a gift from another's eyes
written, September 11th, 2004

he stood beside me, silent
yet loudly proclaiming his truth

he grabbed my soul and offered
his eyes, his dead ghostly eyes
some would say

but seeing out of them I could not
say ghost or dead, but only
flaming living spirit!

I could not look away and we
became one, and so I had to speak
to witness what we saw, or
if you will, what he showed me.

first a high tower view
and a desk full of papers
needing attention, and work

inside him a pain, a fight at breakfast
the partner edgy, the children afraid
the marriage in jeopardy.

mind floating, he/we can't concentrate,
something is not right, an hint of anxiety
as if all stood balanced on the abyss

then
the building shudders, a deep
moaning cry, and while sounds of
explosions echo away into
screams of fright

we run now, this way and that
up and down
looking to escape the danger and
the rumors

there is no hiding place,
only the rock

panic now, smoke filling lungs,
flames licking at windows,
sirens rising from below and panic
wins

A chair through a window,
which shouldn't break, but does

Insane now, we fly...out
with no wings
tumbling over and over

free somehow of most of fear,
except the dread of
waiting for the pain of
impact!

Finally it comes,
and just as quickly passes,
and
so we descend this ghost
and I

our eyes united, our souls one

descend into the earth as if
having jumped into a swimming pool
floating falling, gliding down and down
a sense of maybe drowning in concrete
and dirt, but then a hand

luminous, gentle, we are gripped
taken hold of and lifted.

rising now, up through earth
and then out
into sky and light
seeing flame and smoke
but not alone

there are others with us,
souls, spirits, what is in a name?

the luminous hand lets go, and we float now
have the sense of a lifetime's companion
protector, teacher, for whom the naked
words guardian angel hardly touch
its meaning

then we watch as others are drawn
up from falling or other forms of
life's end

until first one and then the other
tower falls, and as each lets
go, there is a tone, a deep bell
that rings through everything

finally, the smoke clears, and we
can see that we are many now
thousands easily

we circle round and above
the place of doom
and the grief below rises through us
and we can not but breathe it in

for air is not our sustenance anymore,
just feelings, raw sometimes and light
filled when others below pray, and
we breathe it in and witness.  

we circle round some more,
for this is our first new task
to witness and bear within
the grief of that which
we have left behind

eventually, one by one we are drawn
higher, and he who has given me his
eyes, turns, and sees his grandmother
who holds him, and us, close at first

drawn higher we are, the many
witnesses, knowing just our
witnessing itself is sacrifice received
into the Heart and Root of all the World

sacrifice received, a date
and time and place made sacred

but even as we left
this hallowed place, following
the grandmother's kindness,
we could see behind us

a darkness forming, for already
some hearts, cold and wrong
made ready to steal what they
could of this sacrifice
made by both the still living.
 and the newly gone

a theft more terrible then the
doom of
falling towers themselves

so like a child needing comfort, we two
turned away from this flooding darkness
seeking the grandmother
to rest there in such embrace as never
before needed, or felt.

touched this way we travel through
a quick remembering of life,
and sensing shame at those all
too frequent dark deeds,

she leads us on, and takes us
to a school wherein we will
live how it felt to others to
know us.

the girl we teased for a torn
dress, whose soul we scarred with
shame

the boy we tripped whose
nose was broken in the fall
and whose father beat him
later for a coward he was not

the teacher who lost her job
and later killed herself for the
lie we told about the touch
that never happened

all this and more we lived
inside what they felt,
and the years passed, while
the earth below

continued its ravages of light
and pain

yes there was light, even in our story...
the child we loved and held
when sick, walking the night
away

the friend we stayed with
when the drink was too much
and life more than they could
bear

the year we volunteered
at the shelter

we knew it all, our deeds of dark
and light, and how they felt to
others

early once, in this long school
of others feelings,
there came a break
and grandmother took us from
this labor for a time

down to earth again, to a
place of strangeness
a people not like what we
had been

A small room, a woman rocking
a child and crooning a wordless
tune, yet something more she
felt than love

fear it was, a nameless dread
too soon to be fulfilled
as the night exploded with
light and sound

and the ground shuddered until
after a moments pause
a great stone fell from the
sky

thrown by a bomb made
in America, the stone hurled
up and up and then fell

through the roof, crushing mother
and daughter, and for the little
girl a lingering death
innocence shattered and
life ended in enduring only pain

but then we saw the angels come
and drawing them up they too
stood around, in groups with
varied faces, foreign and domestic

in the nearby invisible realm of true light
they too witnessed for a time, until
we watched the older relatives take
them up, and on to that school of
mirrors of life felt and not seen

But his grandmother was not through, and
she pulled us down, down and down
beneath the earth, and we knew we followed
where Christ had once gone, on a Saturday,
straight to Hell!

