Mercy Flourishing
The reservoir was empty when You arrived,
atop a desolate (but not God-forsaken) landscape.
You gave it the name Mercy Flourishing.
Decades later, the hot winds were still awhirl,
dust coating the paths, porches, withered fields,
green banyans and neems, as I mounted the small hill
to reach Your Tomb and enter Your Immaculacy.
Sometime or another, I thought to bury myself
somewhere deep in that merciful ground
as best I could, but half-covered and mournful,
I couldn’t finish the job.
And now I can never come clean.
Returned to the world, everywhere I go
I’m still caked in the grave dust of Meherabad.
O child of God, it’s not a do-it-yourself task.
Reach a humility that allows His grace to flow.
Makeshift scaffolding
Meher Baba laboring in the body,
established schools, dispensaries, ashrams
and, at their height, abandoned them.
Mere scaffolding, He said, for the real work,
explaining no further.
One day my lifetime’s structures,
including this weathered tent of skin and bones,
shall also be razed, dismantled, dispersed –
things I consider vital, valuable and dear.
The real work having been accomplished,
all the apparent, quite human and temporal activities
shall come to an end, without sufficient explanation,
the makeshift scaffolding irrevocably removed.
O child of God, only the real work matters,
accomplished beyond your efforts and ability to grasp.
Love unadulterated
Eye to eye stand the man-eating tiger and I,
a safety sheet of plexiglass between us;
his ochre eyes gazing nonchalantly
as I admire his glinting tri-colored coat
and the symmetrical arrangement beneath it
of his latent danger, thrilling power and grace.
In the wild, I would enjoy no such beauty,
find no such magic and majesty,
my admiration thwarted by terror.
Daily our vulnerable selves
miss the terrible beauty of God and His creation
for fear of our own pain and demise.
It’s not the world from which
we must be liberated but our attachment
to this human, deeply-held view.
Free from self; free from mind;
free from death and fear,
we shall gain a God’s eye view
and become again capable
of love unadulterated.
O child of God, Meher said where there is fear,
there’s no love.
Where there’s love, there’s no fear.
Where you go to die
Folded body; observing the breath.
Trying to keep a toehold in the here and now
as wave upon wave of illusion crashes over me.
I’ve been told, time and again,
I must live in the now, where the real things are,
but lately I see – the now is where you go to die –
the false self sputtering to a halt
from lack of fuel; thoughts evanescing
before they can take root
and establish fully the ego
where it lives – in the realm
of mind and imagination.
There is only space in the now
for pure consciousness (none for me).
Meditation is a means of acquainting myself
with the reality of my own non-existence
while still tightly wrapped
in the illusion of self.
O child of God, the truth is unclaimed,
everyone cosseted in their own imagination.
Something to be said
There is something to be said for silence
when you’re clamoring to get into heaven.
When you find your entreaties only accentuate the divide;
when the only strategy left is to abandon all
strategies.
A long while ago you discovered there is no why.
Now you’re learning there is no how, no when or where,
only the Who left for investigation, merely a concept,
a designation, unsound in Its true Oneness.
There is something to be said for silence
when you discover the tongue in your skull and mind
will never whisper the Word you need but belongs
to an ancient companion you’ve never really known,
roughly detaining you outside the gates,
keeping you from the truth of Who you really are.
O child of God, it takes many lifetimes for the truth
of Meher to begin its penetration of your habitual view.
The interior
Put away the road map.
You’ve reached the rim
of the interior – uncharted territory.
Echoes of travelers past
are all you have to guide you.
Hang up your boots.
Time to stop begging door to door.
The only footprints in the dust
have turned out to be your own.
But you should no longer be trying
to get from here to there. What you want
is to fade away where you stand,
the trek now a descent from head to heart
taken by someone you don’t even know.
O child of God, become footless
to one day become headless.
Heartstrings
Love. Look it up
in the dictionary
if you care to read a human handful
of pallid descriptions – fondness;
deep affection; enjoyment.
Love – the antonym of hate;
the opposite of fear.
Will that do for an answer?
Or, maybe, love –
the mystery beyond description.
There’s no definition in that crowded book
for that which we are most desperately yearning –
the Word to break our chains;
to pull us up from the muck
by our heartstrings.
O child of God, keep your ear cocked
toward the otherworld silence of Meher.
Bogeyman
Forgive me, Lord, for refusing to forsake myself.
I’m just trying to protect (as You well know)
a child from being crushed by the darkness;
keeping at bay the bogeyman from under the bed.
I believe You (with all my faithless heart),
when You say that it’s only a dream –
still, my childish dreaming goes on.
I can’t shake myself awake.
That will take my Father’s hand, I suppose.
Ask for nothing, You say.
So, obediently, my lips are sealed
but my heart (with which I seem to have no truck),
is ever begging You for comfort and release.
A child who has been forsaken by everyone he trusted
(who, one and all, turned out to be merely human)
(especially me), so I turn to the One
who says He’s above and beyond the human;
who says He is indeed my one true Friend.
O child of God, God is the child, the bogeyman,
the dreamer and the dream. There’s no one else to turn to.
The big top
I got too close to the circus and it lost its charm.
Spied the tease of flesh between the fishnet,
the cheap spangles; the music’s blare;
grunting acrobats, exhausted clowns;
the pervasive beast-and-excrement smell,
the exaggerated theatrics, the sawdust’s filth –
and the glamour was gone forever.
I walked out between the roaring stands
onto a cold spring pasture;
took in the breeze,
a new moon, the countless stars
and have never again been tempted
by the big top’s threadbare glitter
and the empty pitches of the circus touts.
O child of God, once you see the truth of the lie
you can wring no joy from the greatest show on earth.
