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

Sun Of Our Enlightenment Future and past I cannot see Or births and lives in former spheres And stars that have companioned me On journeys through unnumbered years Beneath the ever-brightening sun Of our enlightenment whose blaze Before man's labour had begun Was felt upon his obscure days; A greater light whose mysteries Impel the spirit to renew Its vision quest upon time's seas, The unmarked pathways of the few Who move towards an unknown goal, The lone adventurers of God Seeking the sanctum of the soul Who follow where His feet have trod, Forgetting self, defying mind, Foregoing ego and desire To lift

O Sleep Sweet Soul Sleep now O dove in the white infinity And in Their bosom find at last thy peace, The hooded angels shall reveal to thee The light for which thy spirit came to these Sad realms where mortal joy is mixed with tears And all our halting efforts strive to find Beyond the tribulation of our years A purity of heart, a sun-bright mind, Embrace a oneness all our days attest, In flowered field and on the snow-capped ridge, Among the sinful and among the blest, And work to build within the golden bridge. O sleep sweet soul who filled this cup with bliss, The pain of all the ages now shall end, My lips to thine, a las

And There Are Flowers And there are flowers, modest, shy, withdrawn For whom the sun as lover is too strong; They bloom at night and offer to the dawn Their fragrant gifts and silence is their song. We have watched the ballet of the stamens dance In the moon-white chalice of blooming Cereus When night was full and earth held in its trance And felt a subtle peace wash over us. Now love has come and granted me the Sight Reflected in the mirror of my heart, Of things that are themselves possessed of light And every soul is of this beauty part. For at the last joy shall again prevail, Eternity lives in us, we cannot fail.

To Mary Helen 2/6/02 Soul in Transition Riveted to the ticking of the clock Relentless the attack of piercing pain, The numbing cancer drugs reduce the shock But ebb and flow of agony remain. Minutes pass, millennia of Will, As all life's flame-events go flashing by, The shattered tortured shell tenacious still, Its mantra to the Lord a poignant cry For bliss in an uncomprehending world That moves a puppet or automaton Whose dark desires on the Spirit hurled For sated joys of dull oblivion. The days drift by a disconnected strand And hours move more slowly than the years, The sweeping motion of the second-hand