Like Margaret in the courtyard
One lover at a time allowed at Arti
bowing down in the Tomb, darshan
an intimate coupling – Meher Baba privately
inviting each lover: May
I have this dance?
And each receptive soul, focused and participatory,
taken up in His arms for a timeless while,
a whirling embrace, a precisely accomplished series of steps
(like Margaret in the courtyard of Villa Fiorenza)
then turned out beyond His door again
to stumble down the Hill and into the world
of separation, thought and evaluation
but left with yet another heartening interlude
and memory of the Master’s unparalleled
concern, command, agility and flow.
O child of God, darshan is not so much
about petition as it is about participation.
Blue-skinned Avatar
He played His flute for me –
Krishna at my window.
I listened enrapt, note for note,
slipping into a reverie, wondering
about this Hindu, blue-skinned Avatar.
Tried to remember what I’d learned
over the years of His various escapades
and the teaching stories, His methods and purpose.
How might this Piper and His melody
effect my own liberation and escape?
The music ceased. Krishna
turned away,
over the rise and gone from sight –
leaving me in a silent, wistful solitude,
the memory fading of Love’s sweet lilt,
I, not yet ripe, having failed to respond
wholeheartedly to His numinous invitation.
O child of God, mind is the culprit, say the Mystics –
the self-involved, misapplication of thought.
An improbable faith
Go through life, per the zen maxim,
like a bird through the sky – fearless;
no path ahead; not a trace left behind;
its sufficient little birdbrain
never quite perceiving itself
as distinct from the vast emptiness
through which it flies,
upheld and guided by nothing
but an improbable faith in the adequacy
of its own intuitive, hollow-boned,
feather-clad construction
and the incessant informing and instruction
it receives from the Mystery that it is
and is ever moving through.
O child of God, don’t let these collected images
become dead weight and pin you to the ground.
A clockwork arrangement
Silent seem the stars in their vigil,
no ear near enough to hear their roaring.
The sentinel moon shows its face,
a clockwork arrangement of shadow and light –
mute testimony of our estrangement
and God’s abiding faithfulness.
It is He Who has sent Himself
on this terrestrial journey;
He Who chooses the path beneath His feet
as He gathers and guides Himself toward home.
Infinite and solitary by nature and definition,
there’s no room anywhere for anyone else.
No self means no other.
No child but the Father.
O child of God, sometimes
all you can do is hold the pen.
