Automatic Earth

He also said, "The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how. The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head.

- Mark 4:26-28

The automatic earth does her spinning thing while you

nap and eat buttered toast and make love,

walk the dog, curse at the traffic, make plans for next Tuesday

and forget why you went upstairs with the hammer

the wheat head bursts forth and spills seed

into the soil and it gets interred and forgotten --

just like you fear your burial, your englobement

-- but remembered by the sun-warmed humus and the sun’s sun

the river does not need you to push it with webbed fingers

the flower does not require you to pry its petals open

the clouds glide effortlessly without you puckering and blowing

the sea tides know when to go out without your lunar expertise

yet you think this world could not tick-tock along

without your MBA skills and calculus and voting ballot

you think, don’t you, that you must do something

for the magic to happen when all you have to do

is feel the enchantment happening inside you when

you do exactly nothing except enter the river, the flower,

clouds and sea, and your own eyelid twitching just now

without you starting or stopping any of it

the mystery of the cosmos is calling you into itself

the divine is singing her siren’s song for your quivering ear

do not grope for the winding mechanism to turn

release the urge to cause or be caused

slowly breathe in and out and in and be the universe entire,

the growing seed, the open flower, the pulsing sea tide, the whimsical clouds

the unpushed and unhurried river, the hammer in hand

and you’ll remember why you went upstairs, and also why you forgot