Prayer of Gratitude for a Mixed Blessing

Dear Maker of Meaning:

Thank you for knowing me so well.
Your gift to me comes with good counsel.

i could not have swallowed my pride
but for this mixed blessing.

It reminds me that i am
loved by you,
neither more nor less
than every snowflake that falls,

And that my brief descent
is but a dance that celebrates
its own frailty
and makes its own brief imprint
on the pavement of the Eternal.

i will meditate on You.

i will see the humility of the mixed blessing
as the greatest of Your many gifts to me,
and i will remember to thank you no less
for what you have taken from me
than for all you have bestowed.

--Mr. Gobley

i accept the terms of service

When i have to click on that little box,
When choosing, or buying,
Or downloading,
Signifying that
"i accept the terms of service,"

i often think:

"How i long, just once, to click that box --
If only in my mind --

When it really means something."

So i will say it now,
For all to read,
For the All to know:



i accept the terms of service.

And now i will serve.


--Mr. Gobley

The Return of My Miniature Zen Garden

Today, it was on my desk again:

The small, square Zen garden,
Three rakes and a brush,
Sugar-white sand laced
With miniature tumbleweeds of
Dust and lint;

The garden had lived for months
In a colleague's cubicle:
While i was gone,
The garden was neglected.

The sand furrowed its brows;
The smooth stones sulked in their
Nests of sand and and gathering dust.

It is home again,
And again, my desk is a desert.
And now i will rake the garden
And pluck the lint from its new rows,
And then

The scratching of the miniature rake
Against bottom of the earthenware tray
Will drown out the silicon hum of the
Hard drive

Will obscure the blinking of the
Message light

Will remand the petty interruptions
Back to their cubed spaces:

Now, i will rake;
Now, i will be folded
Into a small, square universe
Of order and
Harmony.

--Mr. Gobley

What the snowplows leave behind

What the snowplows leave behind
Is gray and leaden.


Pure when peeled, the snow is sullied
By the passage of time and vehicles;
It becomes a sulking armature
Over lampposts and hydrants,
A cream-pie in the face
Of the world.


Then it hardens;
Then it is gone.

The plowed snow
Reminds me of my own
Fevered delusions
And personal melodramas:
Billions of little deceptions,
Grains of fiction,

Become a wall,
Become a shell,
Become water,
Become, in the end,

Nothing.

Just now they are jagged and gray,
But in time, they will flow downstream;

Perhaps someone will drink them
And be nourished.

In the gray of this season,
Impervious,
They seem almost to boast.

Soon enough,
The plow and the salt-spreader
Will cover them over with another layer;

Soon after that, perhaps,
i will remember them fondly
For what they really were:

Billions of little stories,
Waiting patiently to be told.

--Mr. Gobley

Meditation on my Blackberry

You are the fruit
Of a strange and lifeless tree:
My little rectangular heart,
Rear-view mirror of my conscience,
Insomniac engine of my endless days.

You emerge from a seed of wisdom --
The knowledge that we are all connected --
But you are a mutation:
You do not connect us
So much as you ensnare us.
We are alone,
Tied by your tentacles
Into an info-world
Made hollow and blinking and blue.

Priorities without meaning,
Messages without
Content:
These are the gifts you bear.

We bow low to your screen,
Waste our thumbs in obeisance to you,
Call out for connection
But are never fully joined
To those who beckon.

Even so, i thank you:
You always do your best,
You do not complain;
You exist to serve.

You are humility,
Clipped to my waist,
You are community
In a cube.

Like you, i will do my best,
Not complain,
Exist to serve;

And there,
We shall part ways.

--Mr. Gobley

Prayer for Yourself

May you remember that each breath you take is the first in a long chain of breaths, stretching down to all those who will be touched by you, loved by you; by those who descend from you, and by those who honor your memory.

May you remember that each breath you take is the last in a long chain of breaths, drawn from ancestors, all the way back to The Very First.

May you honor all these, with each breath.

May you be thirsty.

May you remove a splinter from your thumb.

And peel a grape.

And go an entire day without hearing an engine or an electrical appliance.

May you remember a grievous wrong done to you, and think of something very funny you could have done in response.

May you remember your calling.

May you fall out of bed.

May you make your own ice cream.

And eat it.

And may you hear crickets, and distant thunder, on an evening in August, when you are not in a hurry and the dishes have already been done.

--Mr. Gobley

A 10-gallon fish tank, in the dark

suspended in the invisible,
buoyed in a liquid
that always seeks the most direct route
to the lowest place,

they breathe

kept in a cube,
they sense large creatures,
shards of light,
feel the thud
of our footfall

each morning,
the heavens open,
the light returns with a burst:

mannah!

for now,
they have made their peace
with each other

for now, it is dark,
and they sense both
relief and terror,
and from their fellow travelers,
companionship
and competition

soon it will be light again;
soon, the heavens will erupt
with light, and a shower
of nourishment;

for now, the filter breathes,
and they with it;

and all is quiet,
and still,
and fleeting,
and strange;

all is visible,
but nothing is within reach . . .

