Open Your Heart, Free Your Soul

The little space within the heart is as great as the vast universe. The heavens and the earth are there, and the sun and the moon and the stars. Fire and lightning and winds are there, and all that now is and all that is not. - The Upanishads

On waking after the accident

I was presented with the "whole picture"

as they say, magnificently detailed,

a child's diorama of what life appears to be:

staring at the picture I became drowsy

with relief when I noticed a yellow

dot of light in the lower right-hand corner.
I unhooked the machines and tubes and crawled

to the picture, with an eyeball to the dot

of light which turned out to be a miniature

tunnel at the end of which I could see

mountains and stars whirling and tumbling,

sheets of emotions, vertical rivers, upside

down lakes, herds of unknown mammals, burds

shedding feathers and regrowing them instantly,

snakes with feathered heads eating their own

shed skins, fish swimming straight up,

the bottom of Isaiah's robe, live whales

on dry ground, lions drinking from a golden

bowl of milk, the rush of night,

and somewhere in this the murmur of gods--

a tree-rubbing-tree music, a sweet howl

of water and rock-grating-rock, fire

hissing from fissures, the moon settled

comfortably on the ground, beginning to roll.

-- Jim Harrison, from The Theory and Practice of Rivers