The Oak Tree Speaks Do not disturb the soil beneath my feet For I have stood a century and more, Above man's traffic and his noise I greet All passing souls within my shade's retreat. Do not pollute the air my leaves intake Or cloud the sun with choking noxious fumes I breathe your waste, the air you need I make, His radiant light my consciousness illumes. Tread lightly on the earth thyself aware My gift of life a glory to behold, Trees in bloom are beautiful, more fair – I stand a symbol of the strong and bold. Beside me sit awhile, my strength is thine, Feel the breath of God within my limbs, I know myself a part of His d

A Dream of Auroville I dreamt of Auroville last night And saw as in a changing sky An advent of transforming light Descend, and from the earth a sigh Rejoicing in this state of Grace. Flowers, fields and fragrant trees Bedecked the red earth's winsome face And floating over quiet seas The crescent with a starry crown Appeared and seemed to hover bright Among the paths so lushly grown In Matrimandir's golden light. All now becomes a holy quest For pilgrims of the inner way Disdaining paths of ease and rest To win the ransom of the day Foreseen and promised to mankind And preordained from heights above, Withi

Presence of the Mother Dec. 2002 In this little room of life now dwells Enlightening, enrapturing our days The presence of the Mother in our cells Transforming by Her love our errant ways.

To God Within Remembering the fervid dreams of youth And brief-lived hopes that bloomed only to fade, The search for meaning and a ray of truth, To see our past as on a film displayed. Growth is a spiral not an endless round Monotonous, repeating all we've done Nor peace and calm a state so quickly found, Enlightenment a treasure to be won Through offering of self and all that we Conceal in darkness of our human state, Our freedom's call the great apostrophe To God within our lives must consecrate.

Servitor of Light I, a waster of days Profligate of gifts Miser of memories Penurious abide In the counting house of life. Controller of riches past, Mendicant of light Cherishing tattered dreams Dressed in sorrow's robes, Purveyor of others' goods, Salesman of used ideas Spendthrift of godly boons. Would I find greater wealth A sadhu or a slave Dispossessed of all But my divinity? I, scientist and sage And blind novitiate, Careless practitioner Of spirit's enterprise, Participant and pawn Actor and audience, Witness and spectator Of creation's steady steps Destruction's rapid pace,

Jewels Among the Grass What dreams I dreamt in youth's exuberance, And truths that every child could understand I knew and held a simple reverence, That all this earth is consecrated land. Flowers grave and thoughtful in their turn And meditative trees in forests' dense, Retreats among the humble moss and fern Mid thought-filled days and skies of innocence Dotted the flowing valleys of my youth, The secret dells where rivulets ran clear, Sunlight and the gleam of greater truth That beckoned at the edge of soul's frontier. I found the treasured jewels among the grass Flitting winged joy my heart could break, Denser woods and

Before the Battle's Won.htm Before the Battle's Won Though we are tried and feel the human need To ease each other's pain and share their grief, In retrospect we know we'll not succeed And find our tears, our efforts at relief Inconsequent, for all is in His care And we must learn at times to stand aside, No matter that the human heart might tear Oo eyes so dimmed with tears we cannot hide, But in our state of higher self we know That all is wrapped in waves of healing Grace, Our truest needs He surely will bestow, For in His calm is our resting-place. We see a ray and take it as the sun, So far to go before the battle's won.

Transform Our Lives I sullenly protested when we moved Away from all familiar things I loved To spaces where a child might run and play In unconfined communion with the day. We look upon the present, hug our lot Of pleasure and of pain, we plan, we plot And rarely do we look within for cause Of things, divine the sealed and secret laws That move the mechanisms of our fate, Or seek the wisdom of the realised great. We live content within a narrow sphere, The spirit's voice we can no longer hear Yet all our trials attest to otherness, Of beings in our midst, of hands that bless, A force of God that calls our hearts to bliss

Winter Haiku - Scroll VI Winter music A crackling branch Shakes loose its frozen coat of snow. Snow-white swan Untouched by cold Figuring the freezing pond. Fractured night When mortal breath Breaks like shards of crystal glass. Unknown footprints Mark the snow. What stealthy creature passed this way?

Mind of Man* An ivory tower with obstructed view In which we build our world philosophies Combining old ideas to seem like new The ego-self to pamper and to please. Monotony in which the highest thought Subserves the bland necessities of greed Where pleasure a commodity is bought And sold to fill desire's endless need. A few have met the Mother of us all Descended here a flame of sheer-white light, Who enters us with every sincere call And banishes from souls with God's own might The gloomy limitations of our race, To peer bey