Maybe it's time to update the Ten Commandments, such as "love what you like. Cherish what you love." (What if we are living in Paradise? Would it make any difference?)

::::::::

I am walking back across a field of white clover
And alfalfa

Honey bees are working the field
Behind me is a hemlock forest
And a path that follows a ravine
Up to where I left my friend
Sitting by a waterfall
(He is a little older than me
But we are both old men now
His hair is white
My hair is gone)

The day before yesterday
The port of Beirut exploded

75 years ago Hiroshima was bombed

First Commandment: Let the bees work the field

I'm going to be honest
I passed so many things I don't like
To get here
The list was endless
It would give anyone a headache
It's my list
And this is Vermont
I love this state
And yet I find so many things not to like

Second Commandment: Love what you like

Third commandment: Cherish what you love

I like those hills those flowers
I like that porch that locust tree
So I love those hills
Those flowers
I love that locust tree
I cherish them

Now there is a fly on my screen
Proof-reading my sentences
Stopping to rub its little hands together

When I was crossing the field
Were the clouds saying
There is a man crossing the field
He is noticing the bees working the field?

Fourth Commandment: Let the clouds have thoughts

I try to identify the plants
Growing behind the guard rail
As I walk back to my car
Burdock, poison parsnip, goldenrod
Chicory, mullein, but what's that one
With the vertical rows
Of bell-shaped yellow flowers?

Fifth Commandment: Not everything has a name
Some things don't need a name
Un-name some things

I un-named the poison parsnip
But its name came back again

As I crossed the bridge I looked into the stream
It looked just like I thought it would look
Clear and shallow
Running over a slab of rough concrete
Before it passed beneath the street

Sixth Commandment: Something about
Water under a bridge

There is something in the road
I let a string of cars rush by
I walk out to inspect the object
It looks like a dead animal
It is a black mask

Seventh Commandment: Some things should be left in the road

I unlock my car
I check the time
I drink some water
I eat something

My car is pointing north
Soon I will be driving north
Back to my home

Eighth Commandment: Honor the seven directions

The seventh direction
Isn't a direction
It is the heart
It is your heart and my heart
It is the great heart

I am heading back across the field now
Through the alfalfa and clover
Where the bees are working

Ninth Commandment: Thou shalt not steal
From the bees
(Ask them for their honey
Thank them for their labor)

In the corner of the field
I vanish into the forest
To follow the path up the ravine
I drum loud enough for my friend to hear

When I see him descending through the trees
It is his white hair I see first

I sit at the foot of a hemlock waiting
Listening to the whispering
And the rushing
Of the stream below
And behind it all
I hear a distant tape
Of rock and roll
It is just in my mind

It is good rock and roll
But it is out of place here

Tenth Commandment: Turn the radio off
And listen to the waters

My friend is standing there
How was it? I ask
He says
We are living in Paradise

Eleventh Commandment: What does it mean
To be living in Paradise?
Find out what that means

It sounds right at the moment
But time passes quickly
Like the water of a waterfall
The moment you stop gazing
Into the heart of its spirit

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Authors Website: https://garylindorff.wordpress.com

Authors Bio:

Gary Lindorff is a poet, writer, blogger and author of five nonfiction books, three collections of poetry, "Children to the Mountain", "The Last recurrent Dream" (Two Plum Press), "Conversations with Poetry (coauthored with Tom Cowan), and a memoir, "Finding Myself in Time: Facing the Music". Lindorff calls himself an activist poet, channeling his activism through poetic voice. He also writes with other voices in other poetic styles: ecstatic, experimental and performance and a new genre, sand-blasted poems where he randomly picks sentence fragments from books drawn from his library, lists them, divides them into stanzas and looks for patterns. Sand-blasted poems are meant to be performed aloud with musical accompaniment.


He is a practicing dream worker(with a strong, Jungian background) and a shamanic practitioner. His shamanic work is continually deepening his partnership with the land. This work can assume many forms, solo and communal, among them: prayer, vision questing, ritual sweating, and sharing stories by the fire. He is a born-pacifist and attempts to walk the path of non-violence believing that no war is necessary or inevitable.