Bend to the work

Bend to the work
 
I have become an enigma to my intimates,
taking a few moments out
 
from their eventful lives
to worry for me, wonder and worry
 
that I am alone so often with You. 
(A precursor, perhaps, to the next phase of the journey.) 
 
3 am and I am awakened again from a light sleep.
I switch on the bedside lamp and scribble down
 
the rudiments of, by Your grace, the next poem
as the world outside moves over and onward,
 
elbows its way into the illusion of a new tomorrow.
O but I am content in my solitude
 
which is not a solitude at all
but a communion and intimacy with You. 
 
O child of God, seal your lips and bend to the work
your Beloved has so graciously granted you.        

    

The Giver of all

The Giver of all
 
He gives me the images and their descriptions.
This is why I’m still here, I suppose, so late in life
 
though the poetry is riddled with my ignorance,
at times belabored and imperfect,
 
yet its construction is the task
set before me and I treasure it. 
 
It is my communion.  I’ve learned, by the way,
that ignorance veils the mind,
 
but leaves the heart untouched.  These words,
of utmost importance, are light as a feather,
 
brief as a sigh, like ink soaking into paper,
like the fleeting import of a cricket’s twitter.
 
He gives me the images and the words
and lets me use this intimacy
 
to feel His presence, His warmth,
to burrow a little deeper into the Mystery.
 
O child of God, is there anything as precious
as an undeserved gift from the Giver of all? 

  

Take me over

Take me over
 
Take me over, comforting warmth, 
as the hours grow short, tomorrows dwindle
 
and the nights are ripe with His presence.
The candle has begun to gutter
 
and the world is reduced to two
before the two become One.
 
The old torch in the chest sizzles and glows,
carried here from a distant fire –
 
a Tomb on a hill eight thousand miles away
and thirty years later and I am alone
 
with a peace beyond my circumstances.
Take me over in this delicious solitude
 
that confirms my faith and foretells of union
not to come later but now – the ever-present, eternal now.
 
Take me over and we shall share
these wordless moments before I am no longer me –
 
I, who never was and never has been
and never will be apart from You.
 
O child of God, burn in the glow,
the silence and warmth of His Presence.   

(painting by Joe DiSabatino)

My God, my God

My God, my God
 
There comes a stretch of the path
where the conversation dies down to a whisper
 
then further dissipates into a comfortable silence.
You are a child again, holding the hand of your Father,
 
(perhaps a father you never had),
trying to match His strides,
 
maintaining a delicious intimacy,
a silent communion with the Silent One. 
 
Your lips are sealed, tongue stolen.
Praise is superfluous, any request an affront.
 
You know there will come again a time
when life will crush a plea from you,
 
perhaps a query – (in good company) 
My God, My God why hath Thou forsaken me?
 
but for a brief spell you possess the aplomb,
the humbling insight that life is too much for you,
 
that the truth of it cannot be contained in words
nor in the bone-encased structure
 
of your understanding.  So you forfeit,
in that fleeting quietude, as much resistance
 
as you can afford with the wish
that one day your surrender
 
will be entire, regardless of any past or future
hardship or loss God has ordained for you.
 
O child of God, savor the sweetness, endure the pain
and hold tightly to the hand of your Father.

(drawing by Rich Panico)

         

God being God

 God being God
 
A dog chasing its tail –
such is our search for God.
 
How tenacious is the ignorance
that cloaks the human mind!
 
I was briefly allowed the illusion of liberty,
the illusion of wandering a bit,
 
but in Reality I’ve never left
God’s fenced-in backyard – 
 
never a moment without His eye upon me;
His hand upon my shoulder.
 
He has allowed me a lifespan of explorations –
of my world and my humanity, 
 
of my loneliness, longing and revelations,
of my fragile attachments and fleeting delights,
 
all seemingly essential components of my adventure.
I might guess in my old age the whys and wherefores
 
but in the end it is God’s secret and all I can
insipidly suggest is that it’s merely God being God.
 
O child of God, cease barking up the wrong tree.
Grow mute enough to hear the voice within.   

The dance of the seven veils

 The dance of the seven veils
 
God awoke after a timeless nap,
stretched Himself and (per Meher) asked
 
Who am I? and thus began
our adventure in corporality.
 
But surely the All-knowing One
knew the answer beforehand!
 
Perhaps, existence is merely God’s
thumbing through an old diary
 
reading it through our mortal eyes, ears,
mouth, nose and skin to revive the narrative.   
 
There may be nothing new under the sun,
but there is also nothing new
 
in the darkness of the Void.  God woke up
to shine a light upon Himself
 
with Maya being central to the plot –
its revelation, conflict and resolution.
 
O child, corporality is the dance of the seven veils.
Be not enchanted by the performance.     

