Garden of the Material

See Though I bow to Life
it cannot bend my truly am
self of immensity,
for each night and at anytime
amongst the garden of the material
I return in a blink to the eternal.
The architecture of living returns.
A cage of lattice
fashioned from dreamtime
and hope, descends—
my daily and anytime garb,
falling fast and finitely
to capture a corner of my truly am
self and propel a life
about the garden of the material.
“I do not die, Momo,” said Ibrahim,
“but go to join immensity.”

I wake from an awakening
and wrinkle into weeping
at this glimpse of the everso simple
of my truly am self,
which soothes with the softly cooing
and refreshed of morning
after another needed death
away from the garden
of the material.

The cage of this life is noise
and names spun from time
into a garden of the material.
Here we roam, merely a life
that sings or weeps
or molds the material
into and out of noise and names
thinking we are gods but not knowing
we are, or how to be
the truly am self of eternity.

We go about garbed in cages of lattice
named and yet not
and perhaps will be—never sure
seeking new gardens, perhaps one,
populated by he and she and the snake
amidst a lush all-given
and one bright forbidden
garden of the material.

So many gardens there are
and were and will be
to return to, to roam—
we walk about encaged
in our Edens of gold or coal,
or air, water or the ardent
light of our everso simple
truly am self, so rare,
so rare in its ubiquity
so rare this stuff of it all!

Copyright © 2005 B. L. P. Simmons All rights reserved
from The American Poetry Journal
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission