Equinox

The Garden releases its last
radiance, not as something failed,
but as its full reason for being: to give
continually, to its last bit of energetic being.
Its giving is its beauty. It is a smile,
it is the heart of love.

So the birdsong that surrounds me
is given, not away, but into the world.
It is given as rain, as sunlight, as snowfall
and autumn leaves. It falls on our ears
as what it is, with no deception,
the complete truth of being.

Even the smell of decay, drifting from
the deer, dead by the side of the road, says:
“This is what I am and no other. I do not
pretend to be. Even in death I speak
without deceit, even unto my flesh,
my very bones.”

Be tolerant of these songs,
my musings on the way these things are
For I cannot give up this Summer except by
giving myself as well, fully and completely,
into the praise of our mutual beauty,
our total loving of the World.

“Equinox” by Richard Wehrman, from the book, THE BOOK OF THE GARDEN, Copyright © 2014 by Richard Wehrman. Posted with permission.

Richard Wehrman

An award-winning illustrator, graphic designer and poet, Richard lives in rural Upstate New York. He is an artist who found his way to poetry through the language and heart teachings of two 13th and 14th-century Persian poets. His works explore the spiritual and psychological aspects of living an embodied life.

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