That eternal composition

That eternal composition                                                                                  
 
Get quiet, say the Mystics, quiet as dust,
to hear the music of the spheres.
 
Always there, always near, get past
the inward chatter and the outward traffic
 
enough to hear that eternal composition,
sans comparisons, conception and imagination.
 
Without a thought, return to the elemental serenity
from which you’ve taken leave.
 
Surrender to the peace that surpasses –
to Original form, to that pool of love within
 
and find there the goal and the cure obtainable,
amenable to all now and forevermore.
 
O child of God, get your lonely self quiet enough
to be lulled back into Oneness.

 

Mischief maker

Mischief maker                                                                                     
 
I found You 
and began to lose myself.
 
The wine in my cellar has turned to vinegar.
I plucked a blood-tinged rose from a bed of thorns.
 
I’m bleeding now myself;
nothing seems to staunch the flow.
 
I took You for the Avatar.  I didn’t suspect
You were such a mischief maker.  Now I know. 
 
I found You and can’t shake You.
You’re everywhere I turn; in the turning, also.  
 
O child of God, you found your way to His Samadhi;
leave enough of yourself there to remain forever at His feet.
 
                              (from A Jewel in the Dust, 2011)

Death and resurrection

Death and resurrection                                                                                     
 
Each moment, teaches the Bhagavad Gita,
we start from scratch. Made up on the spot.
 
Arise, flare and vanish along with the whole
shimmering universe that surrounds us
 
while clinging desperately
to the illusion of continuity.
 
Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva in turn –
ageless existence, perpetually generated,
 
in which we emerge every moment
as immaculate new creatures, nonexistent and eternal.
 
Why fear annihilation? ask the Mystics.
Why harbor shame and dread? 
 
When you own not a whit of autonomy.
When existence itself is impermanence –
 
made up on the spot, an effulgence
of ceaseless death and resurrection.
 
O child of God, only your dream-self  
is less substantial than the dream of creation.

 

A finely wrought perfection

A finely wrought perfection                                                                            
 
The night is not imperfect
because there is no sun in the sky. 
 
Darkness bears its own virtue and the breaking day
offers merely a different aspect of the same perfection.
 
Our lives are perfect, yours and mine, for God’s purpose.
Every thought, word and deed just as God wills it.
 
On the mortal level of time-and-space duality,
we might speak of ignorance and sin,
 
self and other, good and evil, love and fear
but there is a finely wrought perfection
 
in this long night and the breaking day will bring us
merely a different aspect of that same perfection.
 
O child, if God is non-dual,
how could anything be less than perfect?

Of quiet fealty

Of quiet fealty                                                                                                  
 
On the riverbank, by your passivity
mitigate the compulsive spending of the old  
 
and the frantic accumulation of the new.
Your mind will flow per usual
 
but give your thoughts little heed,
like a radio left on in the next room.
 
There’s no waiting here; no hope for the future;
not a speck of ambition – all yields of duality,
 
abandoned as you enter where the mind cannot go.
Miss not the briefest chance to thoughtlessly observe, release,
 
absorb and be absorbed.  Surrender to and participate in,
as best you might, the eternal, original Oneness
 
which appears (we are told)
ever before you and has forever been
 
(as you sit in your seeming isolation
and stillness) the sum total of your existence.
 
O child of God, what a river of words you use
to describe routine, recurring moments of quiet fealty.    

 

Like Margaret in the courtyard

Like Margaret in the courtyard                                                                        
 
One lover at a time allowed at Arti
bowing down in the Tomb, darshan
 
an intimate coupling – Meher Baba privately
inviting each lover:  May I have this dance?
 
And each receptive soul, focused and participatory,
taken up in His arms for a timeless while,
 
a whirling embrace, a precisely accomplished series of steps
(like Margaret in the courtyard of Villa Fiorenza)
 
then turned out beyond His door again
to stumble down the Hill and into the world
 
of separation, thought and evaluation
but left with yet another heartening interlude
 
and memory of the Master’s unparalleled
concern, command, agility and flow.
 
O child of God, darshan is not so much
about petition as it is about participation. 

Blue-skinned Avatar

Blue-skinned Avatar                                                                                        
 
He played His flute for me –
Krishna at my window.
 
I listened enrapt, note for note,
slipping into a reverie, wondering
 
about this Hindu, blue-skinned Avatar.
Tried to remember what I’d learned
 
over the years of His various escapades
and the teaching stories, His methods and purpose.
 
How might this Piper and His melody
effect my own liberation and escape?
 
