"There are some things you still need to get."

No one tells you how or if
to trade the purity of longing
for the dull daily sting of certainty
either way.

But it says in the Great Book
that to grasp is pain
and to seize is crime
and to fly under-over clouds is at hand
but don't desire it.

And it says in the Great Anti-Book
that the ego can be an instrument
if you let it, let it
love with radical abundance.

Then there are the fringe groups
whose books are all embossed
in a language still waiting to be understood.
But even as I fold the fringes
into the endless center
and carry the pocket square of infinity above my breast

I still find myself out in the backyard
each day, walking through the rain water
to glide along the inexplicably green grass,
to trace the circumference of something
with my softly muddied feet,
to mark the point with a cross

section of breathing and movement and
time, this is where doubt starts seeping in,
like a cut under water
red wisps waft
and then, deeper,
for sharks.