By Way of Encouragement

When I held your hand,
and we walked together in the summer sun,
heaven winking at us as passing cars;
when I raised and nurtured you,
comforted, consoled, cooked for you,
helped you with your homework,
the one you turned to in elation and distress,
all that was a taste only,
just a taste or sip of love,
the spring and summer we shared
but some petals of this love
borne aloft, strung together by the wind.
The taste and scent was like a little
coaxing from a seasoned elder
toward a fumbling child, that love
like praise spoken by way of encouragement…

Having shed the body,
I no longer coax or encourage the child;
you must do away with childish notions, things,
the child too invested in bodily form,
the child conceiving a mother and the seasons.
The child saw a mother, saw only a sliver
of Me, fixated as he was on the form.
Let the child die and this love deepen ever…
No mother nor child was ever born
nor spring nor summer nor moon nor sun,
all these but dreams blooming in the formless One.

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