ON THE UPBEAT
Divine Beloved!
I know that my apathy
and willfulness make me unworthy
of Your Infinite Love,
but I also know that by Your Grace
I will lose myself
in Your Compassionate Embrace.
Only You, Sole Doer,
have the Power to
pull me out of the deep ruts
my lumbering mind has worn into
the path of its own making.
And yet, O Fisher of Fishers,
I am so entangled in the sticky web
of imagination that I foolishly wonder
whether even Your Net
has the strength to haul me in.
All I do is sleep, Lord Awakener,
and no alarm clock can wake me up.
When I open my eyes,
I just roll over and go back to sleep.
Awaken me, Great Maestro,
to the Sublime Music
of Love Divine!
*******
A KEY MADE OF SONG
Can words free one
from the tyranny
of words?
There's no lock
on a cage made of words,
but to fly off
into the silence of freedom
a key made of song
can come in handy.
*******
PRESENCE WITHIN ABSENCE
Poetry didn't wait
till even the 20th century
to walk away from
rhyme, meter, and meaning.
See Mallarmé
in his later years
for how the poem came
to be woven into the page,
words scattered with
A Throw of the Dice,
preening in the mirror
of their own empty beauty,
the once preeminent
objective world they
referred to
outside the mirror
utterly absent.
Since then, poetry
has swum on to further
shallows of deconstruction,
a stagnant pool of absence
however dedicated it
might be to mirroring
the meaninglessness
of a degenerate world.
As for the waters
this old fish likes to swim,
the Reality within absence
that Presence is draws me
out of impersonal nihilism
to standing here in person,
feet on the ground,
singing to Him what I hear
Him singing to me.
*******
A STRAND
Here it comes again,
and by now you recognize it —
another colorful strand
weaving a picnic basket
full of the mixed blessings
of pleasure and pain.
So what to do with it
this time? You could just
refuse it, return it to sender,
telling yourself, Oh yes,
I know this game
of approach-avoidance
conflict, and since it has
ended up hurting like hell
before why dance
to it again? Better to
toss it into the fire
and take sober pleasure
in that dance of dances.
On the other hand,
you could take this
bright new strand
and enjoy it for what it is
without getting tied up by it.
Knowing the pattern as you do,
if it begins to wind around you
or you begin to wind it around
yourself, you could whirl
the other way and try
to remain unbound. It might
be a complex dance, but you
know the steps, and it
could unfurl like that
for the good of all.
And on still another hand,
the Hand you are in, in fact,
you could surrender
all desire and reason
to God's Loving and Knowing Care
and let what comes of that
become your constant picnic.
*******
SHINE THROUGH
Radiant Beloved,
shine through me
to all around,
and through all
around to me.
Let light continually
remind us all
that we live
only by the Grace
of Your Love.
*******
OF A SPIRALING
Beautiful
broken shell
of a spiraling
dream I
never even
knew I had
till finding
you here
at low tide
in the setting
sun, thank you
for rolling
me into
this ocean
of healing
within.
*******
BY THE SEA OF GALILEE
"Pick up the pieces left over, so that nothing gets wasted."
— Jesus in John
O Compassionate Provider of all,
even in the hardest of times,
Your miracle of the loaves and fishes
keeps multiplying exponentially.
In an infinite variety of forms and ways,
with Power far beyond
that of the strongest wind, rain, or quake,
Your loaves of Love gently fall from the firmament,
and Your lively fishes rise from the depths.
Dear brothers and sisters,
these life-sustaining gifts from our Divine Beloved
give new meaning to the word awesome.
God turns the water of sorrow into the wine of joy,
and gratitude is the cup He shares with us.
*******
YOU ARE
You are here
now as always,
Divine Father
And Mother
In One.
You are
every here,
ever everywhere.
You are in everyone
and in everything,
and everyone
and everything
are in You, too,
Who are Really
All And Then Some.
You are All-Giving
and Perfectly
Forgiving.
You are Supreme
Care And Direction,
Divine Kindness
And Gratitude,
and Pure Love
In Person.
*******
NO MATCH
Every day, it becomes
clearer and clearer to me,
one of the many self-inflated specks
in this vast illusory universe,
that I'm no match for the hardened
thoughts that keep shaping me
to ego-driven order.
I'm soft stone, and what a mad sculptor
chisels away
at my imaginary form.