                       

Returned to the Ocean

Returned to the Ocean
 
I live alone but seldom feel lonely.
When I do, I allow my solitude
 
to remind me of the eternal aloneness
and infinite loneliness of God
 
Who created me as His companion.
I haven’t changed much in the last few years.
 
I’ve only become more myself, believing,
at long last, that I am and always have been
 
precisely the way God has ordained me to be –
a curiously structured, affectionally ragtag
 
element of His great scheme of things.
Feeling more and more His hand upon me,
 
His existence within me, my only comfort
in the otherwise absolute emptiness of the Void.
 
O child of God, existence is a river and unremittingly
you are being returned to the Ocean from which you came.  

Snapshots

Snapshots
 
I have a photograph tacked
to a corkboard in my office
 
of a nearby river – a paper image
silent, small and dry;
 
capturing a moment, freezing the flow.
Our perceptions of this world 
 
are but a string of fixed moments
wherein we might imagine
 
a continuity of sorts
but our interpretation of such images  
 
is always, always, always
partial, limited, fleeting and false.
 
O child of God, even our brief, separative lives
can be viewed as snapshots in the eternal flow of time.     

                

The original Silence

The original Silence

It’s an eternal tale recounted
up until this very moment.
 
It’s hard to put into words
when every word 
 
has a thousand meanings
depending upon the arrangement
 
of the various letters within it.
When every utterance is a fragment
 
of the original Word God spoke
and then cupped His ear
 
to hear His own reply.
And later in His eternality
 
He dropped in on the consequences
of His own query and chose to remain silent –
 
to listen and live consciously
within the Truth of His own reply.
 
O child of God, deep within the original Silence,
the Word was, is and ever shall be.      

           

Perfect imperfection

Perfect imperfection
              
I once fancied this poetry as a collaboration
between the human and the Divine –
 
my Lord giving me the insights
(which I humbly and eagerly receive)
 
and then I writing my imperfect verse.
But I see now that is a false view –
 
a distancing of myself from my Muse.
O my true Self!  You supply the insights
 
and You write the poems. 
Within this realm of duplicity
 
my poetry is quite limited, thoroughly human, 
but within Your Oneness, its eternal status
 
is ever perfect and sublime.
The art and solace anyone derives from it
 
is Your well-timed, ever-vigilant gift,
an intrinsic part of Your infinite Perfection.
 
O child of God, read and write these poems
as a metaphor for your own perfect imperfection. 

Wayfarer

Wayfarer
 
There is no discernable path
this deep in the winter forest,
 
nothing but the gaps between the trees
through which to wend my way.
 
I’m not lost.  I’m just moving
without expectations; just unfinished business;
 
a forging ahead and a leaving behind,
tramping toward an indiscernible goal.
 
I consider myself a wayfarer now
rather than a drifter. 
 
Hope has abandoned me
but my faith is intact.
 
I heard a wild rumor once told by a Friend, 
as wild and strange as the path I’ve taken,
 
wild enough that it just might be true.
I take courage in His authority
 
and His compassion, the One
who has taken an interest in me  
 
on this improbable, winding pilgrimage
through these darkling woods.
 
O child of God, let faith in the Friend
guide and fortify you on this arduous journey home.    

Two right hands

Two right hands
 
When I was a kid about eight years old
I had a wreck on my bike. 
 
My head hit the sidewalk
hard enough to knock me out. 
 
I woke up a few moments later  
seeing two street signs looming above me.
 
I reached out to determine
by touch which one was real
 
and found that I had two right hands.
Illusion is illusive (and elusive)
 
because it is ubiquitous, blending
imperceptibly into every backdrop
 
because the backdrop is also illusion
and the viewer of illusion is illusion
 
and each knothole view of illusion is also illusion.
We can never climb outside of it
 
to see it for what it is, just as we can never climb
outside of ourselves to know Who we really are.
 
O child of God, Meher said that it is so very hard
to find that which has never been lost.  

    

(Painting by Thom Fortson)   

      

This old horse

This old horse
 
Looking out my window.  So strange!
People going about their business,
 
all the while still aslumber in their bunks.
Everybody wants to go to heaven
 
(goes the old joke), but nobody wants to die.
I am a fortunate man.  I’ve learned nothing
 
of the secret knowledge
but I know the secret exists.
 
I may not know what Truth is
but I’m learning what Truth is not,
 
seeing illusion as illusion
and counting my blessings accordingly.
 
This old horse has gotten a whiff
of the barn and is on his way home.
 
O child of God, are you the horse or the rider
or is it the heavenly scent that is summoning you home?

