RigobertoRogier

(Mind is the forerunner of all states)

Study this.
Study the causes and conditions,
the subtlety,
the complexity.

What rises into consciousness
is fractional—
a rounding error
against everything moving beneath it.

Study what presents itself.
Not to condemn it.
Not to become it.
Look behind the thought.

Behind the image.
Behind the wanting.
Notice the almost imperceptible movement—
toward or away.

Know the nature of this.
Know the animal within us.
Do not try to change it.
Learn how it moves.

Your intentions will be found
at the threshold, behind the thoughts,
in that quiet movement
before you know you are moving.

And when you discover
how little of this you authored,
how much was already underway
before you arrived—

And seeing this in ourselves,
how can we stand above another
carried by currents
they have yet to see?

Compassion for the unaware.
Compassion for ourselves.
The only honest response.

A Palinode for Denska

I had a visitor
last week.

She stayed much longer
than I wanted.
she leaves
on her own accord.

She brought me a gift
from beyond the grave.

A mirror.

I resisted looking.

Then slowly
the observations
I had made of others

appeared
in my own reflection.

I wrote pretty words
about you,
Uncle Denske.

Oh yes,
they were pretty.

Poetic.
Wise.

Impermanence.
Desire.
Compassion.

I thought I understood
something about
your suffering.

I wrote of compassion
without seeing
the small distance
I had placed between us—

your craving,
my understanding.

I did not yet know
the weight
of my own longing,

how easily desire
could construct a world

and convince me
to live inside it.

The visitor knew.

She stayed
until I could see

that compassion
offered from above
is not yet compassion.

Then she turned
the mirror slightly,

and there you were.

And there I was.

Standing
on the same ground.

Wild Phlox

In patches
along the landscape,

purple pink pushing
against sea shades of endless emerald green.

Radiant,
though unaware
of the beauty it offers.

Not trying.
Not allowing.

It simply is.

And this morning,
as a passenger crossing into Workland,

if I am paying attention,

I am reminded
that beauty need not be made,
nor summoned,
nor earned.

It is here already.

The wild phlox does not claim it.
The sun does not possess it.
Neither do I.

This beauty,
this love,

existed long before I took form,
before my name,
before my striving.

The same life

moving through root and stem,
through purple pink petals,
through emerald fields,

and through me,

for a brief while,

before continuing on.

What has his death taught you?
What has it taught me?

Impermanence—
not as philosophy,
but as bone and breath,
as the way a name
suddenly becomes memory.

The wheel turns.
Karma is not punishment,
only momentum—
a mind disturbed,
forever arguing
with the love it was born from.

Compassion
is the only honest response.
The only medicine
that does not create
another wound.

Dennis, like us
suffered
inside this dissonance—
my uncle,
your brother,
someone’s father,
someone’s son,
a husband still spoken of
in the present tense.

Like us,
he tried to soothe the ache
by owning things.
Ancient wisdom warned us:
no object can hold
what we are looking for.

Still we fed the ego,
this starving god—
did we nourish it
past the point of return?

When I die,
Denska and I
will be the same
for one perfect moment.

But will we?

What energy have we released
into the winds of this world?
What continues on
after the body loosens its grip?

Love?
Greed?
Ignorance?

What will you leave behind—
not in inheritance,
but in imprint?

A wind that returns year after year.

What do you wish
to bequeath
the land of the living?

Do I love you
More than I love myself?

On too many days
I tried
to make you other.

I placed my hands
where only light
should enter.

My expectations
pressed against
your petals—
petals not waiting
for my touch.

I called it love.

I thought
I was sent to guide you
through this land
of opposites.

I did not see
you arrived
as the teaching.

Your beauty,
your radiance,
your turning
to the sun
showed me
what is required.

You revealed
what must fall away.

When you hear
my orders,
my directions,

know they arise
from old vows
I learned but never chose—
a voice
learning silence.

My work now
is unmaking
with each breath.

I see
how your beauty
asks nothing,
receives everything.

Let me tend the roots
without name or claim,

and lean back
as you open
into the shape
you have always been.

You gave this madness a name,
called it demon,
called it enemy.

You learned its patterns,
watched how it fastens itself
to your longing and fear.

You trained yourself to recognize it,
to meet it head-on.
We tell ourselves this is courage.
We take pride in the battle.

But beneath this familiar darkness
is the deeper source—
the quiet current that feeds the beast.

A thousand unnamed thoughts
moving through us as we sleep,
as we walk this world
half-seeing,
half-awake.

The moments between moments—
this is where we are formed.
The slow gathering
of a thousand small storms.

The unnoticed ones.
The micro-judgments
of expectation.

Our reflex to classify,
to categorize,
to name—
as if knowing were mastery.

Go beyond this

All of this has been said before.

But to honor them,
you must recognize them

as the very ones
who have come
to unmake you.

The mystics
arrive from a distant land—
a place just past the fields
we know.

From that mountain meadow
they can see clearly
this land of opposites
that I call home.

Their hearts are vast open prairie.
soil they turn
without fear,
and take part
in their own becoming.

But we—

we who live
in two directions at once—
our sight is not so sharp.

Here,
judgment reigns.
And the kingdom of separation
does not loosen its grip
easily.

It reaches down
into the root of us,
feeding the small but gluttonous
I / me.

Wherever we walk
we drag its dirty silt
across the bright, colorful fields
of oneness.

But the mystics—

this is their work.
They came here for this alone.
To harvest this nutriment
without fear, 

knowing it’s the reason
The blue lotus
blooms.

She came suddenly
Unannounced.

The darkness has arrived

Tree leaves have relented,
leaving the spindly fingers
Of brittle branches

Reaching up in gratitude.

The ivory snowscape covers the land now.

The gripping cold sending us to our home.

The darkness comes early
and leaves late
asking us to listen
to what we’ve overlooked.

And our season of holiness begins.

The returning to stillness.

In order to
enrich our earnings,
We must
occupy our cathedrals of
Worship
nurturing the slow malignancy
we mistake for purpose.

Records must be broken
Again and again.

Those who decide
Can calculate the price of bread
Down to the crumb.

but they do not taste
its warmth,
its fragrance,
Its sweetness.

They are ignorant to the families
Who were given some sovereignty 
over time and space.

Who could create family
While serving their master.

This story is not new.
Greed breeds its own gospel.
Desire writes it down.

And the stones
that prop up.
these temples of commerce—
they are only pieces
of a restless ant colony,
waiting for the day
the Mother shifts her weight.

And what will be left?

What will Jamie Dimon grasp
When the earth buckles?

The same as me.
The same as anyone.

Nothing.