The Once and Future Human

If the gray water snake can crawl right out of its own skin
on a summer day along the banks of the Pecos River,
If the singing katydid can shed the confining protection
of its exoskeleton in the juniper tree outside my window,
If the caterpillar in my garden can spin a cocoon and
become a gelatinous goo following an impulse
into the future — molecular transformation into butterfly,
If the ocean can be found in a rain drop
or a rain drop birth itself out of ocean,
If a bar-tailed godwit can fly 7000 miles from Alaska
to New Zealand over open Pacific waters without stopping and
no lunch or beverage but listening to some internal compass within,
If the aspen trees in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains
can shed leaves and their branches that no longer serve
growing new ones that do,
If the star eyed newborn baby girl human can carry at birth
within her tiny being the grandmother of generations,
Who is to say a man cannot be born anew,
twice born now the consciousness within
awakening to itself and the wholeness of Life
realizing the interconnectedness of all that is
within itself?
Is this not the story shared by all the traditions of mystery
wonder and awe that this self has its inter-being only within Self?
And that letting go of all one knows
honoring the willingness and courage
to not know — to at last not name and define
to cease reading the maps drawn by those
who live under the spell of answers and knowing
and trust at last…
Oh Yes!
There is already another map within
revealing ecological lifescapes of whitewater rivers
high mountain passes and quiet summer meadows and
vast plains of tall grasses and thirsty desert washes
of dry gravel and of springs and oasis too…
and a path—
a path known to only the walker
self-revealing only as he or she walks…
listening…
to the awakening wholeness
that is not his or hers
but lives already —a gift within.