Room for God

Room for God

Humility is hard to come by 
(and I have so much to be humble about).

A toothless lion -- pride; a gnawing rat.
Brave men have no pride;

even a humble man's courage
is not there when grasped;

a humble man -- he's no hero . . . nor saint. 
Humility and its poverty

leave room for nothing else
except, maybe, God

to enter when the walls are rubble,
where a man stands

naked and armless, without pride or courage.
Then, maybe, there's room for God.

O child of God, Meher's love, so freely given,
apparently, demands every last thing in return.

My baffled heart

My baffled heart

The heart is a seed buried in the chest
due for an eventual flowering

or grit, perhaps, for a future pearl.  Or, say,
the heart is a bird, its singing muted

by layers of flesh.  I tell repeatedly my sons
I love them lest they forget, lest they doubt;

lest they drift away, my throat bearing
a mere trembling resemblance to the truth

my baffled heart is unable to express.
You wore, o wordless One, Your heart

invariably on Your sleeve; Your love,
Your presence, speechless and palpable,

awakened in Your lovers' chests; in their own hearts.
Such were the human changes You wrought.

Long after the husk and flesh were shed,
Your naked seed buried in that rocky soil,

Your presence, Your love awoke
in my stone tomb, my human, baffled heart --

Your love -- wordless, eloquent, shared
across the chasm, through the lover's flesh,

lest I didn't know; lest I had forgotten; lest
I should ever doubt and become estranged.

O child of God, hold on to the silence
in which real things are given and received.

                    

And the Word was God

And the Word was God

Small word -- god.  Like a grunt,
a groan breaking from our throats.

Capitalized, modified by the pious. 
Used profanely by sinners.

Forgive us, God, this small begrudged word
wedged into our vocabulary as an afterthought.

Words of worldliness: pleasure, flesh, riches,
savored by our mouths: luxury, lavish; sexuality,

sumptuousness, triumph, lasciviousness . . . .
O pilgrim, take god -- that hard nugget of a word

and nurture it in your core
until it breaks you open,

breaks your world apart,
until a tree from its seed grows,

stretches, brushes leaves and branches
against the farthermost ends

of your thoughts, depths, faith,
experience and imagination.

O child of God, in the beginning was the Word . . .
and the Word was God.

                           (Unpublished)