The Palm Trees
“You see the palm trees?” “They tell you that you can do anything, be anything.”
Terrance Malick “Knight of Cups”
When I took my first look at the palm trees
My mind surfaced from below
I became aware apart from me for the first time
Distinct from the boy who pretended to be
A separate free interior man
It was not just the palm trees
The day was filled with everything
That everything-in-it quality
Like a bubble blown from gum that never loses sweetness
Everything had a new expanse
Opening up
As if the sky had arms expressing
To all beings
All that is fastened and adherent to this world
An open-ended reach of the moment
Echoed across the continent
And now I was here
Among the animate and inanimate
All the births of myself before me
And now I was here
Like a shock-wave
A silver slice of sunlight’s blade
Opening me up to see
What I could be
I felt everything I needed
In those palm trees with their brushes
Painting the blue into the sky
Into fragment of light
That bound and wrapped my sensitive head
Softening the sharp corners
And blindfolding me so I could see
Tearing away the gray mist of doubting thoughts
A focus back to the beginning of now
That calmed those trees
While ushering me into an electric flood of fire
I could not go wrong
There is no prescribed plan
Only sweep and barter on recognition’s promenade
Where the palms rock in the sweet wind
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