You Come To

You come to the home of Lao Tzu, where

even though there are no ornaments

you're weeping about the beauty.

You come to a very wide place,

to the One whose face you don't see,

and you're weeping.

You come to a mountainous peak

when the moon has waned

and waned and the circle of her visage breaks

at your weeping. You come to feel

what T'ai Chi calls dan tien,

the warmness and the full, close body;

being pregnant with your weeping,

like a many-petalled constellation of soft red suns

lifting their feet

and turning into the sea.

You come to realize that love is a void

into which is drawn the world;

again, weeping.

You come so close to the edge of you that, O!

the tension aches pleasure and the loss

shines momentously, but you retain

your balance for sake of your weeping.

You're sitting beneath the parkway

on a long piece of ratty carpeting

beside a concrete shelf on which a cabinet rests,

one empty drawer marked Clothes,

the other Books;

you're weeping

:

"Where was this when I was homeless?"

.