Bowing down

Bowing down                                                                                   

When a saint shuts and opens his eyes,

it’s an involuntary bowing down

to the Lord of his heart;

his every breath a prayer;

his heartbeat a drumbeat,

his pulsing blood a trumpeting

of the Spirit’s emergence

from the tangle of muscle,

blood and bone of brain and body.

Involuntary, because a saint

has foregone

determinations and judgments,

left behind faith itself, grasping

the hem of Reality and responding

the only way allowed him – annihilation  

and – while in the body -- servitude;

bound by vows no longer

made in ignorance but, bound

deep in the body no longer his own,

to obeisance and praise,

to obeisance and praise, to obeisance

and praise to the boundless One.

O child of God, bow until bowing becomes

involuntary, intrinsic to your being.