whoever You Are, not that You need me to tell You,

but I enjoy telling You and hope that You enjoy Being You. Amen.”

Reporter’s Note: When every religious person achieves such holy agnosticism

as this true openness to the Holy One/ness or simply Great Mystery,
replacing exclusion and literalism with good will and wonderment,

we’ll have the beginnings of Heaven on Earth.

Saint Francis and Siddhartha

Siddhartha Gautama, the once and future Buddha,

and Saint Francis of Assisi were the same,

for each man set out from a sheltered room

within the walls of opulence in later youth,

unwilling to be cut off by wealth from the world.

Each cringed, then, at his fate.

Each rebelled in a holy rebellion.

Each went over the wall

in a wide-eyed wonder of love for the world,

to take in all that was on the other side,

to marvel at all that lived—

with tears and cries and hunger,

with longing and surprise.

Each became a troubadour

and roamed the Earth

while singing souls awake.

And each became at-one with all

through holy renunciation, took on

voluntary empathic identity

with every mortal entity.

Each in his raw humanity gave all,

unbounded, unfettered, unshackled

attention, self-blessed and a blessing.

And later, each sat

upon sacred ground,

stripped of everything

but the one song

each creature sings

with its living breath.

That song is Oneness.

That song is Yes.

That song None Other.

That song is God and not-God.

That song is the soul’s outcrying sound.

And Saint Francis and Siddhartha

sang it with a smile.

Alla Renée Bozarth , My Passion for Art, c. 2012.

“Do You Live Alone?”

Impossible!
Think of it!
Inside the walls
and joints of my house
are trillions of creatures,
some so small the ant and mouse

and solitary bee seem giants —
not to mention those who cuddle
close for warmth and crumbs
outside — thousands of species
of birds and insects,
rabbits, moles, creepy-crawlers
of all sorts, the neighbors’
cats and dogs and cows and geese
and sheep and horses.

Then inside are
the heavenly hosts
who welcome me to my table,
and earth angels in food and flower,
so open to intimacy and even union
with eye, nose, hand, lips,
organs, words, dreams and poems.

Besides these, all
human colleagues
represented by each object:
the artists, laborers, crafters,
ancestors and friends behind
the presence of every beautiful
or useful or meaningful object
here.

And the forest of trees
that live on as furniture,
picture frames, and the very
structure that is home.

I share my tree house
with millions of unmet mates
gratefully.

Mealtime meditation
brings in even more, transient
guests — those myriad beings
who have been part of my food’s
journey here.

I neither live alone nor eat alone.
Sometimes I need to step outside
to taste a moment of relative
solitude, and even then
it’s an illusion: the stars are
as with me and alive
as the sleeping bugs in the ground
beneath my feet.

I can stretch in any direction
and bless it, knowing a companion
is there within touch.

And because I know that every bush
is a burning bush,
I ask the roses not to burn my lips
when I bend to kiss them.

Alla Renée Bozarth
The Book of Bliss
iUniverse 2000.

Kairos Trinity icon (after Russian, Andrei Rublev, early 15th c.)

portion of a larger oil painting on canvas by Carole Baker
for Emmaus Way, Durham, North Carolina.

Below, sunset with full moon at the North Pole.

Images are from the Hubble Space Telescope, Eucharistic Dance at the 25th Anniversary of the Philadelphia Ordinations at the Church of the Advocate, Chagall's Blue Violin, Dark Moon, Moon Tracks, Sunrise on Mt. St. Helens and Dawn at the North Pole. All but the dance are from the Internet.