Note: Some poetry from 2021-2022 are unlisted in the Index of Titles.
Like dust and ash
O to become a grain of dust
which bears no guilt or shame;
no vows to break, nor strategies to fail,
no decisions to make nor burdens to shoulder;
no crumbling castles; no fire, nor blood
among the lowly and least significant.
But I’m hung up in the in-between,
a tethered man stuffed with straw,
praying for Meher’s glance
to set me aflame. If
I can’t be dust,
perhaps a speck of dhuni ash floating gently
upward on the Meherabad breeze.
O child of God, desire to be,
like dust and ash, free from all desire.
True and false
I am your one true Friend, said Meher.
Which means, I gather, all my other friends
are false (and vice versa); false
in a heedless, human sort of way.
God have mercy on our faithless little selves
as we try to piece and hold the world together,
toe the mark, keep the faith, imitate the Christ
and practice the holy Presence of God;
as we try to grasp the skirt of the one true Friend –
true as in faithful
and true as in the only One beyond falsity,
weakness, ignorance and illusion.
O child of God, escape the duplicity of this world
by entering the realm of the Other.
God’s in love
Do you want to find God?
Apparently, He’s near at hand –
in your own heart, for example.
God’s in there (I’m told) – in love.
God’s in love. In
yours and mine.
Take and give it freely, where you find it,
within and without. Ladle
it out in full measure.
Where to find God? God’s
in love.
O child, God is not a noun.
God is a verb.
Empty-handed
It wasn’t until life got the best of me
(I’m ashamed to say), that I came to my Lord,
empty-handed save for a bit of that hard won
humility He had requested from the first.
Came to the dead end of a long road
at the rim of a desert I was loathe to cross alone.
Then all His love talk came back to me.
His promise became my solace.
A patchwork faith (by His grace),
an ounce of patience; scant courage
and a modicum of obedience;
still bereft of the love that should be there.
But I’ll leave that to Him, having not a clue
what it is or how to go about acquiring it.
O child of God, lay down your trophies.
Love is not reward for a job well done.
The skirt of eternity
Hand held as a child returning home
still excited, stiff-necked
from the thundering fireworks
above the city green, light years
below the immutable constellations.
In my children’s eyes later,
viewing their gunshot rise, arc and flare,
reflections, sighs, barely looking up,
where once it had burned me
deeper and lasted longer.
Now traipsing out an old man,
the lonely, tree-shaped, silent nights
to view only the ordinary and trustworthy,
perfectly-aligned comets, moon, planets and stars.
O child of God, ignore the passing fancies;
grab onto the skirt of eternity.
The dark heavens
To view the stars in all their glory,
abandon the bright city for the dark hills.
Step off the world-worn path
and lie bewildered in the fresh greenery,
your back to the rotating earth.
Don’t waste your vision grouping the stars
into constellations and reciting
their schoolbook, man-given names.
View them freshly as you did
on your first glimpse of their atavistic beauty –
a scattering of pearls against the dark heavens,
an everpresent gift from God to His children,
the very elements and evidence of God’s
brilliance, might, vigilance and mercy.
O child of God, to search for the Light,
blow out your candle.
(photo by Petra Fischer)
God’s vibrant fluidity
Circling the sun, our revolving earth,
even as we speak ceaselessly hurtling through space.
The star of our sun in motion also
through the great universal expansion.
Why then imagine your meditative body
folded into a static posture,
anchored to one spot on the earth’s crust?
Meditation is not for keeping still but for dissolving,
deliberately and purposefully, into the eternal flow,
moving with, instead of contrary to, God’s vibrant fluidity.
O child of God, the ego pictures itself as an immutable island
in a constant stream of time and space.
A refuge similar
The practice of non-attachment, said Master Dogen,
is not different from full enlightenment
and in its devoted practice, the unenlightened
find a refuge similar and prior to the attainment of Truth.
Just so, the one who becomes a willing slave
of the Avatar exists as an enlightened one –
takes it as it comes; leaves it where it lays.
Not a worry to take root in the fetid soil
of individual fantasy and conjecture.
Anticipation, regret cloud not the view,
accepting the outcome of each moment
as being not a creation of the individual self,
but of the infinite-eternal workings
of the great autonomous Mystery.
O child of God, become a flagstone in His courtyard.
Become a palm leaf under the donkey hooves.
The secret richness
It’s an errant quest, o seeker, the desire for
Knowledge.
The peace of God, wrote Paul, surpasses all understanding.
I’ve fumbled around on this stage for the last 40 years
trying to pull a rabbit out of an empty hat.
Now I want to become (another desire)
a single mote, o Lord, of the dust
collecting on the bottles in Your cellar.
Dust doesn’t want; doesn’t understand.
Divested of any strength or authority,
neither accedes nor rejects, resists nor accepts,
only to discover in its utter desiccation the secret
richness
and the promised treasure of its true nature.
Whether into the wilderness, o child, or up to
the threshold of the Darbar, dust goes where it is bidden.