Divine Beloved,
loosen my grip on the tools
of self-serving attachment
so that I may hold on
to the hem of Your garment
and simply be myself in You.
*******
LONG TO LONG
Cheer up, dry-hearted lover of God!
If you sink too low into the blue
to the exclusion of life's other colors,
you'll miss the rainbow
and you might not be able to hear Him
when He arrives at your door to take you out.
If even your longing for Him has hidden from you,
take that as the form your longing has taken
and return your gaze to His image in your heart.
If you're tied to your chair and holding yourself up,
do you think you'll suddenly be
able to jump up happily at the sight of Him,
like your dog when he sees you coming home?
Cheer up, dear desolate heart!
With all the frequent flyer miles
your flights to desert mirages have accumulated,
your trip to the Pearl in the Ocean of Love
is just around the corner.
*******
EVER YOU TO THE RESCUE
Time and again,
I let myself down
into a deep hole I
then can't get back out of.
But You, O Highest of the High,
always come to my rescue.
You never let me down.
For starters, You assure me that it's
actually You, not I, who's down there.
"Only I am real, so not to worry,
it's all taken care of," You tell me.
And then for the umpteenth time
You toss down a ladder.
When I'm too absorbed in self-pity
to notice it, or too blinded
by tears to find it,
You put my foot on the first rung.
When I'm too paralyzed by fear
to hoist myself up,
You rekindle the fire
in my heart. When the light
at the surface is too bright
after all the time I've spent in the dark,
You offer me Your shades.
When I'm too weak from the climb
to take the last step,
You give me a hand and pull me out.
Truly, dear God, it's ever You
to the rescue, You the upliftment,
You the ever beginning again.
*******
BREATHING
(Inhaling): W h o
(Exhaling): h e r e
(Inhaling): W h o
(Exhaling): t h e r e
(Inhaling): M e-
(Exhaling): h e r
*******
A FORTUNE COOKIE FORTUNE
Gratitude is the key to happiness,
says my fortune cookie.
Okay, but what's the key to gratitude?
I ask.
Acceptance is the key to gratitude,
I hear.
Okay, but what's the key to acceptance?
I ask.
Grace is the key to acceptance,
I hear.
Okay, but what's the key to grace?
I ask.
. . . Long pause . . . There's no key
to that door, silence intimates.
And no door, either.
Grace is everywhere.
*******
ALL THERE IS
O God, dear God, Pure Light,
try as I perversely might
to escape Your grace
in the long, long night,
I keep falling right
into Your sweet embrace.
All I can do, all there is,
You keep telling and showing me,
no matter what,
is to love You truly,
so what can I do, ultimately,
but simply that?
*******
IMAGINATION
What a double-edged sword
of a tightrope imagination is!
On one hand, it can be
a useful vehicle for the journey.
On the other, it can be
a parking lot that easily
turns into a junkyard,
a prison so vast that
it gives the illusion of freedom,
a religion unconsciously
devoted to idol worship.
O Merciful One Beyond Imagination,
deliver us from
harmful uses of imagination.
*******
BEHIND THESE VEILS
We words have been searching
for a long, long time.
We can't put a number
on the years; it's been
longer than numbers or years —
longer and shorter;
all of history, in fact,
is really one big zero.
And though we're more like
shifting sands or dusty tents
than timeless beauty,
we CAN say this:
Behind these veils we are,
made of all the knowing
and not knowing,
the remembering and forgetting
and remembering again,
is Pure, Eternal Radiance.
*******
JOURNEY TO DAWN
Out of poverty, persecution,
crime, and curiosity,
you've embarked,
ridden the waves,
and arrived in the West.
Years later,
firmly ensconced
in Consumerville,
you hear about
the Grand Opening
of a brand new World Mart,
and you drive
all the way across town
to check it out.
Pulling into the parking lot,
you feel something
begin to shift in your mind.
When you stop the car
and take the key out,
it dawns on you:
It's something
to receive, to give
that you want,
not something to buy.
*******
STRINGS
You never know what's
really going on.
What you take to be
this or that, what
seems to be happening
or not happening
according to your
perception and purposes
may actually be a mere
sideshow in the
bigger picture.
Perception, after all, is not
omniscient consciousness.
Perception is just a habit of
looking at things and
interpreting them
from the particular
set of angles you've
come to acknowledge.
