Breathe on this sleeping fire

Dean's Blue Hole .

When you walk out the door,

all the spirits of the invisible world

gather around you like a great cloak

that flows back to your beginning.

You walk away

but they do not.

They love you because

you were a knit-together marvel from the first;

they heard of your miraculous frame

growing around you in your mother

and sent gifts to feed you

as you became yourself.

You leave the book of your days behind

yet its words rise up in your absence

and tell the story you can't see anymore.

They call forth phantom thoughts

to lay themselves down on the page

and wait for you to want them again.

You abandon desire

yet desire lives

in this host that surrounds you

and fights for you

even as you slumber in your tent.

You thought you let it go at the edge of that cliff,

yet it swam the river below

and tracked you day and night

and even now,

lays merciful traps in your path.

It shadows your escape boat across the sea,

lulling storms to sleep and singing them awake

so you might see the wind and the waves

and know how alive you are

and how always close to death.

You abandon the reflection of 
your own reflection, yet 
still you are seen.

Still you are known

by every last creature who's crossed your path,

every invisible path of lightwaves

that have touched your shifting face

day after mist-burned day;

by every symbol or portent

you forgot upon waking.

Creation speaks for you

even when you think you 
have nothing to say.

And all heaven plunges its oars

into the water

that carries you home,

to the place from which you exiled yourself

but that never gave up

waiting for your return.

So when you finally hit the wall

you can't walk through,

go back to the tracks left behind you.

Let the wet soil embrace 
your backwards steps,

let your body be drawn.

Go back to your

hidden country.

If you face south,

head north.

If you ran east,

let the west wind pull you back

with cords of lovingkindness.

Go back to the dark

heart of this mountain,

where you once searched

for gold and riddles and hidden springs.

Go back to the cave

where your heart still lives

and take it back.

Stand back and see

this cave as it is,

this vast cave in the heart of God.

Say the true names of things again,

knowing what is—

not idea or form or creed or mantra—

just the name that is—

and breathe again.

You named these things;

these things named you.

You have always been seen.

You have always been known.