Poem of the Day – Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front

When someone is deeply listening, with eyes wide with interest, 

and heart open as a window on a spring morning,  

it is like you are holding the empty cup of your longing

 for moonlight, 

and the scent of roses in starlight, 

 every dream of innocent pleasure.

Your thirst for water, 

as if you had been a month in the desert,

the hope: as though you were suddenly released

through a trap door

from the prison of your ordinary self. 

it is as though a miraculous spring of water gushed from a rock in front of you, clear 

cold and sweet, 

just wide enough to spout and let you bend toward it to drink, 

sating your thirst, 

misting the air near you so that your breath is made lighter and more

delicious

without dust, 

greening the world around you.

Your weariness fades, 

the doubt and cynical thoughts recede beneath this 

waterfall of joy.