Concerning some
distant person or event
you can easily
think and say
"No relation,"
but such a statement
ignores the truth that
it's only in the mind
that the indivisible
is divided in the first place.
The vast strings bringing
everything together
reach far beyond
conventional notions
of time and space. It's
quite a web God spins
and you find yourself in!
Quite a hammock
He rocks you in!
Quite a large net
full of lively fish He keeps
catching and throwing
back into the sea!
And "coincidence" — that
pseudo-objective concept —
is an outright misconception.
A wealthy American
woman who owns
several businesses, say,
is visiting Seoul, Korea,
mixing business and pleasure.
One day, stepping out of
the shopping mall
adjoining the InterContinental Hotel,
she looks up and sees
a huge sculpture of Maitreya,
the great Awakened One to come,
standing atop a nearby hill.
Though she is
not a Buddhist
nor a practitioner of any
other faith, she feels
drawn to the sculpture
and immediately suspends
her shopping expedition
to get a closer look at it
if possible.
Soon she passes through
a colorful gateway
into the grounds of a large
compound of Buddhist
temples. Making her
way to the Maitreya
through this
lovely garden of a place,
she feels directed to enter one
of the little temples.
Inside are three small
Buddhas and a sturdy
little old Korean woman,
who immediately begins
to tell her something —
in Korean. Unfortunately,
the American woman
can speak only English.
No matter —
the resourceful Korean
demonstrates what she
wants of the American:
for her to bow seven times
before each of the three Buddhas.
For some reason
unknown to herself,
the American follows
the Korean's orders and
begins to bow. When she
performs the bows
incorrectly — not slowly,
not deeply enough —
the Korean sternly
takes hold of her and shows her
again how to bow properly.
Once the American has
completed her twenty-one
full-body bows, she
smiles-genuinely,
thanks the Korean, and
steps back out into the
bright sunlight, wondering
what's just happened.
Meanwhile, at that
very moment on the
opposite side of the earth,
in Los Angeles, where
the American woman lives,
a beautiful but very sad
sixteen-year-old Korean girl
whose family has
recently immigrated to the U.S.
slowly lowers the knife
she held poised over
her jugular vein a moment
ago. She is in her bedroom
with the door locked
and only a flickering candle flame
to keep her company.
She doesn't know
why she lays the knife
down. It isn't that she
lost her nerve or was
suddenly struck by a fear
of death. She'd given
plenty of thought to
what she was going to do
and was quite ready to
turn herself into a hungry ghost
for who knows how long.
The life of a ghost couldn't be
much different from
the lonely, frustrating life
she was already forced to live
in Buddha-forsaken America,
she'd decided. But now,
for some reason
unknown to herself,
she feels a lightness
within herself and all around,
rays of hope and courage
filling her being.
She looks down at the knife,
shining like an angel's wing
in the candlelight,
and tears well up
in her eyelids. When she
turns to look directly
at the candle flame,
her tears spill over the edge
onto her cheeks
and the flame stands taller
and brighter. Lord Buddha,
dear Buddha, Lord Buddha,
she prays, smiling
through her tears.
Or, less dramatic
but equally compelling,
the situation of a man
on a subway train, beginning
to smile. His work's done
for the day, and now
he's on his way home
to play with his wife and
one-month-old baby.
The thought of all that
brings his expectant,
happy feeling, which then
brings his smile.
At that same moment,
in the seat directly
in front of the smiling man,
another man,
whose back is to the first,
suddenly comes to
the startling realization
that he is alive. He is here
on Earth and he is alive.
Only a moment before,
he'd been bored to death,
about to nod off.
O the strings,
the mighty strings that join,
the golden strings of pure Oneness!
And O the smiles,
the loving smiles that heal,
the healing smiles that say it all!
*******
SLOW ME DOWN
With this fever,
O Giver of All,
I know You
slow me down
for my own good.
From the whirling rim
of my racing life,
You pull me through
the narrow spokes
toward the Hub
of Your Gracious Being.
When I think
of the suffering
You eternally endure,
dear infinitely
Compassionate One —
the ache of all creation,
of all being born
and dying,
of every moment
of everyone spent
in the illusion
of separation —
this bit of pain I feel
sweetens like an apple
glad to be picked
for Your pleasure.