Down she took us, this wise
elder woman, down and down
through realms of bestial screams
and inhuman cries

places so dark and mean
that mere words cannot find
names

until

a realm is seen,
somehow on the other side
of Hell there is a place of Light

How could this be we think,
but pulled ever on by elder
wisdom we come to a place
so gentle and kind of feeling

so safe, so much like home
remembered

and then we see them,
there in the Root of the World,
sitting in a circle, individual
and joined at the same time

names fly through our mind
Demeter, Diana, Persephone,
Sophia and the Holy Mother

What Mystery!

that on the other side of Hell
lives the deeps of the Divine
Feminine, the realm of the true
Dark, the Dark in which the Light
Itself was born

Then we saw it falling from
above, a constant endless rain of evil deeds,
of pain and hate and violence
and more

a rain of poison, and theft of
innocence and all the most
terrible of human actions

falling like darkest, vilest
blood, on the circle
there - the circle of
deepest Holy Dark

into them it streamed, this
evil dark substance unredeemed

where breasts had once given milk
it entered in
where the womb had once given
birth, it entered in

streaming hate and crime, moving
into the Holy Mother through
all Her wounds that should but
bear the most wondrous gifts

But that was not the end of it,
for once inside such a power
eyes could not bear took
hold, and rendered

all this hate and evil
Impotent! Powerless! Undone!

through the wounds of giving
went the evil, and inside
it lost its nature, for there a great
and holy power transformed
our darkest acts, until

from out the eyes and mouth
of Feminine Mystery
came tears and words of love

golden, light filled, rising
not falling, back through
the realms of Hell came tears
and words of love

all to soon now, before we
could contemplate this miracle
divine, his grandmother took
us back and up

to a new place of vision,
outside the earth, as if
on the moon, yet closer,
and so we saw
the earth naked in its spiritual truth

there before our gaze we saw
the man on the cross, His image
fading out to earth and then
fading back in again

in the ever pulsing Heart of the World,
first the one image - just the earth,
 then the other - the man on the cross

but even that was not fixed,
for the man on the cross
shifted as well, sometimes sitting
on a rock, holding children in his lap

or blessing a woman
or becoming a dove
or sitting at the feet of the highest

but as we watched we saw more...
more evil, more hate, more crime, more
theft of innocence

for not all evil fell downward through Hell
toward the Holy Mother,
resting in the Root of the World
not all

for evil's hunger could not rest
in just one place, but
sought to despoil all that lived
or loved the Light

so an equal portion rose up and out
especially that most terrible
of lies, hypocrisy - to say one
thing and do another

here too, in the Heart of the World,
the wounds were
entrance points, and evil
flowed into Him as well

five wounds
two on hands
two on feet
and one in the heart itself

but there too, within Him, it
was made impotent, unbound,
and healed, so that now
from a second place
tears and words of love fell
inward from without

fell from how He surrounded
and held the world to his bosom,
falling slowly toward the earth

tears and words of love
falling inward, from the surrounding
Heart of the World
meeting that which was
falling upward from
the Root of the World

meeting each other,
these tears and words of love,
mingling, touching, mixing,
changing into a fine mist
invisible to the eye

but everywhere,
an atmosphere of healing feeling
breathed in by human hearts,

wherever and whenever
they opened to each other

human
open hearts
breathing in the mist
of tears and words of love
the Mother and the Son
having redeemed
evil and changed
it into love

sustenance, nourishment,
a Eucharist of being.

enters open human hearts
and graces them,
granting courage,
wisdom,
and even more love

it was too much to see
such Holy Craft and Art

And while I did not want to leave
his eyes which saw
and witnessed such as could
not be imagined

yet leave I had to, and so
the grandmother returned him
to school and me
she sent back
to my keyboard so as to record
and witness
what was seen and felt,
this day of September the 11th,
2004