--Mr. Gobley

The Drift

The last dusk of the year
Falls in a pointillist's parade.

Each snowflake is a shard of glass
From a shattered universe,
A spark stricken
From the flint of a life.

See that one?
That snowflake has a dust-mote
At its center.

And at the center of that dust-mote
Is a carbon atom

That Shakespeare once exhaled.

All around us, they are falling,
The great and the wicked,

Bound up in the dance of eternity,
Combining with each other
And with us

To make new
The age-old promise
Of life after life,

Of resurrection after death.

One snowflake is a fluke.
One thousand snowflakes are a pattern.
One million snowflakes are a drift.

One snowstorm is a fraction of a moment.

Live this moment with me,
And we shall be blessed.

Happy New Year to you, from--


--Mr. Gobley

When i am cold

When i am cold
i remember the eons
of my pre-existence:

a germ of light
planted at the edge
of the vast womb of
Darkness,

i waited without purpose
and watched without sight.

i can dimly recall
the silence,
the stillness,

the millennia of
not knowing,

And even now
i can summon up
the moment --

the horrifying eternity --
when movement
toward Being began.

When i am cold,
i recall my first passage into warmth:
the horror, the exhilaration
as comprehension dawned,

the mighty struggle
to Become,
even as i yearned
not to Be,

the messiness,
the urgency,
the surging heat.

When i am cold,
i begin to ache for those dark silences --
against my will, to be sure,
and still --

some speck of ash at the center of me
senses the cold,
wants the weightlessness,
embraces the emptiness,
seeks the silence

and welcomes the prospect
of rest
of emptiness
of ceasing the struggle
abandoning the need

to be warmed.

--Mr. Gobley

On Sight Restored

Hosanna in the highest:

The eye is a catacomb of halos.

Within these shining rings lie the secret of all perception:
Brief, shaded, shaped by experience,
Warped by time and by grief:

Restored by heat and light.

The eye is that most miraculous of all organs:
Revealing, receiving,
Fragile, resilient,
Complex,
Unitary:

Milton's window on the soul
Is the Throne of Pure Majesty.

When the world jumps toward you
With renewed clarity,
You are born again

Into aching color and pointillist perfection.

Glory to All That Is:
Light and life have come home to her,

And her insight is now restored
To its outward twin.

--Mr. Gobley

Meditating at Dawn

No shadows

Panes of light
Slide by as cars go round the bend

Have i sat long enough yet?

i hear the toll road
and the filter on the fish tank
and the toilet with the leaky flapper

All sighs and exhalations of coming to be
And passing away
Are borne through me
On the panes of light

Thought sinks

Soul rises

The leaves that shudder
And drift from the trees
Are like the ornaments of selfhood
That fall from my carapace --

And then i hear the thud of heels
On a bedroom floor above me,
And i feel my knees and my back,

And i know,
With no regret,
That the day has begun.

--Mr. Gobley

My Mind is Times Square

Somewhere above 43rd and Broadway
A peregrine falcon nests
On the rim of a roof-top water tank.

The pulmonary power of the Broadway bus
And its subconscious thought,
The Number 3 IRT,
Force movement and
Deliver defibrillation.

None are lost here; none are even lonely.
My mind is like this --
Full of electronics
And loud pictures,

Bright beauties
Larger than life
Colors too vivid for
Real eyes

Schools of people
Swimming uptown
To their jobs.

When i sweep the streets
At first light

i am inviting filth
Praising busy-ness
And sanctifying this
Brief
Frantic
Commute through
Time's full arteries.

--Mr. Gobley

Prayer for a Friend, Dead in a Jail Cell

You were too good.

You were too lonely,
Too lost, too loved
From a distance.

You knew heartache the way
A child knows her invisible friends
(Or her other secrets)
And you fought

Until it gently took you
In its arms
And danced with you --

Danced off the edge of the stage, --
A flash of satin,
Then
Silence.

i wish to my great, silent God
That you will be held,
Loved,
Healed
Where you have gone;

Because if you are not,
Then we have no recompense
For your absence,
No balm

For the wound
Opened by your final,
Muffled cry

For company.

--Mr. Gobley

The Day of the Truth of the Highest Meaning

i am about to dive down
and find what has lain silent.
In the penumbra of time
And a veil of sand
My soul lays dormant,
Not breathing,
Unsuffocated:
Unaware.

The descent to retrieve
Is fraught:

i must move slowly
So as not to threaten
My equilibrium
Or disturb the beasts
Of the deep.

i find where my soul lies
In angry repose
And i begin to lift.