*******
FROM OM TO HOME
Why not joyfully
take this road of loss,
of passing beauty?
It is, after all,
the way Home.
*******
BEST ACTOR
Funny how we
differentiate and evaluate
performance in this
movie of a life. Acting
performance awards such as
Oscars and Golden Globes
are presented only to those
in the movie-within-a-movie
business. Indeed, yes,
that celebrated kind of best
actor deserves an award
for his or her work,
but perhaps even
more deserving is one
not trained to pretend
on stage or screen —
that is, any one of us
unwittingly pretending to be
bored, unhappy,
unkind, complacent,
ungrateful, hateful.
At one time or another
in our dramatic lives,
we should all get
Golden Globes for our
stellar performances
in those demanding roles.
*******
AN OPEN BOOK
Meher Baba —
God-man —
lived every moment
knowing that
it would be
an open book to all
who would be
drawn to His Love,
the far-reaching
significance
of each of those
moments telling
its story in
everyone's
moments, ever
revealing its
tailor-made,
love-affirming
essence with
perfect timing.
A wholly
unique book, its
pages made not of
paper or electronic
transmission
but of God
in person!
*******
THANK YOU, LOVE
Thank You, Love Divine,
for remembering me,
even when I forget about You.
Things change with time,
and I wander off, supposing I'm
reflecting Your absence,
not realizing that all along
off is On, that time dissolves
in the Eternal Flow You are.
But then comes the sweet ache of that
Great Song again, the One
You never stop singing to me.
*******
SOUL OF MY SOUL
Soul of my soul,
Other No Other,
it's You I hear
in the glowing silence
of this misty pink and golden
early morning lake,
still resting in the still,
green woods of Your
All-and-Ever Being;
You I hear breathing
in the parting at the bow
and the wake at the stern,
in the soft, distant sound
of the waves beyond
the dunes, swelling and
rolling into my imagination
from here in slow motion,
nearly forgetting
to break in the pure fun
of their powerful becoming;
You I hear, O Ancient Silent One,
in the rhythmic bird talk now
from tree to tree
nearby, as a breeze
begins to move this
myriad of leaves,
shadows, and lights between
and the day begins again.
*******
THE HEART
The heart moves in the same way
other things do, which is to say
in the way God does,
in mysterious ways.
In fact, the human heart, as part of the whole,
is made in the image and likeness
of God, which accounts for
its rapid oscillation among various
superimposed circles and triangles.
In some circles, the heart
is thought of as the home of emotion.
In this sense, it is a vibrating object
pounding out one subjective angle after another.
Of course, the vibrations succeed
each other so quickly that
many angles can appear to be only one,
like any light or sound, which after all
is really a series of discrete vibrations.
The blur of feeling that results from this illusion
can be taken in a number of ways,
at one extreme as paralyzing confusion,
at the other as euphoric rapture.
Many a rational animal has pondered,
"Why is the heart so hard to comprehend,
except as a word or picture or medical part?"
But then when you think about it,
anything
is pretty hard to comprehend
at any one point in time
since except as a figure of speech
time doesn't really have any points.
*******
A LIFE
To be a knife
carefully
honed
at the grindstone
of suffering,
to cut and
cut away,
to be thrown,
in the end,
into the sea
of liberation —
oh, what a life!
*******
SHINE ON
Wall in the middle of nowhere,
you must fall and you will.
Veil, take time if you so love to
dance, but unveil.
Outside, are you out there
to hide?
Inside, come out and play.
No one's died.
Moon, gone again?
Come back soon.
Sun, shine on,
shadow of the Eternal One.
*******
NOW
Where am I going
now?
It's Love
I have
to get to
from Love.
*******
YES, THE ANCIENT ONE
Yes, the Ancient One is breaking His Silence
again now, like the Bread the Word broke
at that momentous Communion
a few long hours before His body was broken
to release the flood tide of His redeeming Grace.
Yes, the Silent Master is now again
speaking the Word, turning the world
into the Rose unfurling, His Word
exploding, at once suddenly, in slow motion,
imperceptibly into the Light of His Being.
Yes, the Eternal Wine has come again
and is still here among us offering Himself,
passing the chalice from hand to hand,
filling us to the brim again and again
with His Golden Nectar of Perfect Love.
*******
SAMADHI
Now I see the cracks in the walls
and the signs that say no vacancy.
