Of wondrous avail
Seek no farther than the brim of your hat,
looking not up from your task heavenward,
beseeching God’s grace when God
(Rumi said) is in the look of your eyes.
Nor lament the path beneath your feet,
selected by fate, good as any –
an equal distance from the Goal.
Look not into the future,
nor side to side at a myriad of distractions.
Forsake the past also for its failures,
travails, impotence and partialities.
It has served you well enough –
depositing you perfectly
into this particular moment
where God is lodged (per the Mystics)
and of wondrous avail.
O child of God, have you made it plain?
This poem is addressed primarily to the poet.
The heart of the circle
Born into a realm where as a matter of course
a childish heart is soon crushed, sewn up
and packed back down in the chest just as it is
to function brokenly in the name of wisdom,
You’ve come again to sever the threads and let it bleed.
To accomplish, if not the restitution of innocence,
the hearkening of each heart back to its beginnings.
Our minds reject such counsel, opting
for fear over pain, insularity over vulnerability
and busy themselves with worldly affairs,
while hearts, in ones You have directly touched,
begin a slow, planetary revolution toward
and around You, the center of existence,
the unbroken heart of the circle.
O child of God, the mind gives way to worry
and the heart bears thus much needless woe.
Rubble and dust
I misunderstood, years ago, when You
first brought out the chisel and hammer.
I imagined You would shape me
into a worthy likeness
and I welcomed the blows as best I might.
Now I see, Your perfect aim
is to reduce me to rubble and dust
(a tedious task for the tall, cold stone of me).
Rubble and dust – rubble which has no center
and dust where there is no grit or blood.
I should have understood it sooner –
the likeness of You is the absence of me.
O child, God is found, said Meher,
where you are not.
This tallow heart
This tallow heart in which has lodged
over a lifetime every hurt, shame and fret,
You have incised, dug out and lighted
the buried wick, urging me
to become the flame consuming itself.
It’s spearhead blade trimming away the dross,
severing the past, slicing readily into the future,
clean, votive, free and steady
as it melts down the heft of me
to reach a condition worthy of offering.
The soft hiss of the candle-flame
to the heart’s ear is a muted roar,
drowning out the clamor of temptation,
judgment, guilt and fear.
O child of God, consider yourself a flame,
purified each moment by the grace of God.