There is little weight
But great resistance:
So small an essence,
Such gravity.

i rejoice in the struggle
That risks my life,
And in the recapture
Of the soul that is
Mine and
Not mine.

Such is the life
Of a penitent
On the day
Of the truth
Of the highest meaning.

-- Mr. Gobley

Alone in the Office

Today there is a company event,
Some corporate frolick on a boat
Or a beach;
i did not attend.

i sit in my office, alone, comforted by
The hum of the hard drive

And the fall of locust leaves
On this, our first autumnal day.

There is great comfort in finding solitude
Where it usually is not to be found.

Such unexpected, unruffled quiet
Reminds the part of you that is always alone
That it is, in fact, always kept company
By some idea
Or hope
Or grocery list
Or falling leaf;

Some reflection of a passing angel on your coffee cup
As she goes off to celebrate her freedom.

--Mr. Gobley

Wednesday

The blessing of this day
Is its middle-ness.

Along this bridge between Sabbaths,
Sun and Moon were created,
Ballasts of Time
Hung in black bunting.

Hidden in today's name,
The god of the Wild Hunt
Gallops above the ground,
Seeking between
Sky and Earth
The bounty that mortals
Cannot fathom,
Much less attain.

i set foot on this bridge,
The bridge of the
Middle Way,

And am embarked
Upon my own
Wild Hunt
For the promise
Of each week's path --
The heart of meaning,
Toward which I fly,

Unbound by time
Unfazed by torment,
Unafraid of the moment

When silence is revealed
At the center
Of the wandering
Universe.

--Mr. Gobley

The borrowed soul

i borrowed a soul
was given it, really
for a brief moment

it came wrapped in a
blanket of flesh
and box of bone

it was a mighty force
in a tiny package,
furious at its needs
and regal in its demands

it soon was clothed in
a personality
and gained
the rudiments of speech

it grew to know me
and surpass me
in all things

and now
my child
has a borrowed soul
of its own

another gift
like a telescope
that magnifies miracles more
the larger it gets

and i
full of the wonder
and the remorse
of the blessed

open my arms to
hold it
for this one
brief
borrowed
moment

--Mr. Gobley

A Visit from Beethoven

i sat in the concert hall --
All graceful arches and spandrels,
Filigree and high polish --

And was drenched
By the wake of sound
Plowed up by
The prow of
The mighty soprano.

Outside, the rain whispered
Its praises,
Crying for joy
On the concert hall's roof.

Sheltered from one downpour,
i was baptized in another --

Or, maybe, i thought,
I had received a visitation:
Each time the great are summoned,
They appear, atomized, annotated,
Scaled and sung:

Vocal cords vibrated, raindrops condensed,
Tiny bones of the eardrum --
The soul's own tuning fork --

Rattled by rays of being
More powerful, more enduring
Than Time itself.

That evening, we were visited
By Beethoven,
i'm sure of it --
As his notes were sung
And his rain fell
And our bones, great and small,
Trembled and hummed
In the presence of
His fevered majesty.

In this way, he lives on,
And i carry him forward,
Humbly,
Stumbling
Toward
You.

--Mr. Gobley

The tree that saved your life

the tree that saved your life
was not the oak that sheltered you
from withering heat

was not the pine
whose dry cones
and brittle bark
gave you kindling
for a fire
on that black,
aching night

the tree that saved your life
was not even the Douglas Fir
that seemed to call to you
one summer evening,
commanding you to
see wonder in all things

no, the tree that saved your life
dug its roots into rock
and by those roots
held itself upright above a gorge
calm and ageless
still and certain

impossible you said
impossible
how life makes life go on
until all going is gone

impossible how in any crag
life will set up shop
hold on for dear life
while i -- sodden with my own
private miseries --
ponder letting go

so you did as commanded:
you wondered -- at the sheer force
the desire to be
the knuckled roots determined, steady
content within their gnarled will
their unshakable embrace
holding to their eternal task

you looked awhile
then you knelt by the tree
and thanked it and
it spoke to you (in its way)

and at that moment you dug in --
your roots went down
into the rock of your life
further and more firmly each day

your branches spread
your head went more certainly
toward the Sun

and you pressed forward
to contain
to express
to share and shelter
to be
as much as that tree

and that's how
in that moment
by that tree
your life was saved.

--Mr. Gobley

Edge of Time

prepare with me
to fall into the abyss
of eternity.

Don't worry:
it only lasts a day.

Come with me
and feel time fall away
as we fall away from time.

We'll abandon all --
All cares, all commitments,
All concepts --

We'll watch the sun push shadows
Slowly through the back yard,

See backyard animals
On their unending rounds;

And soon, this sliver of endlessness
Will end.

Within that needle's eye of time,
We'll have lived a life.

Come see this sliver of forever
In our midst.

Don't worry:
It only lasts a day.

--Mr. Gobley