Will I As Man Survive? With an unclouded eye to go within And sound the deepest fathoms of the soul, Leave the past behind and truly see What lies still hidden in the cavern space That holds the untold vastness of the self, This exercise attempted now I find Persisting in me a host of small desires, Resistant to the necessary change As the edifice of sorrow I have built, Limited mind that clings to old ideas, A body hardly conscious of the goal, A heart that falters on the fiery road, A being ignorant of bliss who lives Circumferenced in its small bays of self. How then have I been chosen for this path? I clearly see my of

Of His Infinity Seeking with the stultifying mind Answers that can only come when calm Descends and breeches the thickened fortress walls, Crosses the draw-bridge of our ignorance, Above the moat of our obscurity Subdues the defenders of old and fixed ideas And the guardians of superior intellect, Enters the Chamber with the sword of peace Installing on the throne the rightful heir. Only then begins the warrior-quest Who seeks for truth in life's uncertainty, For love that burns a bright unsullied flame, A body to bear divine unbearable bliss, These births accompanied by careful death Who moves us when we can no loner move Or grow into th

Ever Towards Light 10/23/09   I fell into a world once seen in sleep, A sleep not fading into dream, but real, Tactile, vibrant, vast, and borderless, Where all was touched by beauty, formed by love, Saw palaces afloat in limitless space, Their alabaster columns in the sun That never set, its ever-changing hues To captivate the free enraptured soul, And settled in an other-worldly calm. I saw approach the men I knew on earth, Conversing amicably in tones subdued. Before them walked the one I knew as Lord. Majesty was sculpted on his brow And all around the air was charged with peace. A friend once told me of her childhood dream In whic

Let the Holy Fires Burn (10/13/09)   Body do not fail me now, So many pages still to turn In the unfolding book of soul, Let the holy fires burn, Burn away and purify The remnants of all egos past, Let fall away the sense of self Surrendered all to Thee at last; Nor let the wiles of fictive time Interrupt the spirit’s course, Let me still chant the sacred AUM Filled with Thy transforming force.  

You Must Become My thoughts like a dark and storm-racked sea Rush upon me and there is no rest, Sleep comes in fitful pauses and I wake Exhausted with a weight upon my chest. Great gulps of breath to still the pounding heart Return the body to some normalcy. Last night while reading Milosz I was struck By a certain similarity Of life experience, his phrases burned Onto the page with Truth's imprimatur. All these years gone by, so little learned Of riches that lie within us, we demur To vagueness and content with 'getting by' Make of our days a journey to no end. "You must become what She has seen in you." These words so gently

Remember Beauty 9/11/09 Remember beauty, it shall last Through all the withering of time. Outward beauty is a mask To please the senses and the eye, Yet those with an awakened heart See beauty in a mote of dust And nowhere turn but she is there, Of such a radiance the eye Bereft of inner sight is blind. Only the vision in the heart Can truly see behind the veil The youth that leaps in aged limbs, The perfect form of the infirm, The peace that lives in troubled souls, The joy that made this stumbling world, The inhabitant for whom we seek Who lives in us unseen, unfelt And carries us to heaven's heights.

Preparing to Leave A red hydrangea in its brilliant dress Apart from pinks and multicoloured blues Calls me as I walk the garden path. A last lone iris singing by the lake Greets me as I near in dulcet tones. In the torrid heat of summer flowers rest, Even roses desultory blooms Are muted in the white-hot heat of day. O India, your jasmine-scented lands Sweetly call this traveller of song. Now autumn whispers in the tinted leaves And the mornings of my life grow cool once more.

Keeping Watch The hydrangeas in the near unbearable heat Sadly wilt, their leaves like dog ears droop, It seems as if they are prepared to die. The mop heads and the lace caps could bring tears To one who sees their shriven lifeless blooms. But then miraculously towards end of day A revival one might say, as suddenly When the sun has dipped behind the stands of trees Or settled in the stillness of the lake, All is made new, a resurrection eve, With vibrant shades of blue and pink and white. "Don't go into the garden until six", A phrase that I have often heard before. It is the quiet hour when Nature rests. The hawk is on the hunt, the rabb

My Only Refuge 9/18/09 It falls, this rain of days, incessantly, No sun is seen but yours within my heart. I have cut and stacked the wood of broken dreams, Piled upon the fire useless thoughts And thrown into the flames my dark desires. I have been burned by treachery, abuse, The gifts I offered charred upon return, Seen offered love reduced to smouldering ash. But you, my mother, lit a flame in me That shall not die though the heaven's pour, Igniting spark of soul to roaring blaze Consuming all my ignorance to know That you and only you are my life's blood. The past is dying and the new world born, In you my only refuge and my strength

Of Light^s Descent and Darshan Days.htm 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 wound