Of resolution and
resurrection
Beauty becomes a quiet
comfort
in the latter years,
giving of its depth
and essence without
intentions or purpose,
earning our honor and
attention
by virtue of its mere
existence.
One day Truth will be
like that.
We’ll cling to it even
through
the most bitter of
circumstances,
the most fearsome grief
because it lies
so purely, so resolutely
beyond our grasp.
It will taste medicinal
by then –
of resolution and
resurrection.
One day Truth will come
to our door
so pure, so vulnerable,
so lovely
it will be beyond us
to ever deny it anything.
O child of God, pray for
the day truth, love and beauty
all are expressed by the
same silent word.
Elegy
Not a word of scripture
to be quoted
over these bones but, at
graveside,
he would have tolerated a
short, silent prayer.
He took it as it came;
for what it was worth.
Good for the sake of
righteousness.
Honest in the cause of
truth.
Brave for honor’s sake.
Kind by decree of the
human heart.
He’d put aside any
fanciful notions
of heavenly reward or his
possible rebirth –
(he was convinced of his
own annihilation)
and thus, resolutely, he
went to his death.
Quietly cherishing joy,
enduring the pain,
he came closer to
surrender
than any religious man I
know. If he lacked anything,
it was the imagination
and longing to be anything
other than the man he
was.
As they lower his body
now into the grave
I am struck by how
closely
a coffin resembles a
crib.
O child of God, to surrender
is to yield,
earnestly and humbly, to
your destiny.
Chanji
He found you in Chowpatty
washed up on the beach
by life’s betrayals,
cruel vicissitudes.
You were ready to drown
by then,
hopeless, not caring if
you lived or died.
He persuaded you
to go a-travelin’ with
Him.
Apparently, the Way is so
narrow
there’s only room for one
to walk it at a time
which doesn’t mean
we go it alone
but that we must stay
hard on the heels
of our traveling
companion.
Chanji, by the end of his
days,
was one with You, ready
for drowning,
hopeless, not caring if
he lived or died
as long as it pleased his
Master.
O child of God, nothing
ever changes . . . it just gets larger –
more height, breadth and
depth than we could ever imagine.
Waiting in the wings
The moon is a disc, not a
sphere.
Flat as the earth; the
sea
pasted onto the bottom of
the sky;
stars poking through a
threadbare canvas.
I’ve turned away from the
latest backdrop,
heading toward the
interior.
It’s all to be pulled
down anyway
at the performance’s end.
We flow through time
apparently
but, also, time flows
through us,
life delivered daily to
our door.
How could I ever cease to
exist?
If I cease, existence
ceases, the void
once more reigns and even
then
I’ll be waiting in the
wings.
The scenery incessantly
changes but still
I stride the stage,
emoting, aggrandizing,
gesticulating, playing it
to the hilt.
O child of God, follow
the script.
The pageant is endless;
without resolution.
(drawing by Rich Panico)
The last resort
Most people come to You
(You have said) as a last
resort.
There’s a fundamental
wounding
in coming to You, a
violation of the self
in even our most timid of
intimacies with God
or any of His
manifestations.
In Your infinite mercy,
You draw us past
our intuited fear and
allow us our first
quavering steps toward
annihilation,
gathering us in, tucking
us under Your wing.
But, even after we become
Your lovers,
years later, we often
come to You
in pain and fear only
when our most familiar
worldly comforts have
been tried,
exhausted and found
wanting,
our last resort yet . . .
because
within every surrender,
every intimacy with God,
incrementally, now and
then, here and there,
moment to moment, there
is a fundamental
wounding, a violation of
the self as we move
so timidly – a gesture, a
word, a few steps,
an embrace – closer to
our own annihilation.
O child of God, come unto
the Ancient One,
the last resort, the
final refuge of the soul.
(Drawing by Rich Panico)
Love interest
Existence You compare to
a motion picture
with God playing every
role.
You, of course, are the
love interest.
When Your face hits the
screen
every pulse quickens.
Let the storylines get too
sad, predictable
and You are thrown into
the mix,
to stir up the plot by
espousing
the most difficult task
in existence.
Love God, You say. Love God.
Again and again, You
enter the picture
to round out and soften
God’s rough edges, awaken
the human heart to
love. To love.
You make it easy -- so
that we might begin
our arduous approach to
God;
to love God, to become
God,
to become God the
Beloved.
O child of God,
impossible to love the self;
next to impossible to
love the Self.
In the drink
Everyone is in the drink
–
laboring to keep their
heads above water;
no piece of solid real
estate
in this vast sea of
illusion
upon which to make a
stand,
gain a foothold – a
perspective, stability, bearings.
Some are swift and fancy
swimmers,
others fat and lightly
floating,
some sink like stones
but,
everyone, everyone, is in
the drink,
paddling about, waiting
for the One
Who walks upon water;
Who surveys the horizon
and sets the course;
Who offers navigation,
buoyancy, consolation;
truth, hope, explanation.
