Early post-advent

Early post-advent                                                                         

I pray for this poem (which I intend) to be a prayer

trampled in a field of fresh snow,

making sense only when viewed from a great height;

not merely a shadow of life and death

but the difference between

solace and grief, hope and despair.

I pray for your poems, too, o lovers of God;

your prayers, too – ink, oils or clay,

eye, throat, shoulders, thighs. 

May you reach that purity

of breath, blood and bone  

beyond sound and form;

may your blood run its tireless course

from the moon’s blotched surface 

to the rich earth beneath the snow

and your bones, your bones -- may they turn up

in the spring in green fields,

bleached evidence of fallen soldiers

in these mad and turbulent,

early post-advent years of Meher Baba.

O child of God, say your poetry and your prayers

with precisely the same fervor and devotion.