The music ceased.  Krishna turned away,
over the rise and gone from sight –
 
leaving me in a silent, wistful solitude,
the memory fading of Love’s sweet lilt,
 
I, not yet ripe, having failed to respond
wholeheartedly to His numinous invitation.   
 
O child of God, mind is the culprit, say the Mystics –
the self-involved, misapplication of thought.

An improbable faith

An improbable faith                                                                                         
 
Go through life, per the zen maxim,
like a bird through the sky – fearless;
 
no path ahead; not a trace left behind;
its sufficient little birdbrain
 
never quite perceiving itself
as distinct from the vast emptiness
 
through which it flies,
upheld and guided by nothing
 
but an improbable faith in the adequacy
of its own intuitive, hollow-boned,
 
feather-clad construction
and the incessant informing and instruction
 
it receives from the Mystery that it is
and is ever moving through.
 
O child of God, don’t let these collected images
become dead weight and pin you to the ground.

 

A clockwork arrangement

A clockwork arrangement                                                                               
 
Silent seem the stars in their vigil,
no ear near enough to hear their roaring. 
 
The sentinel moon shows its face, 
a clockwork arrangement of shadow and light –
 
mute testimony of our estrangement
and God’s abiding faithfulness. 
 
It is He Who has sent Himself
on this terrestrial journey;
 
He Who chooses the path beneath His feet
as He gathers and guides Himself toward home. 
 
Infinite and solitary by nature and definition,
there’s no room anywhere for anyone else. 
 
No self means no other. 
No child but the Father.
 
O child of God, sometimes
all you can do is hold the pen.

Wordlessly

Wordlessly                                                                                                      
 
Tongues are wagging, pundits of every stripe
flooding the market with worldly wisdom.
 
And what advice are we gleaning
from the wisest people on the planet –
 
the accomplished, the expert, the scholarly,
the lauded, the powerful and famous?  
 
Do they proclaim foremost
the sovereignty and reality of God?
 
There is nothing to know, said my Lord.
Wordlessly transmitted (say the Mystics),
 
Truth is neither spoken nor heard. 
Neither spoken nor heard. Only experienced. 
 
O child of God, your daily fill of data  
has nothing to do with Truth.

The answer

The answer                                                                                                      
 
The problem with this poetry
is that it’s riddled with words –
 
a conundrum shot full of holes;
a leaky vessel letting in, perhaps,
 
a scattering of light but sinking
ultimately under the weight
 
of its own inconsistencies.
I want to wash my hands of it;
 
wash my mouth out with soap,
but I’m stuck like ink to the page.
 
The riddle’s inside me and there’ll be
no peace until it’s solved, the answer
 
shining through each contradiction
in all its inexpressible glory.
 
O child of God, what is there to say?
Truth is not comprised of explanations.

 

An icy stream

An icy stream                                                                                                  
 
Thoughts come and go. 
I acknowledge them,
 
more with a nod than an embrace,
remaining attentive to the task at hand,
 
the focus always upon my simply being. 
The mind, again and again,
 
being led back from where it strays –
to the peace, the posture, the breath and senses.
 
Like men crossing an icy stream – how cautious!
avowed Lao Tzu, speaking of the old sages,
 
minds ever upon the task and just how and where
their feet are positioned amid the rushing water. 
 
To allow their attention to roam during
this critical passage is to court disaster.  
 
O child of God, rather than write
about zazen, ardently practice it.  

Seventy-one

Seventy-one                                                                                                     
 
In this dream (per Meher), today is my birthday.
It doesn’t feel like I’ve dreamed myself
 
for seventy-one years.  It’s more like
I’ve dreamed, upon waking this morning,
 
that I am seventy-one; dreamed my identity
and tacitly all that’s gone before.
 
No abiding self, said the Buddha, and at times
the idea has struck me that I’m never older
 
than a mere millisecond.  And never will be.
Anyway, I threw a party with cake and candles
 
and in the midst of the celebration,
I pretended to be an old man.
 
O child of God, ignorant yourself of absolutely everything,
why not embrace a faith in the Knower of all?

A rough metaphor

A rough metaphor                                                                                           
 
Love personified You’ve been called,
God in human form and it’s heart-stirring
 
to view the beauty of Your young flesh
and the majesty of Your latter years. 
 
Yet, one day we shall move beyond
that flesh and beauty, that majesty,
 
to see You as You really are.
Love’s personification and incarnation
 
is but a rough metaphor, a comely veil
to be removed, the scales dropped
 
before we can behold the imperceptible Mystery
which binds us to That of which God is made.
 
O child of God, gaze upon the perfect human
and steal a glimpse of Love divine.

