Are you looking for a quiet place?
But friend, you are already here.
The repose of your blood between pulsations.
A secret chamber in your chest where
you have no enemies,
no one is to blame,
and the endless journey
has never begun.
Here even prayers for peace need no speaking.
You can disperse into
the finer element you are before you breathe.
You can be the sparkling sky
in the lungs of a hummingbird,
smoke of sage in desert air, aureole in emptiness
where the flame just blew out.

Here you can burn away
because you remember your body
is made of vanished stars.
You can stumble and fall
into your own rhythm, which feels
like you are not moving at all
because your mind is at rest in flesh
that needs no discipline of stillness.
You are a nest inside the egg,
a mother's womb that carries
her own savior, the seed
of what you have always been seeking.

Now flower
on a Winter night.

- Alfred K. LaMotte

There is no refuge 
No destination 
No resolution 
Only This

Blessed are the fruit of my womb 
Blessed are the cycles that have no end
Blessed is the Wound 
Blessed is the Hole 

Blessed is the space that holds you always 
Blessed is this unfinished life 
Blessed is the eternal and unchanging
Blessed are we who bear the unbearable 
who carry our cross from first to last breath 

Blessed are we who know the relentless mercy of the 
Mysterious Other 
known only when we sacrifice our reaching 

There is no refuge 
No destination 
No resolution 
Only This

To you who are the Birther of Samsara 
and the doorway to Nirvana 
To you whose Love 
is the bridge that flows between them 
To you who holds the mirror of perfection 
inside the crack of imperfection 
whose Road leads nowhere and is everywhere 

To you whose breast is the refuge of no refuge 
To you whose passion dissolves all ignorance 
and whose innocence reveals unstained beauty 
​
Enveloped by your Grace
With nowhere to go
Around and around 
Heart to the Ground

Here
I
am 

-Maya Luna

Once it was in my dreams, a place that could home angels.
Their spirits and beauty captured in a moment, so pure and white.
A building, surrounded by draping plants and rolling slopes,
covered by small olive trees and lavender bushes.
A building stretched, touching the sky, not reaching the clouds,
yet they leaned over, rolling down the slopes
enveloping the worshipped state of mind.
Drinking its sweet milk, admiring its white columns,
watching the love angels dance,
while bathing in the sun's gaze.

In my dreams I am always taken back to a place like this,
my hopes end here; peace, love and hope fill my heart.

I am the clouds, I watch and admire, I see the angels,
I see the rolling slopes covered in fragrant flowers,
I run down the hill,
I watch the people living simple colorful lives.
Every upcoming step is a mystery,
they do not seek to satisfy their needs by traveling to achieve it somewhere else
but mold what they have, carving their lives out in the hills surrounding them.

Feeling the safety of the tall revered temple that stands on the hill,
hold them, embracing them,
filling the empty holes they once felt inside when they questioned the great meanings.
Their loved ones living close, down the street
in that slender Italian stone house they spoke their first words in.
In their arms the light of their life gurgles,
​a halved toothed mouth smiling up at their gleaming faces.
This bundle of joy,
part of a new generation of beautiful souls.

As you walk through the stony streets, towards the mountain top
the smell of cigarette and coffee dwindles,
pushed away by the vibrant notes of geranium and lavender.

These paths hold generations of memories, and memories yet to come.
Some day when I return, I'll walk these streets
​listening to the stories held by the rocks,
their emotions, the happy and melancholy,

Maybe one day it will no longer be a dream.

- Amelie Locke, January 2019