Be kind, o child, and
dubious,
studious and soft-spoken;
be clear-headed,
one-pointed, alert.
O child of God, everyone
is in the drink
until they drown in the
Ocean of Love.
The illusion of God’s
absence
The rich have their
diamonds and pearls;
the poor – the moon and
stars;
the pauper emerges from a
cramped hovel,
peers upward into a
starry night
going on forever. Upon every doorstep –
the infinite sky, the
eternal now,
filling us up everywhere
we turn
upon the spectrum of
agony to ecstasy.
The Lord is our shepherd
– we shall not want.
Every brimful moment – we
shall not want.
No one is slighted; no
one goes without.
Our inheritance – our
just and proper due –
life in minutia, in all
extremes,
the essence and price of
being human.
Preference creates the
illusion of want. Judgment
and desire create the
illusion of God’s absence.
O child of God, cultivate
indiscriminate gratitude;
purchase Oneness with the
jewel of desirelessness.
O child of God, in the
stone’s crevice
shall bloom the perfect
rose.
Just shining
You are the Light of the
world
and light makes no
sound. It just shines.
Those who couldn’t see
the Light asked for words.
You pointed out certain
arrangements
resembling the Light and later
wrung from the air
approximations that
delighted Your lovers –
they printed up cards,
pamphlets,
magazines and books. How sad for You,
at times, also, for the
Mandali, Your flesh ablaze,
eyes aglow, the roaring
fire inside
and Your lovers in their
blind faith
praise and bow and
plaintively beseech You
for descriptions of the
Light. For evidence,
for instructions; for
intimations,
for directions to the
Light. O my Lord,
You are the Light of the
world
and You took birth to
shine Your Truth,
silently; silent – just
shining. Just shining.
O child of God, he who is
blind, let him
muck about in the
business of words.
Ottoman
I consulted a dictionary,
thick as any gravestone,
the meaning of each word
only given in terms of
other words
whose meanings must also
be
looked up and so
around and around we go
--
illusory, inclusive world
of words
created by barking,
braying,
warbling and lamenting,
cooing and crooning,
flesh-throated human beings –
our wordiness letting no
truth in edgewise.
Your love I find
inexplicable, indefinable, unutterable –
Your love – all You ever
talked about (in Your silence).
Silence I dare not keep –
the truth of myself
might shine forth for all
to see. I dare not shine.
I dare not embrace, so I
go home
and write a poem about
shining, embracing –
a pillow made of my
dictionary,
an ottoman of my
phonebook.
O child of God, words
never tell the Truth
yet, they are the only
means at your disposal.
God was born
God was born (as any
lover will attest)
at David Sassoon Hospital
in Pune, India
more than a century ago
now. That is to say,
God entered the mortal
realm an embryo in a womb –
vulnerable, dependent,
miniscule and yet, growing
inexorably toward
fruition. Nothing can hold back God;
His precisely scheduled
manifestation.
Even Jesus (of the
ascension and the miraculous birth)
began a floating fish in
a woman’s belly.
O seeker of God, God is
within you,
right now -- (it’s
how He enters the realm).
Within you –vulnerable,
dependent, miniscule, yes,
but growing every moment,
inexorably toward fruition.
And, in the course of His
love and law,
He shall outgrow the
flesh that encapsulates Him,
transcend the mind that
ensnares and escape
forever the narrow,
bedimmed, illusory confines
of your self. O seeker, nothing can hold back
the God within you nor
prevent His destined,
precisely scheduled
manifestation.
O child of God, where is
your patience? Everyone –
Meher Baba says –is
destined for the supreme goal.
O faith of mine
O faith of mine, o faith,
I run through you daily.
I run through you with
feet of clay –
like running with a kite
over the hardscrabble
landscape,
until the wind can catch
it
and I can stop, stand my
ground,
sufficient tension upon
the string
to keep the kite
effortlessly floating.
O faith of mine, o faith
of sticks and paper,
string and wire,
I manage you warily,
hands cupped in prayer.
You are my icon, my
silent, bright relic.
You bind my life together
at the end of this line –
my gathered, disparate,
quavering self –
and keep my face turned
upward
toward the floating,
moon-like, bright-shining
kite above the
hardscrabble turf.
O child of God, faith is
the evidence of God’s mercy –
the inward concern turned
outward.
In lieu of silence
In lieu of silence, I
offer this poem.
In lieu of surrender, I
offer this prayer.
Unable with my whole
heart to praise You,
I compose these poems of
praise,
mitigated by inquiry and
complaint;
by words themselves. In lieu of conviction,
I assiduously examine and
guard my faith,
lest a wall should crumble,
a foundation crack.
In my lack of poise,
I lay at Your feet my
desperation
and because my obedience
is so shaky,
I repeat constantly my
repentances
for the breaking of my
high-minded vows.
I can’t live up to Your
measure
but, You are the measure. It is You
for Whom I break my own
silence,
reaching out of my shell
with petitions,
questions, grievances and
grief.
