Selected Poems of
Robert K. Hall

Meditation

Retreats

Biography

Transcribed Talks

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The Soldier

He stands inside my chest and throat,
a soldier at attention. Holding the
line, guarding the storehouse from
looters. They came once and stole
everything, every bit of trust, every
reassuring touch and all the spontaneity.

Those days were long ago, when
intruders came and left their bloody
footprints on my skin.
Still that soldier stands, holding a
musket, a feather in his hat.
I try to steal a smile from him
everyday, but he knows his duty.

I say, “At ease soldier! As you were
before strangers occupied the land,
as you were before my innocent
heart was cut open like a ripe melon!”

He guards the scars and every day I
visit with my bouquet of tender
attention, basket of appreciation.

We touch each other with understanding,
but he does not relax his stand for security.
He has his duties. I have mine.

Call off the Search

I walk upstairs.
I walk downstairs.
I wander into the kitchen
and look through a doorway into
the living room with all its books
and oriental carpets, but I can’t
find the point of it all,
can’t reach into what I’m looking
for until I sit down in the corner,
pull my blanket over my head,
close my eyes, look into the
interior rooms and listen for what
is moving in there, and again be
amazed that there is a river,
constant and uncreated, flowing,
announcing itself with the sound
of life everlasting, bursting into
this wrinkled brain substance,
translating itself into muscle,
bone, fat, connective tissue and dreams.

When I bathe in that immediacy,
I never have to search for
anything again.

The Appearance of Things

Life is ordinary.
It happens all the time
without anyone doing anything.

What I’d like to know is
how that spark makes music,
or the symphony creates so
much solid soil, or how those
sterling roses grow out all lavender.

It’s amazing that something
so light as vibration can solidify,
precipitate into bones, become
the form softer meat hangs on,
then expands and contracts to
make dance and drama.

Life is ordinary.
It happens all the time.
What we don’t know is
what it is.

Manual of Instruction

Reflect on yourself endlessly,
because you are all you have.
Those five senses will fail you
when the time to leave
bursts out like a surprise party.

Reflect on yourself until the edges blur,
until darkness closes in and your head disappears.
That’s when some angel will come and gesture.

In the meantime be ordinary.
Putting in time is easy, if you
Don’t need to be anybody.

Sit at the table, drink your warm comfort,
be happy with friends, look at your fingernails,
open the mail, but all the while reflect on yourself.

It’s a good sign
when you don’t know
what to do next.
We don’t have to go anywhere.

.

The Narrow Path to Mystery

I am hopelessly human.
Obsession is my name.
Addiction is my nature.

Every day is filled with need.
I despise the wanting as though
it were alien other.

Every night is filled with loneliness
that comes from separation.
I cannot escape pornographic desire.

I slide my tongue along smooth thighs.
I gaze with lust on well-shaped buttocks.
I want the storekeeper to love me just
because I purchase his potatoes.

I worry about my children in a distant city.
I confess to friends my secrets,
so they will add theirs to mine.

I scheme for money and sell my attention
for respect and payment in coins.
I walk through endless, thick sorrow,
despairing for some magic solution.

Finally, the torment of imagination,
The torture of uncontrolled dread
force me to a kneeling position.

At last, I take the narrow path that leads to peace,
crawl my way remembrance by remembrance,
decision by decision toward the swirling mystery
that begins it all.

Like the waves roll to the shore one after the other.
There is life here: I am that and worthy.
All creation floats in the movement of this mystery.
What I seek, I am.

Ste by step, I cross the kitchen floor.
Increment by inch, I reach for the refrigerator door.
Muscle by tendon I walk into the garden where the roses are.

I Touch My Thigh

I touch my thigh.
It isn’t young anymore.
Flesh is soft and without edges.
Getting ready to dissolve into old age.
Preparing to fall away from the bone.

I don’t know what happens to us.
We are bright stars, full of brilliance.
Then, without notice, we become
inhabitants of decaying houses.
The transition tests our wisdom.

Arising and passing away,
expanding and contracting,
victims of some universal rule.
No apology for all the unmet expectations.

I touch my thigh.
Soft and not elastic.
I don’t remember it to be that way.
Something has happened to this poor body.
It loses form, like fresh baked bread,
has no respect for my dismay.

No escape from liver spots and wrinkles,
joint pains and memory collapses.
Just part of the common day.

This body is getting old.

Broken down, weather-washed barns
in fields of golden grasses,
old photographs of skinny men in
tank tops at the beach.
Skeletons in unmarked graves.
Time is relentless and flesh is temporary.

Everything is coming and going,
here one moment, gone the next.

What Really Counts

I was just sitting there and nothing happened.
For once there were no voices,
no planning, no Technicolor memories.
Whatever drives the thinking machine
had taken a break.
Left to run the company was
an empty desk, no papers.
No telephone to ring.

It’s hard to describe the simplicity of sitting
without agenda and no past to speak of.

Sometimes they call it emptiness,
but it was full of life and wonder.
when neurosis skips a beat,
you can see forever through the
crack in your mind.

I was just sitting there.
The one who wants something
all the time was absent.
The ordinary revealed.
Ordinary body-life.
Soft white light.
Relaxation.
The sound of presence.
The stuff that lives so sweetly
Behind the struggle to be human.

The Endless Present

We are always going somewhere,
heading out toward the distant
peak, buying camels to carry us
across some desert of the mind,
landscape of the soul.

I can’t find a place to go.
I’ve been preparing for some voyage
for a long time but, now, there isn’t any path
and I’m sitting on this rock with my maps.

