The Silent Thread - Stafford

There's a thread you follow.
It goes among things that change.
But it doesn't change.
People wonder about what you are pursuing.

You have to explain about the thread.
But it is hard for others to see.
While you hold it you can't get lost.

Tragedies happen; people get hurt and die;
and you suffer and get old.
Nothing you do can stop time's unfolding.
You don't ever let go of the thread.

William Stafford
Poem: "The Way It Is."

1998

Interpretive Note:  There is a deep thread that runs through all of us.
It is not our beliefs, political views, or our "spirituality."  It is the
thread of Silence of our Eternal Being; that Ineffable, Unmanifest
Being, that never changes.  I experience this in times of meditative
Silence.  Some may call it the Tao.  I don't know that this is what the
author was alluding to in his poem, but it is how the words spoke to me,
based on my own experience..  It is the thread of the Ineffable that we
can never be separate from, because it *is*, in essence, what we really
are - the Ultimate Reality...

~*~

We go on pilgrimages to the
edge of our lives
to see what life is like
on the other side....

...I paddle the sacred river
to touch what is sacred inside...

Rod MacIver
Rod MacIver Art
excerpted from:
"Wild Waters and The Tao"