I see all the hungry, jittery balls
rolling off to work in the loaded lottery.
Now I warm this heavy flute
with the blues of praying here.
I warm my cold, cold hands at the truth
of being so far, far away, so near.
Now I wander into Your room,
a great hall with no ceiling, no walls.
I wander under Your fragrant broom,
pray to be Your dust as the red sun falls.
*******
REMEMBRANCE DITTY
High leads to low
low leads to high
and both lead to One
beyond the two
O
Low leads to high
high leads to low
and both lead to One
beyond the two
O
High leads to low
low leads to high
and both lead to One
beyond the two
*******
THE BIG CLUB
The big club that you've never
really had anything to do with
but that's always hung over
your head like a falling net
is thread by thread
losing its power over you.
It's still there, but it isn't.
You still hear the incessant chatter
of its Doomsday prophecy, but you're
listening to something else
now, the Silence of One
nearer to you than yourself,
the One unraveling the net
and canceling your membership
in that overrated, phantom club.
*******
VARIATIONS ON A THEME BY DEVANA
Radiant Beloved,
what are these eyes for?
For seeing the Resplendent Beauty
of God all around you.
Radiant Beloved,
what are these ears for?
For hearing the Divine Music
of God's Loving Silence.
Radiant Beloved,
what is this nose for?
For inhaling the Fragrance
of the Holy Spirit.
Radiant Beloved,
what are these taste buds for?
For tasting the Wine
of the Eternal One.
Radiant Beloved,
what are these hands for?
For feeling your way
to My Radiant Feet.
Radiant Beloved,
what are these feet for?
For bringing you, step by step,
to your True Self in Union with Me.
Radiant Beloved,
what is this mind for?
For surrendering it
to the Will of the Almighty.
Radiant Beloved,
what is this heart for?
For sacred drumming
to the Rhythm of Love.
Radiant Beloved,
what are these tears for?
For washing your face
in the Ocean of Love.
Radiant Beloved,
what is this soul for?
For melting
in your Beloved's Embrace.
*******
THE GREATEST GIFT
— for Darwin Shaw
in memoriam
Let Today's Light be
the marker
of yesterday's grave,
Almighty Giver
and Taker Away.
And at the end of the day,
let the epitaph read,
"The greatest gift is to be
taken away to You, Dear Love,
in Radiant Eternity."
*******
RED LEAF
The beauties
Of red leaf
And orange light
Of waving
In the wind
Holding on
And falling
All at once
Of the dying
Dying for Life
Make this day
The Lord's made
*******
BELOVED MEHER
Let me walk with You
here on this good Earth,
lips sealed to inhale
Your Wondrous Fragrance
in every breath, to hear
Your Tender Silence
in every ray of light.
*******
WHEN I TALK WITH YOU
When I talk with You
Beloved God
it's about Nothing
because Everything
comes from Your Nothing
and returns to It
when I talk with You
it's about Everything
all at once
in the single moment
Nothing is
without things
and metaphors for things
the beauty
when I talk with You
it's about light
sifting through leaves
never really
there in the first place
in this empty
shining talk with You
*******
SHINING THROUGH
Far, far
larger than letters,
than life,
Your Smiling Face,
shining through
every particle
of existence.
*******
THE ROAD TO REALITY
On and on,
the road to Reality
gets pulled out from
under the wheels
of imagination.
So much is
taken for granted,
especially that which
really matters:
Being Itself,
Love Divine.
Silence, so deep
and unassuming,
is pure poetry,
consciousness
its timeless voice.
We're like little trees,
walking about
on our roots,
with birds calling out
to each other
from our branches.
We're tiny roadside
houses here and there,
coming to life
under the vanishing stars
of fragrant dawn.
Dear scattered,
aimless mind,
dissolve now
in the radiant colors
sifting through your
faded curtains.
*******
WARP AND WOOF
Inside
the particle
the
wave,
and inside
the wave
the
particle.
It's
quite a
game
they play,
not
knowing
what's going
to happen
as they
tailor-make
God's
wardrobe.
*******
HERE HE IS AGAIN
Here he is again
at the front door — Pain,
uninvited, frightening.
And at the back door, too!
"Sorry to disturb you
again," he says, "but I'm
just here to remind you
that your options are
not closed, as you tend to
think. In fact, they're
actually quite
open, this ever
being an open mystery
of possibility,
and I encourage you
to look into them
immediately.
