The Hole

Maybe this is the time when we begin to notice
there is a large hole in the center of our chest.

We are no longer naive, we know how it got there, now
we realize even our slightest thoughts have consequences.

Don’t turn away, here it is, the gaping hole, right here.
It took anger to make it, and the wanting to strike out,
to hurt, to kill, and in that way it started out small
but little by little got bigger and bigger.

None of our things can fill it, even our designer things.
Delicious food cannot fill it, passionate sex cannot fill it,
fame cannot fill it, nor great power, nor books and quotes,
nor meditations and prostrations, nor the stories we tell
each other, the easy lies we try to believe, like someone
will come along with the magic touch and make it
go away — no, none of that will ever work.

Perhaps we were hopeful but alas, none of our ideas
about emptiness and no self, about good old God
and the holy saints, about accentuating the positive
and eliminating the negative, will fill this hole.

Now that we’ve made it, we will have to live with it.
The hole might be there for the rest of our lives, although
we can stop making it any larger by recognizing how it grows.

Strangely, there is a light which is the exact size of the hole.
It is always flowing in and out, but we don’t see it yet.

It has nothing to do with the character we pretend to be.
None of that means a thing to the light, none of the pretense.

I would like to say something eloquent about this light,
but with every word I would only be enlarging the hole.

Having said that much, I should refrain from saying more,
but there is one more thing that wants to be said:

we are neither the hole nor the light.