The Yes! Sense of Life
Defining Essence in a Poem
I once read of a man who rode a motorcycle,
On a quest to find the ghost of a man he’d once been;
It never was clear just who was seeking whom?
The ghost eventually found him, then helped him find himself.
But long before that happened, the journey was the shit,
The search, the Chautauqua, clues discovered when he was a ghost;
They’d tried to shock it out of him, this thirst to know the truth,
To define the term “quality”, a search that drove him insane.
I loved that tale, seeing much of me in him/them (ghost and man),
I went crazy once myself, searching for life’s essence;
They tried washing it out of my mind, teaching me to settle for less,
But once bitten, that ghost of my truth was bound to find me, and did.
Together, we’ve learned it’s not so much about the searching,
But more about the being, here in now, the moment, just breathing,
Accepting what’s right in front of me now, we ease down into it,
And let the essence of life wash over us, and know what it is to be…
Me.
That’s what life’s all about, its essence if you will,
Me, then you, then us and them, all together,
Individual yet joined, by the essence of the
Shared air that we all breathe.
I breathe out, you breathe in, we hold it, hold it, turning purple,
Then let it go with a rush, a laugh, tasting the joy of life,
Life — what a trip, we trudge along the trail, like hippies in a tribe,
Walking to Woodstock, 3 days of fun and music and nothing but…
We live, we bond, we laugh, we cry,
We love, we hate, we fall down and get back up,
And fall down again, and get back up again,
We keep on going until we don’t go no more.
That’s the essence, the shit, the whole damn ballgame,
Last at-bat, smack that ball, then run like hell,
Circle them bags, arms churning, legs flailing, chest heaving, leaving it all out on the field,
Rounding third, we head for home, charging hard, diving in headfirst, avoiding the catcher’s tag, the last thing we hear the cosmic umpire crying into that final moment — “Safe!!!”
… as the dust settles all around, and the crowd goes crazy.
YES!!!!! Sense.
The yes-sense of life.
You are home and safe, once more.
