Love's mantle

Love’s mantle                                                                                       

O Meher, what have You done? 
You’ve asked to be loved!
 
Such words are spoken
and mankind breaks out
 
the racks and whips, scaffolds,
crosses, blades and chains!
 
O the effrontery!  The blasphemy
              of such a request
coming from Your silent, human mouth!
 
God is Love – You say;
nothing matters but love for God.
 
Nothing matters but love for Love.   
You’ve come not to teach the inexplicable,
 
but, to bestow – and receive – Love  
unfathomably.
 
O child of God, words can’t pierce Love’s mantle,
but one bold act might aright a wayward world.

Soon to blur

Soon to blur                                                                      

There are all sorts of theories about You.
I don’t know what to believe.
 
So, long ago, I stopped believing –
beyond belief . . . beyond disbelief.
 
Rain falls and I don gear to keep me dry.
Where is opinion and belief in that?
 
Mortar holds the bricks together.
Oil lubricates the mechanisms.
 
The eightfold path – a photo taken from space;
no conjectures there.
 
I take my Beloved for granted.
Didn’t He promise – He is always with me? 
 
O pilgrims, I am a raindrop one day to blur into the Ocean.
My opinion is, my opinion is of little consequence –
 
using what works and discarding what fails,
I find my Beloved closer than the vein in my neck.
 
O child of God, drop that six foot pole,
sink to the bottom to find out where you are.

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.

My heart's beatings

My heart’s beatings                                                                  

I swallowed Your wine,

causing me to dance in the streets;

letting my heart slip out a bit

from under the heel of my brain –

the caravanserai licensed again

to traffic in the goods of companionship.

Your wine sings in my blood, years later,

not with the rough immediacy of tavern songs

but with the hymns and psalmodies of praise,

an influence to my every movement,

a blood-part of me, the strength of me,

the heaven’s sake of my heart’s beatings.

When this cup is crushed, when my blood is dust,

(judging the Infinite from the particular), I pray

Your wine will sing through me still,

filling my veins and throat, core and skull

with Your wine and light and song

on my wondrous way to becoming You.

O child of God, wine loosens your tongue and sends you

rambling beyond the bounds of propriety.

Fish out of water

Fish out of water                                                                         

That which is beyond imagination and conception –
call It the Ocean of Love to get a handle on It.
 
I am drawn to the Ocean –
where there’s no friction;
 
no property, no boundaries or partitions.
I’m weary of the animal coming out,
 
in myself and others, barking,
snarling through bared teeth.
 
I’m ready for the flood
to leave us paddling about
 
until we exhaust ourselves
and sink to the bottom.
 
You, of course, were a Fish out of water, a Pisces,
showing us how to be Piscean –
 
moving through this here-and-now
Ocean of Love gracefully strong,
 
lithe, colorful,
eyes unblinking to the Truth,
 
going about Your business –
the silent expression of Who You are.
 
O child of God, the Beloved, closer than your breath,
invites you to drown in His Ocean of Love.

Garment of leaves

Garment of leaves                                                                    

Heart like an apple core –

that’s where the seeds are. 

People take you for a lunatic

but it’s just the inner thunder

giving you that far away look,

(as Adam must have looked,

gazing back across the garden pale),

impeding nimble strides and coherent speech.

What’s a man’s gait anyway,  

but a limping away from his destiny?

Or smooth talk if his seeds are stone?

The crooked path he follows

can only lead back to where he began –

the garden in the chest.    

It’s all there in the core – root, leaf, bark, fruit;

soil, water, sky.  Time makes us think

the apple in our hand is ripe and ready

to sink our teeth into.

O child of God, shed that garment of leaves.

Venture naked into the new world.

A host of angels

A host of angels                                                                         

Billions of souls afloat in the cosmos
and I’m on my way home.
 
Like the brother in the field,
I dropped my scythe where I stood.
 
There’s another harvest I must attend –
where I’ll be cut off at the knees.
 
My horse has gotten a whiff of the barn.
Nothing can keep me now from my Beloved’s gate.
 
My name in His throat, the name He gave me,
ages ago, when I was first sent out --
 
a host of angels over my shoulder
and the highway rising up to greet me.
 
Billions of laboring souls lost in the maze,
          tossing in feverish sleep
and my Beloved has come to awaken me;
 
billions of souls drunken from rage, lust and hate
and my Beloved offering His sobering wine.
 
O child of God, look beyond this ephemeral existence
into the ageless face of your Beloved.