Spinning tales

Spinning tales                                                                                 

I hadn’t a clue – so You scattered a few about –

sandal prints under my windows;

sacred threads snagged in the hedgerow;

Your blood staining the cross within my chest.

People wonder why I go on about this!

It’s ancient history, they say.

I’m like the angler whose trophy fish is mounted

          above the mantle –

I can’t stop spinning tales about it!

Especially when Your wine gets me drunk

and I feel again the excitement of finding You

          on the end of my line.

Gone forever -- the despair of empty nets

pulled again and again from the sea of illusion.

My nets are bursting now, my vessel in danger of sinking

under the weight of Your bounty.

Jesus must have smiled when I turned down Your street –

He’d sent me that way years ago looking for You.

O child of God, the Avatar is the fisher of men.

It’s His hook causing that pain in your chest.



                   

Journey of constant failures

Journey of constant failures 

Is this a straitjacket ...

or swaddling clothes?

the fruit immature ...

or rotten to the core?

This journey of constant failures –

a teaching story or a grinding wheel?

Should I try leaping across the river

or kneel on the bank and pray for angel wings?

Abraham whispered to his son, “I am an instrument.

I don’t know where my hands end and God’s begin.”

Suppose Isaac answered, “Everyone lives and dies

by the hands of God.

How fortunate if my last glimpse of this world

is the light in my father’s eyes –

“the light in the eyes of Love’s perfect slave.

Both under the knife, we have placed whatever we are

on our Father’s offering stone.

“Let us help each other now keep our appointments,

trusting to the benevolence

of That Which Is approachable only by dissolution,

sacrifice and utter surrender.”

O child of God, how did you ever come to the notion

that your life and death belong to you?

                     (from A Jewel in the Dust)                               

The lost language

The lost language

                                                                             

You had Your chance

but, held Your peace –

perhaps, because only a handful

understood Your language.

Later, Your silence became Gautama’s flower; 

a sand grain, a moon and stars’ silence;

the noiseless marrow of our bones;

the pause between heartbeats;

the silence of the backs of our hands,

the napes of our necks –

a silence wrapped in dust; the kernel of the grain;

the hollowness in the horn of plenty.

You had Your chance to speak –

and Your Word flooded the planes,

reaching the smallest, most turbulent and severe

of all our dry places; sated the heart

and began our re-acquaintance

with the lost language of God. 

O child of God, His dialogue is continuous and pervasive,

how could you ever feel beyond its range?  

(from Spoken For)           

I love love best

I love love best    

                                                                       

Gratitude roams the ruins of my heart –

tipping the scales in Your favor.

I’ve an urge to run through the streets

shouting Your name. 

Instead, I kneel and slowly burn.

Dawn bears the same fire on the eastern mullions.

It’s not so much that You love me

but that You give me love to give . . .

more and more, more and more

and still yet more.

I know nothing of worthiness, except 

it has everything and nothing to do with love!

O reader!  What might we discuss 

that you and I don’t already know?

Like the elephant in the dark –

everything is true at once!

I love love best as a fire in the chest – silently longing

for the whole house to become ash and cinder.

O child of God, what is there to say?

You are bewildered – inside and out.

(from Spoken For)

Utter Stillness

Utter stillness                                                                                   

I have always adopted, in this human dilemma,

the rational approach,

but, secretly, I long for a love that makes no sense.

My every motive is self-preservation,

while my heart’s wings propel me, inexorably,

toward oblivion.

Let those royal falcons build their nests

in the clefts and crags of Your holy mountain.

I want only to throw myself over the edge.

Let them haunt the rugged peaks.

My fate is farther down the slope,

where Your ocean swallows me.

Below that rugged exterior lie 

the quiet disintegration and utter stillness I crave.

O child of God, your longing is romantic and self-serving.

When will you see yourself as you really are?

                      (from A Jewel in the Dust)  

                                     

Ellora

Ellora 

They started with a stone hillside;

carved out everything that wasn’t a temple.

