Graveyard gates

 Graveyard gates                                                                                               

I have come not to teach, said my Lord.

Liberation, apparently, not something you learn how to do. 

With this lifetime of accumulated knowledge,

it’s difficult to become a vessel now with a perfectly hollow ring.

There’s an old joke about a drunk

stumbling into an open grave.

I’ve forgotten the punch line.  I’ve dug my own grave;

settled into the bottom, studying the sky.

I can dig no deeper nor climb back to the surface.

I thought the virtue of patience

referred to the length of the journey.

Now I see it only begins

when the path veers from the highway

and enters through the graveyard gates.

O child of God, how stubbornly you cling

to the only thing you know.

The trick

The trick                                                                                                   

When you try and try, said Lao Tzu,

the world is then beyond the winning.

To attempt (or strive)

is one definition of the word try.

To tax (or strain) is another –

to go through a trial. 

The trick, said Lao Tzu, is to act

without trying – strive without distress;

non-doing within non-duality.

Surrender is the ultimate abandonment

of attempt and strain –

an unimaginable state

in which we live without strife,

neither enduring nor causing friction,

illimitable, amenable drops dissolved

in the oceanic whim and will of God.

O child of (that same) God, everything,

says Lao Tzu, is won by those who let it go.

Free radical

Free radical                                                                                              

The fault is mine, I hear myself say

but it isn’t quite true.

Better than blaming others

which is even less true but,

contrary to worldly wisdom, the teachings

suggest that to blame is to blaspheme,

adopting the self-centered, heretical conceit

that I am not (nor is anyone else)

entirely under God’s authority,

a loose cannon somehow, a free radical.

It is, apparently, the ineffable, inarticulate truth

that all the blame must rest solidly

upon the vast, irreproachable shoulders of God

and the sooner we come to know

and live that truth, the nearer we approach

the illusive fellowship of the new humanity.

O child of God, take your cue from the fallen leaf

and the half farthing sparrow. 

An anchored pole

An anchored pole                                                         

Maybe my obsession is no more fruitful,

my esoteric compilations of no greater value,

than my great uncle Whit’s sackful of doorknobs

or that fellow out on Highway 322’s

front yard ornamentation of shiny hubcaps

and car tags from every state in the Union.

Certainly, an unbiased consensus

would find my pursuit the more futile,

pretentious, eccentric and absurd –

trying to establish a beachhead of order

amid this unrelenting chaos;

a bulwark against the looming grave;

my adversity to merely coloring, until death do us part,

between the allotted lines; a method,

a comfort, a conviction  –  an anchored pole

on which to tether myself

in this ever-shifting dreamscape

to which I find myself temporarily assigned.

O child of God, when everything adds up to zero,

to seek an exit is the only sensible recourse.

Baby powder

Baby powder                                                                                         

Powder sprinkled on the infant skin

is made of stone, made soothing,

soft and smooth by being crushed; 

by being processed and converted. 

In soapstone, likewise, the same talc

makes for a yielding, utile medium of art

able to be notched and sculpted

into various forms of divine expression.

Primitive man once aspired

to be an adamant warrior – 

aspired to be glorious, god-like, impregnable;

leaving an imprint; making an impression.

The Avatar came along and said

(time and again said) to the human heart –

become dust, soft, crushed, soothing;

become curative, servient, a comfort

and inspiration to the most innocent

and vulnerable among you. 

O child of God, you dream of gentleness

while your heart is made of stone.

To Whom it may concern

To Whom it may concern                                                                         

I continue my search

without knowing why or how.

If it’s truth I’m after, I might find out,

enamored of the answer or not. 

If the source is fear, I’m afraid

I’m doomed. But then, I always was.   O Lord!

If there’s something I can do, help me with it.

If there is nothing I can do, let my efforts

be a lifelong appeal to Whom it may concern –

a wish that something might be done.

Let my search be a running toward rather than away,

my one request being – a divesting of all requests,

coming from the depths of me who I do not know

to the One Whom I beseech and also know not. 

O child of God, sometimes the path is merely

the placing of one foot in front of the other.

The stone pillow

The stone pillow                                                                                       

The stone pillow of Saint Francis,

the sting of snow under his feet,

his empty belly, the tender stigmata –  

all he took to be blessings

because they kept him

from going back to sleep.

I have not been a lover of God

but a lover of comfort and conformity.

A stone pillow is so discomfiting!

It will not bend to the contours of my dreams.

Yet there is a certain attractiveness to it,

(within the dark cave of my solitude)

a silent, loyal simplicity and immutability

I must learn to lie down with

until my shape conforms, my dreams cease

and I awaken like Francis to the truth of myself.