At cycle's end

At cycle’s end                                                                                                  
 
You even put it into prayer –
the plea for God to help us
 
hold fast to Your damaan
when, as You predicted,
 
things got rough at cycle’s end
and how easy it would be  
 
to lose our grip in the upheaval
of a world turned right side up.
 
And God has provided us, in silent aid and answer,
with no one and nothing else to cling to but You.
 
O child, God has backed you into a corner
so you might face Him at last.

A sliver of God

A sliver of God                                                                                                
 
A mighty faith, once it’s bestowed,
of yourself as a sliver of God, instills then
 
a life freely tendered, an earnest pilgrimage
from self to Self.  Fear, doubt dissipated;
 
pain stoically endured, merely the requirements
of a rough transition from one to the Other
 
as more and more you gain the perspective
of Who you really are
 
and Who you really serve,
becoming and offering yourself –
 
a unique and priceless gift –
to the Source and Recipient of all such gifts. 
 
O child!  God wishes to explore His consciousness
and you are at the crux of that encounter.   

 

Near drowning

Near drowning                                                                                                
 
Your Tomb flooded that day.
I didn’t drown, the love level
 
not quite reaching my chin.  Instead,
You turned me back out,
 
set me adrift in this illusory world,
my toes never again to touch bottom.
 
I’ve moved with the tides ever since,
ebb and flow, wane and crest
 
churning up a ceaseless longing
for Your fathomless depths.
 
I’m drifting out now to face You
at whatever speed and direction You pull,
 
not the least impatient; not nostalgic
for that long ago near drowning,
 
Your companionship and solace all I need
to keep me afloat until love drags me under.
 
O child of God, all that you are, every thought,
word and deed, is God in disguise.

Serenade your Beloved

Serenade your Beloved                                                                                    
 
A lifetime of blindly wounding my wings
on the bars of the cage.  Now I’m settled
 
on my rightful perch – heart steadied;
mind attentive, body motionless,
 
throat aflutter with songs to my Beloved
of praise and complaint, bewilderment and longing,
 
awaiting the thunderclap which will propel me
through the open door, the unbarred window,
 
into the sunlight, green freedom
and blue skies beyond.
 
O child of God, serenade your Beloved
empty of impatience, fear and desire.

The perilous voyage home

The perilous voyage home                                                                               
 
Bound to the mast by his crew,
their ears with beeswax plugged,
 
Odysseus endured the full import
and sweet torture of the Sirens’ song
 
until his ship had sailed beyond
the reach of their enticements.
 
These days I pray likewise, my Lord –
lash me to a sturdy spar,
 
the allurements of my karmic impulses
and the self’s deceptive schemes surveyed,
 
fully noted, yet ignored and survived,
as their honeyed songs sweep ineffectually over me,
 
fading at last, wind-tossed and enfeebled,
in the ship’s wake upon a vast and silent sea.
 
O child, let God’s strength and wisdom will out
on the long and perilous voyage home.

 

A timeless while

A timeless while                                                                                              
 
Soon another adventure to brave and endure,
a fresh human milieu to explore – reincarnating,
 
to learn (so they say) certain lessons
when the only real lesson
 
is that we are not our selves but God.
‘God on a Whim’, said Meher, ‘asked Who am I?’
 
And our existence is the tentative answer
by the gradual revelation of who we are not.
 
And since God is everything
(even that which He is not),
 
it seems we are in for a rather lengthy,
painful, convoluted and circular journey
 
of constant failures, until and only
by God’s grace and Whim
 
we complete our individual destinies and rest
for a timeless while in Him as the One.
 
O child of God, calm your peripatetic soul
by immersing it in the pacificity of the moment.

The One You say we are

The One You say we are                                                                                 
 
Some apparently find You just by sitting –
fading away cross-legged into nothingness.
 
I’m a bit too rambunctious for that.
Or maybe it’s just too early in the game.
 
When I consider the stress of eternity
and my capacity for pain, I note
 
from this prayer rug on which I teeter
that I possess neither the courage
 
nor strength to shoulder the burden. 
If we are ever to become
 
the One You say we are, it will not
happen from my coming to You
 
but from You gracefully encompassing me.
And so with great relief and trepidation
 
I endeavor to still and settle myself,
release this fist of nothingness
 
I less and less consider myself to be
and hand it all so lovingly over to You.
 
Sitting quietly (o child!), doing nothing,
(wrote Basho), Spring comes . . . .

A foot in the door

A foot in the door                                                                                            
 
My windows are barred, doors bolted.
It’s a bad neighborhood.
 
