The fruit sublime

The fruit sublime

 
Climb out farther on the limb,
the utmost ends,
 
where the sublime fruit grows,
only the rare ones eat –
 
assorted birds, extraordinary climbers,
graceful, long-throated beasts.
 
You’ve been rooted too long in the shadows,
settling for the ordinary. 
 
Climb where the limbs splay and sag
under your weight;
know the body’s full price. 
 
Your soul, fed on such fruit, eventually
will leave this entanglement 
 
and with the birds soar
the farthest reaches of the sky.
 
O child of God, you’ll transcend this realm,
when you’ve developed a taste for the fruit sublime.

The cross within my chest

The cross within my chest                                                                     
 
You gave me three sons,
an inkling of the grandeur and price
 
You pay for loving Your children.
As they leave my door, I pray for them
 
to move unscathed through a world
of torment and deceit.
 
Suffering is prasad – they must surely
drink from that cup
 
but, nothing reveals so starkly
the paucity of my faith,
 
the cross within my chest,
as these three figures
 
disappearing over the horizon.
Like Joseph, I know – I’m not the Father.
 
Like Abraham, I’m torn between
love and trust; terror and surrender –
 
the intersection of such extremes
roughly joined and nailed beneath my flesh.
 
O child of God, teach by example.
Strong faith will inspire your sons to courage.

A suspect scarlet

A suspect scarlet                                                                         

The ink fades
on the paper even as I write.
 
I long to dip my pen into the heart’s well
and stain these pages with blood!
 
Romantic words, but what do they mean?
Once it breaks the surface, blood turns
 
from its true color to a suspect scarlet.
The Beloved knows every complaint
 
and praise before they soak the paper.
His fare is the wordless poetry of your true Being.
 
These ghazals are His gift to you. 
Read them carefully.
 
O child of God, put as little of yourself as possible
into these poems and refrain from judgment.

A fortress

A fortress          

Stripped to the waist, hair tied back,

lean and sweaty, the mandali at Your elbow

 

as You labored to build a fortress

where thousands of Your lovers gather

to lay hearts and flowers, but for years

the work progressed unacknowledged

and even the mandali had no idea

the foundations You were laying,

the mortar, blood, sweat and stone

encircling that holiest of holy ground ....

Planted in the hillside, Your body

growing a garden built of solid walls,

well-rooted neem and banyans,

crisscrossed paths Your feet wore down;

 

established by Love and ardor to endure

for as long as forever needs to be.

O child of God, He spent a lifetime laying stones

for the years to come without His human form.

Sweet on the tongue

Sweet on the tongue

They gave You a name,
nectar in our mouths --

they called You Mercy.
Other names would have sufficed --

Purity ... Valor ... Fidelity --
but not quite hit the mark.

Mercy is what we're begging for
with Your name on our lips.

O Meher -- Compassionate One,
sweet on the tongue,

the sacred Rose around which
a multitude of nightingales --

Your name in their throats --
gathers and sings, hoping to catch Your ear.

O child of God, the Beloved has a thousand names.
Call Him by the one that drips like sugar 
          from your lips and tongue.

                      (from A Jewel in the Dust)

Abandoned houses

Abandoned houses

Tonight my heart’s fire rages; nothing to do

but throw myself in the river flowing at my Beloved’s feet.

Once, I drifted free as a ghost.  Now I am rooted in holy soil

like the banyan trees on the path to my Beloved’s door.

Under a dormant sky, the restless ocean heaves and sighs.

How can the gulls, darting here and there, ever fathom its depths?

Windows of a long-shuttered room have been thrown open –

to fresh air and sunlight, music and laughter . . . .

Important people of the world, sleep on – moving about

in your dreams; jabbing the air with your fingers.

The mandali are giving out holy prasad.  Those old bodies

remind me of abandoned houses the winds blow through.

O child of God, your heart resides within His heart;

wherever your willfulness leads, remember, the Beloved

          goes with you.

                                           (from The Garden of Surrender, 2004)

Your sound is the silence

Your silence is the sound

Your silence is the sound of the heart’s surrender,

the dissolution of the ego structure,

the speechless wonder of the mind

when God steps through the door.

It is the sound of a lover’s deep gaze,

a tear sliding down the cheek;

the silence of a pilgrim sinking to his knees,

after so long a journey, before the Tomb of his Lord.

O Beloved, Your sound is the silence of the Tomb itself,

          closed for the night;

the silence of the painted images on its holy, stone walls.

O child of God, why speak of silence?

The Beloved speaks eternally within the human heart.

                                      (from The Garden of Surrender, 2004)