You keep forgetting:
Your limits are
self-imposed. It's that
closed-door self
of yours, really,
that's the uninvited
guest you fear.
If you let me in for awhile
and treat me well,
I'll soon be on my way
and you'll find that I'm
not fearsome at all
but your close friend."
*******
IMPERATIVES
Forget the last sentence.
Take away your fingers
and just listen for a while.
Pray for Love's liberating
Grace. Wait for a wall
to lean against you
and dissolve as it whispers
sweet nothings in your ear.
Look up and welcome the moon
as your long lost sister.
*******
AT LONG LAKE
A gust of wind
gives wing to a flock
of sparkles across the lake.
*******
ABIDING IN THE WORD
The Word of the Ancient One
is a beautiful place — a quiet
cabin in a green wood overlooking a lake.
Beyond the lake, old waves
of wild dunes, and beyond them, the ocean,
the Word. Such pure beauty
could be called breathtaking,
but breathGIVING is more like it;
you feel yourself breathing here,
as you do nowhere else,
and you remember the Word,
and the Word comes to you,
shining in your heart.
When the wind blows,
the Word sings and dances in the trees.
When it rains, there's no gloom,
only the joy of the Word pouring
drinks for His Earthly wayfarers.
And there are people here, too, old friends
in their devotion to the Word,
enhancing each other's solitude.
And at night under the brightest stars
is the oceanic sound of the Word,
of the Ocean of Love,
so close and far away at once
as you fall asleep to Her lullaby.
And when the sun rises, the Word
rises from the lake like mist,
whispering you awake.
"Abide in Me," you hear.
"Abide in Me, and you will find
the Eternal Love you seek."
*******
BY MEHER BABA'S LAGOON
In the morning ecstasy
of all-out cicada song,
the sunlit and shadowed
greens, browns, and blues
of the woods breathe
Your Name, the One
that undoes all other names.
*******
BY MEHER ABODE
Beloved Meher Baba,
in Your Infinite Grace,
here on this bed You lay,
compassionately taking
the suffering of all
upon Yourself for our
redemption. And here
on this same bed now rests
my unburdened, grateful head,
imbibing the Radiant
Heartbeams of Your
Loving Presence.
*******
AT MEHER ABODE
Beloved Meher Baba,
in Your Infinite Grace,
here on this bed You lay,
compassionately taking
the suffering of all
upon Yourself for our
redemption. And here
on this same bed now rests
my unburdened, grateful head,
imbibing the Radiant
Heartbeams of Your
Loving Presence.
*******
BELOVED AVATAR MEHER BABA!
Thank You for this beautiful life,
this wondrous consciousness,
this holy charge to manifest
Your Divine Glory.
In the abundance of Your Grace,
move us beyond mere words
to the Loving Silence
of Your Living Presence.
And for Your Dear Sake,
All-Suffering, Compassionate Lord,
awaken us to our True Self
You are, the One and Only One.
*******
TRIO
Good/Bad,
the mind thinks.
Beautiful,
the heart sees.
Indivisible,
the soul reveals.
*******
WORD AND SILENCE
Word and Silence aren't opponents
shooting at different goals
on opposite sides of the field;
they play for the same team.
The screaming old king of reason's constant,
insane command, "Off with their heads!"
works only to drown him in the heart's
blood of the so-called infidels and heretics.
Meanwhile, Word in the Silence
of humble intuition scores the victory.
*******
THAT LITTLE SHOP DOWN AN ALLEY SOMEWHERE
Again and again You've pointed out that
ideas, words, and deeds
are mere window dressing to lure us inside,
but once You've drawn us to Your shop
with such glimmerings how are we to get in
if the door's locked and You don't post
Your hours of operation?
Some people say that Your shop doesn't actually
exist, others that it does but that You're never there,
and still others that they've occasionally seen
a light on or heard things going on inside but that
when they've reached for the door handle
it's suddenly vanished.
"Knock and it will be opened to you,"
You've been quoted as saying,
but how can we know that we're knocking on the
right door when our tendency is to get lost
and make all kinds of mistakes, especially about
the most important matters of all?
And then when we feel sure that we've found
the right door, there's the question of
how to knock. Loudly? Gently? Three times?
