Ocean shell

Ocean shell                                                                                        
 
Cup this shell to your ear
and listen to the ocean –
 
its hollow, hushed white noise
somewhere between a silence and a roar.
 
Shell to ear, ear to heart,
this is the silence Baba left
 
(with its intimate roar)
to drown out the world’s bellow,
 
its furor and anguish, 
sham and shallow glamour;
 
the mind’s incessant stream of self.
Cup this ocean shell to your ear
 
and leave the populous shore
for the solitude and intangible promise
 
of the deep high seas, farther out, farther out
towards oblivion and soundless nonexistence.
 
O child of God, ride the ocean waves
until you lose your boundaries in its briny vastness.

Under their trilling

Under their trilling                                                                             
 
The path of knowledge has petered out
into a thick pine wood ripe with scent and birdsong.  
 
Its remainder does not lie undiscovered up ahead.
It simply goes no farther.
 
There’s no key to God’s door
on my considerable chain –
 
a weight I’ve accumulated for years.
There’s no lock on God’s door;
 
most likely there’s no door at all out this far. 
What I should do now is toss these keys,
 
scatter the last of my bread crumbs 
for the gathered, guileless birds
 
and await my Beloved under their trilling –
hand outstretched but no longer for begging,
 
merely waiting, do or die, for Him
to take my hand and lead me home.
 
O child of God, leave it – your salvation
has always been entirely up to Him.

(Drawing by Rich Panico)

Of stars and stones

Of stars and stones                                                                                       
 
When they plant my stone on the green hillside
nothing earth-shattering will occur –
 
the ocean and the stars will function as ever before
once my little boat slips under the waves.
 
Often I listen to the world now as if I’m in a casket.
Listen to my thoughts as if they were wind in the trees.
 
Listen beyond the palpable noises,
beyond the stream of my thoughts
 
to the silence underlying every sound, inside and out.
The silence of stars and stones.  The silence of the blue sky
 
behind the clouds.  The silence of death.
I listen to – whether real or imagined –
 
the silence my Lord saved up for a lifetime
and left for me and others to listen to in our loneliness.
 
O child of God, why not, asked Meher,
consider yourself already dead? 

God-sent

God-sent                                                                                            
 
If my virtue requires a villain
I can be sure that I’m duping myself,
 
dabbling in duality with a quality
that belongs to another realm.
 
True virtue is God-sent, borne
of benevolence, humility and equanimity. 
 
It breaks us down – nearer to dust and ashes.
Virtue that lifts us above others
 
is a subtle self promotion, an empty grand gesture
that for whatever good it does,
 
adds to the darkness, the ignorance
and hypocrisy of ourselves and the world.
 
O child of God, in the depths of a ruse
nothing is ever completely what it seems.