The light comes and goes.
Sometimes it is night.
I eat and drink what’s given.
I think about what I’m doing here.
I close my eyes and notice
the voyage comes to me.

A river of wonders wells up out
of the darkness and, sitting still, I
become memories.
I swim in emotions that have the
power of fire and water.
I am washed with the movement
of some infinitely joyous,
endlessly appearing thing.

I sit here, then, in wonder when
All the places come to me and
there is nothing to attain, leaving
me lost and satisfied upon this rock.

What is a goal, where is a
Destination, who is traveling
there, and what is the expected
time of arrival?

Death will come to us whether
we move or remain in the same
small room.

And death is the biggest surprise of all.
It doesn’t come from the future and never
Travels to the past. For when we die,
The endless present has arrived at last.

Before the Questions Come

Before the questions come,
Before doubt visits and spreads
Its infection, there is a
consciousness reserved for
brilliant clarity and very subtle
smiles, the kind you see on
statues of Siddhartha after he
received the holy touch.

I want to live there always in that
empty limitless, where intuition
is all that moves my mind and
guides the way my hands move,
my mouth speaks and where my
feet will walk upon this Earth
and with whom. Oh, isn’t that
devoutly to be wished?

when I stop wishing I could live there,
in that state where nobody is around to make an effort…
when I stop wishing it were so,
and notice the music around my head,
the trees dancing with the blue emptiness
of limitless sky right before my eyes…
Then I know I’ve always been at home.
Isn’t that a mystery?

Before the questions come, before doubt
even becomes a thought in the mind.

Map of Being

No matter how I do it,
there is always return to mystery.

One thought swoops out of nothingness,
another follows, colors, lines, memories and
conversations, worries about body health,
pictures of faces, even down to moles and
freckles then emptiness again.

There is nothing in emptiness. Really empty.

Then another thought pops up, moves around
gathering attention, scooping up energy in order
to get real somehow.
They pour out of nowhere, tumbling over each other.

The body is like that too. First a
shoulder, then the belly and of course
the pelvis, and behold the feet,
the thumbs and an ache, a vibration,
a feeling of warmth.

The process, the creative movement
happens with us or without us.

The Living Body

It’s important to find our freedom
in this living body.
Bring in the humerus and the
thigh bone, the large intestine
and the cervical vertebrae.
Bring all the parts together in one place.

We have to let the body be whole,
enjoy the Earth and smile with real
affection for each other.
How good to move our arms in circles
and feel the strength to stand.

To know how feet are made to
walk upon the ground and
how they spread to meet the
Earth’s support.

How good to arch our backs
and let our faces turn upward,
throats open to sing!

Stomp the feet and move in dances.
Swing the arms and lift the knees up high.
Feel the warmth along the spine.

The Real Teacher

The real teacher is inside.
The real teacher is climbing around
in the trees and on the mountains.

The real teacher is moving our fingers.
The real teacher is one of a kind, rolling with our
thoughts and spinning cloth out of emotions.

The real teacher is inside
and bursting out everywhere, turning
sunny days into hurricanes, shaking
the Earth until the bridges fall down.

The outside and inside are like life and death,
faces on the coin, sides of the whole, and
the Mother-Father-God is birthing us all
without a rest, whether we witness the miracle or
lie sleeping all curled up inside our tents.

The real teacher is inside and everywhere.
Let’s rejoice in That One. Sing songs, dance wild dances,
and touch each other with love.
The moon is visible at night, the sun at day,
always there for us to celebrate.

The Meditators

There is this sensation and that thought.
We pay attention to them, make
sure we know which is which. We do that don’t we?
We sit carefully, like the cat before the mole-hole.
We are witnesses to all kinds of pain and pleasures. Sometimes
we witness life just the way it is.

And then, there is that mystery around everything.
The deep echo that appears for an instant.
The never-ending possibility, the place
our bones come from. Do we name it, too?
Some just call it THAT, and include
the stones and whispers, too.

Great void, womb of all attention and
all objects disappearing.
We co-exist, you and I. Who is who?
I’m this one with the heart softly yearning.
I worry about doing the right thing and ask endlessly.
I search for love with every step and despair frequently.

You, oh you, what do you do but give birth all night and day?
You are the hall the party celebrates itself within.
you are the big question and the ultimate answer,
the music all the lyrics sing within.
I am your brother and your sister. I am twins, torn in two.
You are the nothing I am identical to.
What a mystery! What a love story! What a play!
Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, every day.

Pleasure Seeker's Prayer

I am a secret pleasure seeker and everyone knows it.
I want all the flavors, sighs, shivers, and every moment of
delight that could possibly slosh its way through this
bag of water, this wonderful flesh arrangement.

Give it all to me and, when the time
for gratitude prayers comes,
let me sit in a dark corner and pull
the blessed comforter over my head,
so alive with shooting stars.

Let me tell you of my love for you who
brings it all with just a movement of your
divine compulsion to create this
electronic virtual reality everything that
IS.
Oh, I love you and I hope you know it.
I can only bow my head to show it.

Marvel

Where does it all come from?
We don’t know.
We don’t bring the breath
or the beating heart
or the inner sound of calling,
the constant reminder that we
are not permanent residents here
but collections of memories
and dancing elements
all on loan for the moment,
so that a sip of tea,
a deep sigh,
the bowels twisting in their cavern
are all events staged from some
clever screenplay written by nobody
and acted by no bald old man sitting
on a meditation cushion,
smiling at the sweetness of such generous
mystery, such a wild imagining
beyond anything anyone ever thought
or decided to produce.

We are beautiful strands of amusement,
threads of momentary desire,
indescribable twists in the wind.