In some secret sacred code that we'll know
only if You've already revealed it to us?
And once we finally somehow find ourselves
inside Your dazzling shop,
how about the kind of currency we'll need
to purchase the Priceless Pearl we've been
longing for, consciously and unconsciously,
for such a very long time?
O Divine Master Jeweler, I sincerely believe
that You are personally open to all,
that the snobbish exclusiveness of other kinds
of high-end shops has nothing to do
with the Perfect Exquisiteness
of Your shop and its resplendent goods.
Radiant Beloved, I believe You when You say that
the Pearl is at the bottom of the Ocean of Love
You are and must be dived and died for,
but sometimes such exalted metaphors make my head
spin and I get confused by the beauty of Your words.
O All-Generous Giver of Life, now that I sing this,
I have a vague memory of your having already
answered all my questions and handed me the key
to your glorious shop. How could I have been
so dream-driven to have then forgotten
where I put the key for safekeeping?
Why did I stash it away at all?
Why didn't I use it at once?
I trust that one day I'll find that key in my hand
again, Dearest Jewel of my heart.
Now the tumbler will turn, and
the door to Your shop will open to me.
Stepping inside at last, I'll find myself deep
underwater, walking buoyantly toward the Shining
Pearl of Your Infinitely Patient Grace.
*******
POETRY'S THIS
Poetry's this abandoned highway,
weeds flowering in the cracks,
an old hearse that rides great.
*******
THE COUNTER
He has an important job now:
He counts the people walking by
his post on the corner of Sun and Vine.
And he doesn't miss a one,
he's quite happy to say.
Where does it go, this valuable info
he collects? Who uses it? For what?
Who's the boss he's talking about?
Oh, my boss is God, he tells you,
his deep-set eyes glinting
in the sun. Don't know
how He uses it. Just know
He wants it done.
*******
THE HEART IS A HUNGRY LION
He's the keeper of a small traveling zoo
with several animals in his charge.
They seem content enough, he thinks,
with their safe life out of the wild —
all but one of them, that is.
When he brings them their dinner,
they seem to smile —
all but that one. When he gets to his cage —
the lion's — and tosses in the food he
knows will be left uneaten,
one look at that noble, suffering face
and he's overwhelmed, doesn't know
what to do. He just stands there feeling
confined himself, confused and miserable.
Every day, his tears roll for him,
but for some reason he just
can't seem to bring himself
to feed him the feast he really wants —
till one day he steps out of his fear
and into that hungry king's cage.
*******
CONTINUOUSLY
The Divine Lovefest
is a gift that
comes wrapped
in so many different
ways — and
not just on birthdays
and other anniversaries
but continuously,
moment to moment.
Though we may
sleep and dream,
the wedding is always
about to begin,
the festive music and
dancing never end,
and the present
keeps pouring in
from everyone
and everything
everywhere,
just waiting to
be opened, to offer
itself here at this
Eternal Lovefest.
*******
WITHOUT YOUR CONTINUAL CARE AND REPAIR
Lord Meher, my dear Master!
What is my life without Your continual care and repair?
What a miserable mess I am without You!
This old trumpet gets tarnished and bruised.
Without lubricant, my poor valves get stuck and these
sad notes of mine become a mockery of Your True Music.
Clean me, dear Master! Let the tender melody of Your Song
flow through me to the cupped ears of Your listeners.
This old broom gets brittle and filthy.
Without a good cleaning after every use,
I just spread more dirt around Your Sacred Home.
Clean me, dear Master! Let every bristle find peace
in sweeping away the virulent dust of my wallowing ego.
This old heart gets bombarded with relentless disease.
Without the steady laser beam of Your Healing Glance
to cut out the cancer, what chance of a cure is there?
Clean me dear Master! Let the narrow river of my blood
find its way to the Infinite Ocean of Your Eternal Love.
Lord Meher, my dear Master!
What is my life without Your continual care and repair?
*******
TEN THOUSAND CRANES
Overhead, low gray clouds roll in,
and the sun goes into seclusion.
Down here, things come to a quiet standstill.
Even the gentlest breeze has wandered off somewhere.
As still as can be in their longing,
the topmost needles of the tallest pines
taper into the absence. Without a ripple,
the lake mirrors a pure expectancy.
In my head, I hear my heart beat.
How very close, Beloved, You must be!
*******
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