O child of God, when you rise from that pillow,

the Mystics say, you will never go back to sleep.

Only the witness

Only the witness                                                                                       

The sole witness to our dreams,

we are most often the main character –

until we awaken and see we never

really were a participant; only the witness. 

As in this waking dream, the Awakener adds.

When roused from sleep, once and forever, says He,

we shall see, we shall see – we never really were

the participant we think we are;

only the witness to an insubstantiality,

suffering its illusory bindings

yet removed from any real peril,

having never left our very own beds.

Only an intimate witness are we to this waking dream

beyond anyone’s choosing, design and control

with only one dreamed-up character a willing participant;

only One, sowing with perfect equanimity

this hardscrabble dreamscape

with seeds of irrepressible truth.

O child of God, auspicious is your dream.

This time you envisioned the Avatar.

A yellow wood

A yellow wood                                                                                       

In a yellow wood, came I to a divergence –

the road I take the next leg of my journey,

the other a phantom companion. 

O Lord, let it be true that the freedom

and certainty of karma and fate rule the road

rather than my fear and ignorance

determining where I shall end up, 

the life I shall encounter along the way.

Praying to God I might set down at last

the staggering baggage of my presumed autonomy

on every more or less traveled road

taken or not taken and accept the long term

remedial grace and benevolence

of a hand-held, divinely-guided tour.

O child of God, you plot your itinerary

knowing not how you have arrived at where you are.

Blithe aplomb

Blithe aplomb                                                                                            

Saint Francis took to the hills of Umbria,

radiating sheer joy (all the poor fellow owned). 

It came as a reminder.  Where had failed

clergy, scripture, pomposity and ritual

and the wilderness cry of the human heart,

prevailed this young man’s mute testimony

to stay the brutal stones, feed empty souls,

draw his future sisters and brothers.

 

Otherwise, who would have followed

through the snow those mad footprints,

were it not for joy and the fire’s roar

of his Jesus-love above any frail warmth

or posturing the world could offer?

One drop of the holy wine Francis

handled with such blithe aplomb

and hearts were kindled, souls reminded,

keenly felt then their own lack of joy –

a memory lost in their dimly remembered past.

O child of God, to love your Lord

as did Saint Francis, is to please Him.

Straw boss

Straw boss                                                                                                         

As a spiritual pilgrim, I must go (I am told)

from being an egocentric being

to a being without a center;

dust adrift in a cosmic wind,

settling eventually on Love Street

at the feet of my Lord. 

I might have been a straw boss once.

Now I’m being pummeled into dust,

this sack of flesh containing the lot

of my accumulated wisdom. 

Any glint among the grains a mere trick of light.

Apparently, I have only just come under the hammer

and it’s a long, long journey

from here to nowhere.

O child of God, what matters the length

of a trek you have no choice but to undertake?

Bold experiments

Bold experiments                                                                                    

I have read the gestures, the finger-tracings;

heeded the later, lived-in mandali stories

so as not to be led astray nor gamble

upon imaginings, vagaries, the ruses of ego.

  

Gone by the book and the left-behind road map. 

But when the Friend appears before me

whispering of alternative avenues

tailored to my peculiar journey, an unheralded route

sewn into the soft fabric of my heart

I am made averse to safe-playing;

willing to risk my likely being led astray

to obey words that have touched

neither lips nor page, words never meant

to be taught nor shared, never to reach

the light of reputable wisdom or discernment,

words that appear from nowhere

to rapidly fade into the mystery

from whence they came.

O child of God, Meher advised his lovers

to take risks and make bold experiments.

Heed Hafiz

Heed Hafiz                                                                                               

My dear, the fault lies in your own

incapacity to understand him. – Hafiz

No, never wrong is the Master,

until His truth touches my ears

too unwieldy and unfathomable

for language and meaning to bear.

So I cautiously heed Hafiz, 

my faith and allegiance

pledged to the silent Godman

but only tentatively and tangentially

to His words of which I have

no true capacity or authority to comprehend. 

O child of God, by what possible measure can you

presume to know what God is talking about?

Only the breath

Only the breath                                                                                       

A creature molded of river clay,

how can it not stain everything it touches?

Leave its separative, alien markings

everywhere it goes?

Made of clay.  Not just layered in it.

To the core and out the other side.

How could that creature ever flow?

Rise above?  Become transparent?

How might the light ever shine through?

Whatever benign shape it’s molded into,

will it not always be a creature thick, slow,

cumbersome, pliable and impotent?

Only the breath God gave it – only the breath.

Miraculous, invisible, ancient and holy. 

O child of God, God’s living breath –

the only redemption for a creature of clay.