Of Light's Descent and Darshan Days

6/13/09

 

I lived and dreamed as a child

And many a flowery garden laid

Small in stature but O so wild

Of gut and sinew I was made.

I rose in back of the stake-bed truck

My head upon a pillow of hay,

The sun so bright and great my luck

But closing fast the years to play.

My father was a driven man

Who drove his children, though with love

Strong as a leviathan

We worshipped him and found thereof

A strength beyond capacity,

And so I pushed the body more

The parent smile I longed to see

Until the body bruised and sore

Begged rest and time that it might heal.

I heeded not its wounded cry

And worked from daybreak into night

At times I felt that I might die

Still listened not to the heart's plight.

Surviving the trials of early years

I never slowed the breakneck pace

The pain and loss and much wept tears

Like rivers in a graven face

Flowed forth and then I was alone

Alone in silence and within,

Seventy years so swiftly gone.

To find the strength to new-begin

The journey of the soul, renew,

Recall the consecrated ways,

The realizations, though they be few

Of Light's descent and Darshan Days.