Free Verse · David Boje (Arihanta) · May 14, 2026
On the Edge of the Water:
A Meditation on Miracles
Gurudev Shree Chitrabhanu, in his book The Miracle of Life, quotes Walt Whitman's poem "Miracles" — but not all of it. He leaves most of it on the editing floor. What he keeps is this:
Walt Whitman · "Miracles" · as kept by Chitrabhanu
Or wade with naked feet along the beach
just in the edge of the water,
Or stand under trees in the woods,
Or talk by day with any one I love,
or sleep in the bed at night with any one I love,
Or sit at table at dinner with the rest,
Or look at strangers opposite me riding in the car,
Or watch honey-bees busy around the hive
of a summer forenoon,
Or animals feeding in the fields,
Or birds, or the wonderfulness of insects in the air,
Or the wonderfulness of the sundown,
or of stars shining so quiet and bright,
Or the exquisite delicate thin curve
of the new moon in spring;
These with the rest, one and all, are to me miracles,
The whole referring, yet each distinct
and in its place.
I am excited Gurudev included any poetry at all. And Whitman of all choices. The miracle of nature is what evaporates out of selective reading by my Jain master. He knew which lines to keep.
The line that stopped me this morning, standing at the lake before the jog: or wade with naked feet along the beach just in the edge of the water. I have done that. Right here. Lake Caballo, which is not a lake but a dammed-up Rio Grande — and I don't know whether dammed is spelled like damming a river, or goddamn. Anyway, both have happened here.
Whitman is walking Manhattan. I am jogging Caballo. Both of us finding the miracle in the ordinary. Both of us in the edge of the water. Both of us, as Chitrabhanu would say, in the jiva recognizing the jiva in every living thing.
— David Boje (Arihanta), Lake Caballo, New Mexico, May 14, 2026
This is what free verse does in the Enthinkment Circle: it finds the ordinary miracle and names it without explaining it away.
