The Soul's Need.htm The Soul's Need The silent staccato of emerging leaves, The pulsing of the earth as life breaks through As Beauty's debut consecrates the world. All here is sacred and all is ever new. Sometimes I simply walk among the flowers Speaking in silence a language that they know. What joy to be welcomed each year so bounteously With loveliness down every path I go. Day now stretches into languid eve, I kneel to see a bud or pull a weed, Alone I contemplate, alone I live Knowing that truth and light are the soul's need.

The Avatar (8/23/09)   They speak in muted voices of the day That he appeared on earth, the Avatar, The silent one who came to change the world. Worshippers remembering his words, The poetry, the books so filled with light That if read aloud would reverberate In flesh and bone infusing nerve and cell. Some, feeling him a bit too high would seek To bring him down to a more human scale Who somehow had achieved enlightenment Withantiquated notions and conceits. Yet in the end they fail, his soul too great, Compassionate, all-loving and divine. He is far from us and he is very close.  

Absent Malice An undercurrent of duress An emptiness that soothes us not, One cannot say that we regress But essential things we have forgot And religion holds no soothing balm To the wounded spirit in distress. Lacking will and lacking calm Alone in an age of nothingness A senseless round seems our lot. Commitment and a willingness A time to seek and reassess And find again why we are here Absent malice, absent fear.

Ballerina O lovely ballerina with the eyes That penetrate the very depths of soul, Your smile is blessing on the multitudes That pass unknowing wrapped in unfilled dreams. I who have seen your beauty radiate An aura of beneficence to all, Who looked on me and opened arms of joy To be enfolded in my heart of peace, Remember when the clouds of doubt descend Enveloping the faithless with their shade That in you dwells supreme delight, content To live and love embracing all the world.

Meeting Vishnu^s Mother.htm Meeting Vishnu's Mother I met her in my spirit's hour of dreaming, Those dreams that linger long in memory, More real than any normal act of seeing. She walked to where I stood, embracing me As one known long, met many times before. I held her close and then began to quote The mystic lines that open the soul's door. She interrupted me, a questioning note, Though not unkind, as if she somehow knew, "Not him again", that is the Avatar. I said, "Not now but following these few Vision-thoughts from St. Exupery, His realization of seeing with the heart." I followed with His words on Ecstasy That lift us to the planes of the Maker's

Mystical Experience I have looked on things that were not there, Scenes so marvellous the eye Not unaccustomed to inner sight Nor stranger to beauty, could not contain The vision of the wakened heart. Whether in sleep or deep dream-state, Beyond the frontiers of the mind They came, the great enlightened ones, Yogis, sages, seers, to me Clearer than the eye can see, More real than flesh and kind, so kind, To teach me and to counsel give, But with such tenderness, as if A friend and brother bearing light. I have heard music with an ear Closed to the noise and din of earth, The too-loud mockery of song, Celestial, exquisite and d

As Time Allows 7/22/09 I will remember her as time allows, And all the infidelities of love. There is a blindness comes upon the soul Of those who unequivocally love, Discretion lost, the heart a seething mass, The mind unable dispassionately to see The flawed relationship, the nagging doubt That ate at her, consuming all her joy, And lacking wisdom's seal and the soul's stamp I wandered blind in alleyways of fate. But I shall see someday as time allows Perhaps her love was flawed but yet sincere, Inapt to overcome the treacheries Once suffered at a brutal father's hand. Though she is gone and lost to me I know I will remember her as time a

The Heaven of Which We Dream How can we speak who have no-thing to say Of life that lives beyond the sense-bound soul, A limited vision of the empiric all Cannot filter out the false from true Locked in the guarded palace of the mind. For even in our sleep we are unaware Of forces that can aid or malevolent Spirits that delight in wrongful deeds. We must break the walls of ignorance And free the bird imprisoned in the heart. A day will come when we shall truly see Beyond the anchored present and the past, In the moment live the heaven of which we dream.

In a World Recast 12/22/09 A hundred random thoughts assail the brain Yet above the mind the silent spirit waits And knows the hour is not far from us When the Lord in all His splendour shall descend, Annihilate the darkness and the din Of discord and the errant ways of men. One breathes this truth in the air of Auroville, Beneath the Banyan, tree of unity, And in the Ashram's sacred atmosphere. We are but instruments on which He plays, But more than pawns in a chess-game with fate; Conscious we may become when all is done With our plenary assortment of desires, Transformed by Light in bodies built of light, Divine, in a world recast, tran

Knocked Out Prone on the soil of boyhood I lay unconscious as sin, A child of the deep-silenced wood, The birds sang to me from within. I slipped on the grass and was senseless, My head hit a stone or a clod, I felt an unearthly bliss As if touched by the hand of God. Such melodies came that morning I would have liked to stay But I heard my mother shouting, 'Get up, go out and play!'