My
warning bell
I’m
folded up again; trying to settle
my
roving mind . . . but it proves unruly,
intolerant
of such a betrayal.
My
companion from the first –
as
best I remember – my strategist,
instigator,
my warning bell,
my
mentor and tormentor,
my
fellow conspirator.
Hard
to abandon so constant a companion
and
face the Void alone. But maybe
I
have mistaken the mind’s
persistent
intrusions and admonitions
for
the silent companionship
of
my one true Friend
in
their ongoing and ages-old battle
for
my attention, my allegiance, my love.
O
child of God, if the Friend is one companion
and your mind is another,
where and who are you?
My
two coppers
My
words ring hollow if they have not
the
hope and heart I intended
when
I first strung them together.
They
are my lepta, the two coppers
I
drop into the coffer; the best I can offer.
My
pockets are empty of all else;
a
trifle yes, but through God’s grace,
a
blessing, perhaps, somewhere to someone
and
a worthy offering to my Lord –
a
richness that has blessed already
this
impoverished poet who first received
and
then shared them with the world.
O
child of God, offering your poems to the Beloved
is the return of your
gift to the Giver.
Bear
your cross
There
is an ethereal beauty
in
the quiet carrying of a burden
(all
burdens being God-given).
In
the submission of every Christ
bearing
His cross up Calvary’s hill,
in
the outstretched arms, crown of thorns,
the
driven spikes, there manifests
over
time an unearthly majesty, dignity
and
ultimate ecstasy, a holy acquittal
from
shame, culpability, exile and fear.
O
child of God, to meekly bear your cross
is to surrender to
your eternal liberation.
For
what it is worth
No
time like the present, they say.
In
fact, per the Mystics,
there
is no time but the present.
The
Eternal Now likened
to
a still frame in the aperture of a projector,
preceded
and followed by
a
continual series of still frames
that
produce the Illusion
of
motion, space and change,
while
answering God’s
whimsical
query, Who am I?
The
answer is thus provided
through
an illusory witness and experiencer
who
escapes (only apparently)
the
timeless inertia and omnipresence of God’s Original
(per
Meher) unconscious state of absolute Oneness.
O
child of God, after so many years, still you seek
to explicate the
Mystery rather than embrace it.
