Just shining
You are the Light of the
world
and light makes no
sound. It just shines.
Those who couldn’t see
the Light asked for words.
You pointed out certain
arrangements
resembling the Light and later
wrung from the air
approximations that
delighted Your lovers –
they printed up cards,
pamphlets,
magazines and books. How sad for You,
at times, also, for the
Mandali, Your flesh ablaze,
eyes aglow, the roaring
fire inside
and Your lovers in their
blind faith
praise and bow and
plaintively beseech You
for descriptions of the
Light. For evidence,
for instructions; for
intimations,
for directions to the
Light. O my Lord,
You are the Light of the
world
and You took birth to
shine Your Truth,
silently; silent – just
shining. Just shining.
O child of God, he who is
blind, let him
muck about in the
business of words.
Ottoman
I consulted a dictionary,
thick as any gravestone,
the meaning of each word
only given in terms of
other words
whose meanings must also
be
looked up and so
around and around we go
--
illusory, inclusive world
of words
created by barking,
braying,
warbling and lamenting,
cooing and crooning,
flesh-throated human beings –
our wordiness letting no
truth in edgewise.
Your love I find
inexplicable, indefinable, unutterable –
Your love – all You ever
talked about (in Your silence).
Silence I dare not keep –
the truth of myself
might shine forth for all
to see. I dare not shine.
I dare not embrace, so I
go home
and write a poem about
shining, embracing –
a pillow made of my
dictionary,
an ottoman of my
phonebook.
O child of God, words
never tell the Truth
yet, they are the only
means at your disposal.
God was born
God was born (as any
lover will attest)
at David Sassoon Hospital
in Pune, India
more than a century ago
now. That is to say,
God entered the mortal
realm an embryo in a womb –
vulnerable, dependent,
miniscule and yet, growing
inexorably toward
fruition. Nothing can hold back God;
His precisely scheduled
manifestation.
Even Jesus (of the
ascension and the miraculous birth)
began a floating fish in
a woman’s belly.
O seeker of God, God is
within you,
right now -- (it’s
how He enters the realm).
Within you –vulnerable,
dependent, miniscule, yes,
but growing every moment,
inexorably toward fruition.
And, in the course of His
love and law,
He shall outgrow the
flesh that encapsulates Him,
transcend the mind that
ensnares and escape
forever the narrow,
bedimmed, illusory confines
of your self. O seeker, nothing can hold back
the God within you nor
prevent His destined,
precisely scheduled
manifestation.
O child of God, where is
your patience? Everyone –
Meher Baba says –is
destined for the supreme goal.
O faith of mine
O faith of mine, o faith,
I run through you daily.
I run through you with
feet of clay –
like running with a kite
over the hardscrabble
landscape,
until the wind can catch
it
and I can stop, stand my
ground,
sufficient tension upon
the string
to keep the kite
effortlessly floating.
O faith of mine, o faith
of sticks and paper,
string and wire,
I manage you warily,
hands cupped in prayer.
You are my icon, my
silent, bright relic.
You bind my life together
at the end of this line –
my gathered, disparate,
quavering self –
and keep my face turned
upward
toward the floating,
moon-like, bright-shining
kite above the
hardscrabble turf.
O child of God, faith is
the evidence of God’s mercy –
the inward concern turned
outward.