A poem should be like that –

from a vast vocabulary, an elimination

of words unconnected to one another

until the secret combination is found,

unlocking glimpses of Oneness, the inter-connection.

Words that tremble and hum

when placed together

belong to the realm of the Infinite.

The truth of a poem is in its transparency –

columns of words, sturdy as stone ... clear as glass. 

O Lord, take my life.  Make a poem from it –

chip away the awkward, the unrelated, the oblique,

the dissonant and obscure.  Leave me ...

sturdy, connected, crucial and transparent.

O child of God, the Masters say Truth is not

an acquisition but a paring away of the false.

Life's accumulations

Life’s accumulations

O Beloved, the intellectuals among us

probe Your every word, seeking hidden compartments.

          I wish them well.

For many years I tried soaking up the Ocean through

          the sponge of my brain.

Now I’m afraid Your wine has seriously impaired

          my cerebral abilities.

Spouting ingenious theories of God and man,

Your wave rolled in and left me gasping for air.

What’s a few consonants strung with vowels,

when the Ocean floods the lowlands and carries Your life’s

          accumulations out to sea?

Where is sure footing in fathomless water?

Which directions matter when all I see is Ocean?

What is there to do now but float face up and wonder

what You have in mind for the rest of my life?

O child of God, words of the Avatar are like bread to his lovers

but it’s the Master’s wine that soaks you head to foot.

                          (from The Garden of Surrender)

Rose from the ruins

Rose from the ruins                                                                           

Did you hear about the fellow who swallowed the moon?

Don’t be silly.  He didn’t swallow the moon -- it grew inside Him, 

from a seed, there from the beginning – dark when new,

but after a time, waxing too large to hide.

Each time He opened His mouth, a wondrous light

appeared. 

He decided to keep His mouth shut – for the sake

of everyone involved.

But the moon shone through His tousled hair,

the pores of His skin,

within the deep pools of His eyes. 

He trailed moon dust everywhere He went.

And when the shell of His body broke under the strain,

the moon escaped, rose from the ruins

and graced the tender sky above His Tomb.

Now His lovers are known as lunatics,

who invite the world to join in their madness!

O child of God, if your Beloved is Who He says He is,

He’ll be around long after the moon has passed away.

                           (from A Jewel in the Dust)

Reading the label

Reading the label                                                                      

The mystery can’t be put into words

but it can be written in blood; 

shaped by the arrangement

of certain human bones.

Truth walked the earth; took in the view –

It’s rambunctious body upsetting the bullock cart –

pulses aflutter;

necks craned and blushing,

ears pricked up; heart-throats,

long empty, suddenly filled with song.

The blood of Jesus is precious

because it runs thick with the mystery of Love.

Reaching for Your garment –

(when You wore Your Jesus robe)

the infirm woman needed not scripture ...

but the soul-stirring presence of the Soul of souls

moving majestically through the pressing crowd.

O child of God, please understand – reading

the wine bottle’s label will never make you drunk.

                                    (from A Jewel in the Dust)

Elephant shapes

Elephant shapes                                                                    

This spinning earth from time to time,

may turn my head

but, I dare not long neglect my duties –

too many who depend on me, eyes uncertain asking –

How are things on your side?  Any news from up river? 

Father shuffling toward another death,

mother befuddled with fear;

loved ones sent out daily to gather

fresh greens in abandoned minefields.

Whistle while you work, my Beloved advises,

but, keep digging.

The stench of death is on the breeze;

crocodiles at the watering hole,

only their eyes visible above the surface.

I keep an ear to the rail; gleaning

what I can from the shimmering air –

for my own files, of course,

but also, for loved ones

who keep asking for the truth

of rescue and escape.

I’ve little time left for puttering about,

pursuing pleasure, 

arguing in the dark over elephant shapes.

O child of God, everything is in His hands and yet,

there’s much work to be done before winter sets in.

                         (from A Jewel in the Dust)