Jefblog

We Are All On The Bus

in memory of Ken Kesey - November 10, 2001

Waking down Pearl St. in Oakland
a curled brown oak leaf flutters
and floats down to the sidewalk.
I think of Kesey's great soul
ripped like a giant redwood
from the earth floating upward
fluttering around us laughing
urging us to an openness that
humanity has forgotten
in the midst of yet another
war of fear and hatred.

He joins the great cabal
of our generation -
our beat-hippie ancestors
urging future generations to move
toward freedom-real freedom
that has its roots in the open heart
and the truthful mind.

They are greeting him there
in the land of the ancestors
Kerouac, Ginsberg, Leary
Garcia, Cassidy, Parker,
Coltrane, Janis , Hendrix
Miles, Corso, Micheline.

They are there smiling
at the wonder of the cycles of life
at the humor of being and not being
at the playfullness of the illusions
we build our empires upon.

They will dance there forever
and we can dance with them as we have
in the great exploration that opened
up the unity we discovered together
hidden in the depths of the mind.

This is the real graduation,
the alignment with the light
toward which we are forever traveling.

Allen Cohen