THIRD-PLACE POEM 2014

Third-place honors go to John Mizelle for “The Birth of Stars.” John Mizelle is a prize-winning poet and fiction writer, a singer, a songwriter, a recording artist with three published CDs of original music, and a psychotherapist and teacher of spiritual psychology. His passion is direct experience of Self beyond the conditioned mind. He draws inspiration from the natural world, from the mystic poets of all times and places, from music, and from people. He lives in the Santa Cruz Mountains of California with his wife and a family of animals. He can be contacted at jbmizelle@cruzio.com, or his website, www.johnmizelle.com.
 

The Birth of Stars
         by John Mizelle

There’s a place of deepest quiet,
where every sound is a clear voice.
There’s a place of deepest darkness,
where softly burning stars rejoice.
There’s a place of deepest stillness,
from which the dancing worlds arise.
To rest there, breathing softly,
is the first, the last, the only prize.

The greatest life, the longest line,
leaves no more mark than morning dew.
The king who builds a mighty throne
succumbs to something small and new
that rises from the emptiness
to feast on body’s heady wine.
No end to the blessed kingdom,
no end to this dance divine.

This body is a sacrament,
each cell a flaming drop of God;
this mind a complex instrument
whose simple purpose is to laud
this wonder giving shape to life,
as universes rise and fall;
each self a speck in emptiness,
yet inside each self resides all.

The redwood asks not how to live,
but rises, graceful, toward the sun.
It hosts whole worlds in its brief life
and feeds still more when it is done.
The task that is offered us
is to discover what we are.
Rest now—your heart teems with light;
by nature, it gives birth to star.