Trees clad in Summer garb nourish and muffle sounds that we cannot or will not hear – like a train in the night,

Mechanical movement in metal presses down on Rail-
Gravity in locomotion without living fire.

Still we sleep untroubled in hammocks unattached to trees –
swaying and rocking in the winds of illusion’s lullaby…

Resting in the numbness and dumbness of mistaken identities
that curl up inside whatever we believe.

Consigned to basic economy we watch as privilege passes above us
on trays just out of reach and high enough to obscure what’s being carried.

Still we want it so desperately – in our dulled senses.

What gives dignity – actions or conduct?
Morality or integrity?  What depth can know this?

Dignity is not a stamp of approval but a subtle gesture of the eternal that ever more incarnates each time we bow before it.

Dignity is the Divine which lives hidden in the caverns we carve out giving us abode even when we live in our sleep.

It wells up as a groan from an open mouth that cannot close humming one note that sustains all including the dreams we so arrogantly choose.

Who will cut the hammock strings fastened to nothing
and hurl us to the Ground?

Who can wake us from doldrums of self that feign freedom
in movements of compulsion?

Would that the trees strip themselves naked and allow the fall to wake us up or at least Jar our senses!

…To see and hear and perceive of a trust in hidden gestures of heart that move all around us all the time.

Dare we see cross-eyed in colors that paint the ground in hues of the stars?

The divine roars in the silence of the universe and hums the single note of dignity ever present in the one soul – Our soul!

Like a train in the night – who will listen?

tpt 9/19/19