Sacred Swimmer

I came to this city
at the edge of the continent
as so many dreamers before me
following the westward winds of time
like the gold-glinting eyes
of greedy men who mistook 
the ocean’s endless horizon
for a promise made only to them.
I was destined by a different ore
not yet hardened but still molten to the core,
something older than the veins
torn open for profit by 49ers.
After the gold rush came the god rush. 
In this city, east met west, 
past, future,
and the modern world began, at least, to meet its end.

The sky was winking at me
when I first made my home 
in the foggy hills of San Francisco.
The planet Neptune
lord of oceans, dreams, 
and boundary dissolving dives into the divine,
was floating through Aquarius 
across my natal Jupiter,
opening the gates of vision,
47 square miles wide.
The transit was initiatory:
a widening of my psychic estuary
where consciousness, cosmology, and philosophy
ran together as sulfur and salt meeting mercury.
Everything was shimmering.

Eighteen years I’ve apprenticed here,
in this vale of soul-making 
and school for the spirit,
this heir of the counterculture,
of dharma bums and Beat poets,
of tree hugging hand holding hippies
who smuggled East into West
and tried to make the world sing together in harmony.
I learned that matter is a metaphor,
that mind bends with the tides,
that the voices of the prophets 
still echo in the Paiute desert,
and that names like vows are fluid as the Tao.

The city was my teacher,
a temple of tech and aftershocks
full of silicon sannyasins and coding yogis, 
psychedelic polycules, mystic runaways,
Zen masters and Jungian analysts,
CEOs quoting koans,
and cybernetic Sufis.

My Sun is setting on this Bay,
like lovers trading fluids,
forever changing as we part ways.

My rose here has unfolded. 
Another wave rises.
My classroom now vaporized,
sangha dissolved into screens,
the school that once rooted me
has become an atmosphere 
I can inhale anywhere.

Waking again from my westward dream,
waking again,
I now turn south, 
toward the wide belly of the earth,
toward forests older than progress,
toward rivers more ancient than empire.

Above me
Pluto, lord of underworlds—
prowls across my Aquarius stellium,
melting to transform
my conscious self,
transmute my intellect, 
temper my senses 
and deepen my relations.
The god of metamorphosis, 
Pan placing his hand 
on the heart of my life
and whispering in my ear: 
no more hedging,
no more waiting for life to begin,
Live dangerously, or die in safety.

I stood at the edge as the sun sank
and watched a swimmer in the Bay 
beneath the Golden Gate.
A lone figure moving through the strait
carving a quiet path through time.
Gold rush ghosts danced atop the skyline
as I reflected on my long pilgrimage
from student to teacher to wanderer again.

The sacred swimmer passed under the vast red ribs
of the bridge, that big metallic Bodhisattva,
compassionate carrier of all our silicon sins,
sacrificial site of suicide sojourns,
Every new birth leaves you
with saltwater in your mouth.
Any wisdom worth loving
requires learning how to swim.
And learning to swim
requires jumping in.

The swimmer swam on,
as the city released me. 
The tide loosened its grip on the shore.
I will carry the wisdom work 
with me into new waters.
What I’ve learned here is portable,
potable, 
tended by devotional attention, 
nourishing enough to shepherd me abroad.

The Western imagination has reached its end,
the Pacific swallowed its Solar ego.
It is time to go down, 
southward, soul-ward, 
‘When that fat old sun in the sky is falling,
Summer evening birds are calling,
The last sunlight disappears,
And if you see, don’ t make a sound, 
Pick your feet up off the ground, 
And if you hear as the warm night falls, 
the silver sound from a time so strange,
sing to me, sing to me.’