Of ignorance and faith (The Great Mystery)

Of ignorance and faith   (The Great Mystery)
 
Poetry has found its way back to me
after a long absence
 
and I am grateful to again be so trusted. 
Poetry that validates my faith 
 
and rewards my devotion;
a gift from the Awakener
 
in this lifelong dream, reaching me
intimately now in my need.
 
O child of God, compose yet another poem
of ignorance and faith concerning
 
your Beloved and the Great Mystery
which has so graciously intervened in your life. 

Poem about a mystery

Poem about a mystery
 
I’ve been unduly busy lately,
plumbing the ocean with a six foot pole;
 
mystified by my lack of success. 
Dutifully, I cast my bread upon the waters
 
but it hasn’t returned to me yet.
Is there any greater foolishness
 
than writing a poem about a mystery
you know nothing about?
 
I end up with a nonsense verse; not quite
gibberish, but it makes about as much sense.
 
My next one I’ll write in disappearing ink.
It’s less embarrassing that way.
 
Then I’ll drop it through the barred window
of my cell onto the street below.
 
O child, how might you judge what is worthy
if everything is provided to you by God?    

          

Rejoice

Rejoice
 
Rejoice when your life has become smudged,
yellowed with age, corners curled up
 
like an old snapshot viewed too many times.
Rejoice in your longevity; not everyone reaches this shore.
 
You’ve been given it for a reason.  Rejoice
in your friends and loved ones who have gone before, 
 
moved on to another opportunity.  Rejoice in your infirmities
which encourage you, in your many-lived journey,
 
to quit your infatuation with your body.
Rejoice in your immobility – there to teach you
 
that there is nowhere to go.  Rejoice in your fading mind
which has misled you all of your days. 
 
Rejoice in your failures – graciously teaching
you to bow down humbly before your Maker.
 
O child of God, in this great migration toward God
every burden holds a hidden blessing.   

                       

Nothing matters

Nothing matters
 
When you come to the truth
that nothing matters (per Meher)
 
in this dream of life but love for God,
standing helpless and hopeless
 
before your Maker,  
you may gain then a foothold
 
on the approach road leading
to your own demise and liberation.     
 
A life of perfect surrender is one in which
nothing matters – come what may;
 
where every moment is received
and humbly accepted with acquiescence
 
by the faithful servant, the perfect lover,
as the sacred will and wish of the Beloved.
 
O child of God, view this dream of life and death
as a supremely important journey wherein nothing matters.  

     

(drawing by Rich Panico) 

 

SomeOne of authority

SomeOne of authority
 
It’s a winding course I’ve taken. 
It seems to have been set by someOne else.
 
I feel like a pawn in a grandiose, enigmatic game –
an unsettling notion at best yet not nearly as fearful
 
as the possibility that I make my way
through the world alone and unobserved.
 
I seem to possess abundant faith in God the Creator
but not so much in God the Beloved.
 
Our Creator I have generally taken to be self-evident,  
but it took someOne of authority, someOne I trusted,
 
to insist that God is Love . . . so that I began to follow
my heart, upturning all my previous assumptions.  
 
This ongoing examination and interrogation of mine
is not evidence of my disbelief
 
but proof of my abiding faith,
my skepticism merely a signature trait
 
(as the Creator is well aware)
of just who in the world I am
 
or at the very least, the imperfect role
I have been chosen to play.
 
O child of God, you can’t know the truth of God’s love
by looking it up in the dictionary.          

                            

Ode to fear

Ode to Fear
 
Lifelong have you hounded me,
thwarted my surrender, 
 
the great contradiction being,   
as my constant companion,
 
you have also been the compelling force
in my flight toward surrender. 
 
For that, I begrudgingly give you credit.
God by definition is fearless, so why and how
 
do you manifest so inherently in His children? 
Per the Mystics, you are merely
 
one aspect of God’s everything,
an illusory absence
 
in the eternal essence of Love.
O these incongruities and contradictions! 
 
Such is my life on the battlefield
which underneath (They tell me)
 
has always been a vast green and fragrant meadow
leisurely raked by the random summer winds.
 
O child of God, where there is love, said Meher,
there is no fear.  Where there is fear there is no love. 

  

The true question

The true question
 
During every pilgrimage over the years,
I have bowed down twice a day (or more) at the Tomb;
 
attended and dutifully listened
to the various Meherazad testimonies.
 
Returned home to clasp my hands daily
before a relic-adorned shrine, trying,
 
perhaps, to prove a sincerity I do not feel.
I have attempted to make Meher the center of my life –
 
attending events and meetings, visiting the Center,
professing before God and others the love
 
I hope to one day possess, though it now seems
that the true question is not whether I love God
 
but whether He loves me . . . (or not)
and, in lieu of any certainty, do I believe it myself?
 
O child of God, make Meher the center of your life
in the hopeless hope that one day He will become its entirety.