Intersection Of Interbeing Poem by Greg Gaul

Could it be that two city streets meet at a portal
of awakening that leads to enlightenment?
May your next frontier be "Inter-Be" discovery.

Nearly forty years ago on July twenty-fifth,
working in the center city of Philadelphia
I was walking to make a noon business meeting
and noticed a hippie sitting cross-legged
on the corner sidewalk of Fourth and Walnut Street.
He sat there with the noontime crowd ignoring him.
Disheveled, scraggly haired, he looks up at me.
Stopping. No coin can. I ask if he is okay.
Calmly he says, "I am one with the universe".
His brilliant, piercing, blue eyes exuding joy and bliss.
Struck unaware, I haplessly then moved on.

Over twenty years before, monk Thomas Merton
had an epiphany at another Fourth and Walnut.
This corner, in downtown Louisville Kentucky.
It liberated and changed his thinking forever.
He wrote and spoke on interconnection world wide
challenging norms opposed to interbeing.
A memorial was built there to his moment.
In many towns, there are corners yet to discover.

Years later, understanding Merton's experience,
still in my awareness fog...yet remembering.
I decide to go back to my Fourth and Walnut.
Arriving at the corner, there were two of us.
Myself and a frail-looking, white-haired woman
in a vestment smock with a gentle, knowing smile
cautiously saying, "I have been waiting for you".
I didn't know her. I was stunned and speechless.
She went on, "I want to go through" and started
walking by me slowly up Walnut Street sidewalk.
Flabbergasted, walking the other way, I turn
back to see her, she had already disappeared.

I remember the July twenty-fifth event
because that is my father's and son's birthday.
Sometimes, the fates do speak to us, if we listen.
Now, I'm thinking of returning once again.
The mystery of the portal is enticing.
Wandering through the Bardo, one will find their realm.
The oneness of everything is Interbeing.