The Garden of the Heart

 

In the turning world of whispers and want,

Where time moves like water through cupped hands,

There burns a flame that knows no season,

No diminishment in the dance of days.

 

What the mystics mumbled in mountain caves,

What the seeker seeks in silence profound—

This love that loves without condition,

Without object, without end.

 

Not the love that grasps and gathers,

Not the love that counts and measures,

But love like light that simply is,

Asking nothing, needing nothing.

 

In the garden of the heart's remembering,

Where knowledge blooms without learning,

Where peace spreads like morning mist

Across the landscape of being.

 

The teachers come with empty hands,

Pointing inward to the treasure

That was never lost, never hidden,

Only forgotten in the fever of forgetting.

 

This is the love that loves the lover

Before the lover learns to love,

The breath that breathes the breather

Before the first breath is drawn.

 

In every moment's perfect offering,

In every heartbeat's quiet gospel,

The divine beloved whispers softly:

You are what you have been seeking.

 

Time present and time past

Are both perhaps present in time future,

And in the center of the turning wheel,

Love's stillness spins the world.