Poems

An Empty Bowl
Mike Boxhall

Empty Bowl

I have a metal bowl.

It was made by the latest in a lineage of such bowl makers.

It is empty, though the Ocean is in it.

If I strike it, it rings and that is useful.

I can put flowers in it, that is beautiful and that is useful but it wont ring.

My grand-son could pee in it and probably would and that would be useful but it wouldn’t ring.

If I approach it from stillness and get into joint practice with it, it sings beautifully

And the sound goes all round the Universe

And that is very useful

And the bowl is empty.

I have a mind.

It was made in eternity.

And if thoughts are in it, that is useful.

And if lesions are in it and edges of resistance, that is useful.

And sometimes it is full of roses and sometimes full of piss

and I can work with that and that is useful.

But if it is empty and I can approach another in stillness,

There is room for the whole story and she remembers who she really is

and the universe remembers who it is

and that is really useful.

And the mind is empty.


Who I really Am

Mike Boxhall

No beginning, only Process.

The Spirit reincarnates.

Birth and Life

The meeting of the unfolding and the experience.

Layer upon layer of delusion.

I have become I and forgotten.

Yesterday was and tomorrow will be-or so it seems.

No now.


A tide there is,

An ocean then.

Beneath the waves,

There is only still.

The Mother.

Pure awareness,

And I remember who I am.


The Ocean stirs.

There is only process.


Trust The Tide

Mike Boxhall

The Tide goes deep and deeper still.

Witness.

I do not hold, it has gone on.

Witness.

Here the pain. Not me to fix.

Witness. Ever deeper, where now the pain?

Witness.


All doing done, who holds who is held?

Awareness.

The void

Still in the Ocean,

the unformed stirs.

Dark meets light and incarnates.

You and I are we. It was ever thus.

Where now the loss?