You are the Hub around
which my thoughts,
my being revolve in this
mad, whirling experience
in which I find myself
and hope,
one day, to lose myself
and find You.
O child of God, when a
poem breaks your heart
you know you’ve moved a
smidgen closer to the core.
A shared life
The island of the
zygote
floating minuscule and
fragile;
the fetus in the womb –
so vulnerable, so
vulnerable.
The island in my head –
so insubstantial,
so subjective; me inside
my skin – so mortal;
the island in my chest –
so isolated, so lonely.
White spit of sand in the
middle
of a dark blue sea until
the Ocean Itself
leaves footprints along
the shore.
Accustom yourself, its
pattern reads,
to a shared life. And for years now,
my island fortress has
been shrinking
under the determined
elements of truth –
wild winds, brutal
storms, the heavy seas.
When every place you
trust underfoot is gone;
everything you thought
solid proven flimsy,
the truth will swim into
view –
truth to drown in; truth
vast as the Ocean
encircling your sad and
dwindling little island.
O child of God, everyone
is an island
until reclaimed by the
Ocean of Love.
Head over heels
To indicate the effect
breaking His silence
would have upon the
world,
Meher Baba once cupped
His hands
to form a globe and then,
deftly, flipped it over.
Why shouldn’t I believe
Him?
Secure within the
predictable
and familiar orbits and
juxtapositions
of various touchstones
and landmarks,
well-accustomed to the
daunting pattern
of stars spinning above
my head,
the dependable earth
beneath my feet,
my Lord, mercifully,
upended my world,
set me upon a path
through foreign territory –
everything new, strange
and oddly out of whack.
Even today, years later,
whenever I come close
to regaining my
equilibrium, re-acquiring my bearings,
with a swift sweep of His
hand, He clears the playing board.
He once formed a globe
with His hands and then, flipped it.
Upside down, someone said,
interpreting the gesture.
No, He wryly
corrected. Right side up!
O child of God, celebrate
the moment you fell
head over heels in love
with your Beloved.
Where do I go?
Where do I go to get my
innocence back?
O fresh-cheeked, joyous,
clear-eyed boy!
Shall I break the news to
you?
I sold you out – ages
ago, for shining trifles.
Innocence strewn and
squandered,
compliance wheedled and
coaxed –
secret indulgences,
anonymous compromises,
a whisper and a hope . .
. and all for love;
all for love but I lacked
the courage.
Beaten up, pasted over,
trampled under,
I betrayed you and failed
you and here you are again,
o innocent one, forgiving
me, begging me to come clean.
I have no promises to
make. It will take courage;
all the courage I never
had –
the countless moments of
truth
that came and went and
found me wanting.
Where do I go to find
that courage?
To get my innocence
back?
Here, said my Beloved.
Come here. Come to Me.
O child of God, your
pretenses worn threadbare,
let your humble, homely
truth shine through.
The business of love
I love you more, said Meher Baba,
than you could ever love
yourself.
My self not in the
business of love –
neither payments nor
debts;
my self – the absence of
love
and love – the absence of
self.
Not finding love within
ourselves, we look to other selves –
who look to us across the
great divide.
The love of which my Lord
speaks
offers neither barter nor
bargain –
love not because of what
we might give
(or receive) but what
might empty us,
what might make room, make
room –
make room for Love; make
room for God.
O child of God, what is
this business of love?
Meher says it’s the
essence of your being.
Wrens and sparrows
I write my poetry on a
crust of bread
I found in the bottom of
my pouch,
dropping crumbs along the
path
for the wrens and
sparrows.
I won’t be coming back
this way and no one will
follow
into this particular plot
of trees.
The woods are deep. I’ll write
as long as the light
holds out.
God illumines the path
only one step at a time
and my own torch has been
thrown down.
It’s like a crust of
bread –
the moon above the
horizon.
My mortal existence is a
crust of bread.
This poem is dedicated
to the wrens and
sparrows.
I wish I had more to
give.
O child of God, venture
where there is blitheness
in dissolution; unalloyed
bliss in obliteration.
Too much like death
You lived in
silence. I can’t abide it.
Too much like death. Even while
lying motionless and mute
in the casket
You’ve so lovingly
fashioned for me,
my mind is stubbornly
asking questions,
roaming the known
parameters.
I climbed in willingly
enough.
Made myself
comfortable.
I don’t regret it. But this protracted interment
is as stylized and boring
as any funeral ever was
and still I haven’t the
courage
to clamp down the lid
long enough
for You to sink the
nails.
You came not to teach but
to awaken.
Lucky for me – because I
never seem to learn.
And, instead of holding
onto Your damaan,
being dragged pell-mell
into the Infinite-Eternal,
I hold tightly to the ragged shirttail
of this wanton, roaring
world; the sad
and flustered illusion of
my false self.
O child of God, hold your
tongue and let
Meher’s silence become
your last triumphant shout.
