Kundalini Splendor

Beach Roses

Mark Doty

What are they,the white roses,
when they are almost nothing,
only a little denser than the fog,

shadow-centered petals blurring,
toward the edges, into everything?

This morning one broken cloud
built an archipelago,
fourteen gleaming islands

hurrying across a blank plain of sheen:
nothing, or next to nothing

--pure scattering, light on light,
fleeting.
And now, a heap of roses
beside the sea, white rugosa
beside the foaming hem of shore:
brave,

waxen candles...

And we talk
as if death were a line to be crossed.
Look at them, the white roses.
Tell me where they end.



Somehow, this poem reminds me a bit of Kundalini (doesn't everything?) When we are caught up in the waves of high bliss, or experience the deep silence of the transcendent moment, it is sometimes difficult to tell where our bodies leave off and the shimmering vibrations of divine favor begin. We are at one and the same time flesh and spirit, material substance and ethereal reality. As Mark tells us, some things arrive not as a line to be crossed, but as a blurring of identities, one merging into the other, human and sublime.