No one gets in; I seldom venture out. 
But something recently has happened – 
 
after a long spell of determined
knocking and melodious patter,
 
some persuasive salesman
with all his wondrous wares
 
has gotten His foot in the door,
allowing for a budding companionship
 
and a dazzling shaft of the Spring day beyond.
I suspect now that this mortal world, inside and out,
 
is not what I have known and feared;
my ages-old imprisonment and estrangement
 
being (quite possibly) a meaningful, essential,
temporary prelude to an expansive and glorious destiny.
 
O child of God, sample His heartening wares.
It’s not hope He’s selling, but truth and faith.

I come to You still

I come to You still                                                                                          
 
Ask for nothing You say and ashamedly,
after all these years, I come to You still,
 
out of suffering and fear, my Lord,
with a brazen request –
 
let me know that Saint Francis moment
when with one quaking embrace,
 
the leper becomes the Christ –
shame becomes triumph, fear becomes love.
 
Let the falsity who is me, through Your fire,
turn to dust rather than suffer the usual putridity.
 
I commit the sin of hope (I know),
wishing relief from Your onslaught
 
not by abeyance, Lord, but by
the ultimate culmination of Your task.

O child of God, your words reveal a lack of faith. 
Love doesn’t ask, Meher said.  Love doesn’t ask.

 

Taking Your Word for it

Taking Your Word for it                                                                                 
 
Here I am engaged again in proving
the poverty of myself; the paucity of my faith.
 
Issued from a cramped hand
and the fist of a heart, these poems
 
shaped by contrariness and preference, habit and fear.
Audacious references, ignorant and wistful,
 
are made to love, taking Your Word for it.    
Taking Your Word for it, finding no real proof
 
among the worldly shadow-shapes
nor the chronic aridity of my own domain.
 
O child, throw down your walking cane
that you might grip more tightly the Godman’s hand.
  

A silent stillness

A silent stillness                                                                                               
 
Shoot ‘til you run out of arrows, He said.
Then, we can have a heart to heart.
 
Fill your dance card
but don’t forget who ‘brung ya’.
 
Stop tugging at your end of the rope.
Your obsessions no longer have any fire.
 
Your villains have fled by the light of day
or become the shadows of a moonstruck elm.
 
Turn to Me for your midnight solace or else
mount a fresh horse and ride farther into oblivion.
 
O child of God, once you let go the rope,
the bell will come to a sheer, silent stillness.

Sweet freefall

Sweet freefall                                                                                                   
 
Per usual, I float in the wild blue yonder,
upholding myself by sheer imagination,
 
a kite in the grip of a childish hand.
I keep myself collected;
 
imitate normality enough
to pass casual inspection;
 
maintain tentatively my lonely,
exhausting and fearsome vigil,
 
all the while (lately) being encouraged
to let go, unhand – experience the ultimate,
 
(promised) sweet freefall into somewhere
beyond imagination and conception.
 
O child of God, find the truth of your predicament
by the ending of it (and yourself) once and for all.

Papier-mâché

Papier-mâché                                                                                                   
 
One day you might find the truth
you have consistently failed to live up to
 
is not the truth at all; the paradigm
allotted to you, your world and self view,
 
the bringer of such recurring misery,
is merely a construct of sticks and stems,
 
water-based glue and papier-mâché.
One day you might find that the celebrated elite 
 
have led you so far from the mark,
so determinedly trekking in the wrong direction,
 
that the only heart-fitting course remaining for you
is to stop where you are; to be irrevocably left behind.
 
O child of God, get lost enough to find that Meher
has long ago taken you by the hand.

Along the way

Along the way                                                                                                 
 
I joined a caravan headed for the Promised Land;
walked a time with the remaining witnesses;
 
learned from its elders; absorbed the satsang
of fellow wanderers and seekers, and then
 
was surprisingly led (by Whom I can’t say)
onto a barely discernible footpath
 
somewhat at odds with the direction
of that earnest, determinedly joyful band.
 
I find myself now (not quite) alone,
the destination a less-than-vital culmination.
 
My lone Companion is providing me with rudiments
along the way of that which I hope to find
 
in abundance at journey’s end; intermittently
revealing to me, immediate and essential,
 
the sanctity and rightness of my soul and self
on this seemingly tangential way.
 
O child of God, the paths to God (say the Mystics)
are as numerous as the souls of men.

 

Strewn with roses

Strewn with roses                                                                                           
 
You and I are not we but One.
O what a sweet promise from my Lord
 
until I hear Him pledge
the same to my nemeses –
 
those of whom I rant and rail
and oppose most virtuously;
 
Not we but One.  Not ourselves but Self. 
Not you and I but Him.  Make it your mantra
 
(He advises) until you are able to love and embrace
those who in your sanctimony you now cannot.
 
O child of God, did you think the path
to Meher is strewn with roses?